The session began with a short discussion on what influences our work in terms of our personality and wants in connection with designing. Essentially it is what makes us unique because everyone has a different approach to how they design.
In connection to this we began looking into what the "first things first" manifesto is.
I found out that it is incredibly interesting and influential to how design is perceived now.
"Commercial work has always paid the bills, but many graphic designers have now let it become, in large measure, what graphic designers do. This, in turn, is how the world perceives design. The profession’s time and energy is used up manufacturing demand for things that are inessential at best.
Many of us have grown increasingly uncomfortable with this view of design. Designers who devote their efforts primarily to advertising, marketing and brand development are supporting, and implicitly endorsing, a mental environment so saturated with commercial messages that it is changing the very way citizen-consumers speak, think, feel, respond and interact. To some extent we are all helping draft a reductive and immeasurably harmful code of public discourse.
There are pursuits more worthy of our problem-solving skills. Unprecedented environmental, social and cultural crises demand our attention. Many cultural interventions, social marketing campaigns, books, magazines, exhibitions, educational tools, television programmes, films, charitable causes and other information design projects urgently require our expertise and help."
http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/first-things-first-manifesto-2000
In short the manifesto has been rewritten several times. Overall it based on the idea that Graphic Design can do more than just fulfil consumerism and advertising. Although there is nothing wrong with designing for aesthetics the manifesto pursues the idea of something else, that there must be a reasoning and a concept to artwork/design. Design can do more than sell products, it can challenge ideologies and create changes in the world as design is highly powerful and impacts people.
This led to a discussion about what we like about design ourselves:
I like work which has a concept and possibly questions certain attitudes and ideologies within society.
Communication and tone of voice is highly important and personality should be expressed throughout with incredibly close attention to detail.
I happen to prefer working on my own currently, but I can see the purpose of working with others. However I feel collaboration with other disciplines could benefit me. This is because I quite like personal projects but perhaps this is because I haven't been exposed to many group briefs.
1. Value the concept in relation to the aesthetics.
2. Prefer working independently but would like to collaborate with practitioners of other disciplines.
3. Showing character and personality through work (human element).
4. Staying to your own beliefs and opinions but also challenging others.
5. Being passionate about your own work because it's your work.
In response to this we have been asked to create a piece of graphic design for Ian Anderson which would contribute these elements. So of course the first step would be to research what he has done and what sort of designer he is. This piece of design should be something which could be kept forever.
Ian Anderson:
Background- Set up The Designers Republic and previously studied Philosophy at The University of Sheffield. Incredibly intelligent in terms of literature and would have been a writer within journalism.
Work Buy Consume Die
http://www.creativereview.co.uk/images/uploads/2009/01/workbuycdie.jpg
Approach to work:
"The approach is quite a selfish approach. My process is quite selfish; not selfish for my own benefit but what inspires me are challenges and asking questions. There’s lots of people who are very pragmatic about things but that doesn’t really interest me and if it takes more work to get it done my way then I will do it but I push the envelope and push the client to see how far they will go. I have to accept there’s a lot of people for whom design, advertising and the creative process is just a glorified 9-5 job and they don’t really want to reinvent the wheel. Perhaps they’re people I shouldn’t really be working with or maybe they should be working with me but don’t realise it."
Who or what inspires you?
It’s difficult to answer that question as I don’t really know – I can say I like that piece of design or that style but there’s a low boredom threshold so that will change. Inspiration can come from anywhere, travelling on a train, watching a film – you just have to allow connections and ideas to form. There’s things that over 25 years keep coming back – like immediacy of communication, rawness of communication.
http://www.madenorth.co.uk/ian-anderson-the-designers-republic/
Due to struggles in terms of group/ partner work and complications in messaging and communicating I subsequently had to complete this work independently. This is something I will have to consider in future projects in terms of how to deal with organisation and communicating with people to encourage them to partake, unfortunately I had to work quickly on this brief to prepare for hospital so I was unable to partake in the crit.
In terms of creating work based on the manifesto and different considerations I had thought about in terms of my design work I wanted to include subtle hints. We had to create something which could be kept forever so to stick to my manifesto I wanted to create thought and this was through the use of an image of a dog. Pets should be kept for their life time but sadly some aren't. As this matter is quite important to me I thought it was relevant to create as it does contain my personality. The quote was also from one of my favourite books filled with quotes about animals and this one in particular was written by Arthur Guiterman. I created the piece within the adobe suit (scanned in image) and wanted to create it to remind me over a story book as a child, this is because most animal abuse adverts/campaigns are quite gory and I wanted this to be subtle. I also happen to treasure/keep books and printed material as I feel as though they are important and are of value emotionally. It's quite a small scale at A5 and I think it would work best printed onto textured paper so it isn't too flat.
