Begin by reflecting upon the sorts of projects, exercises and assignments you have enjoyed most:
● Do you enjoy the creative freedom of working with your own text and images from scratch, or do you prefer working with text and images that are provided to you?
● Do you prefer working in a ‘hands-on’ way, physically manipulating paper and materials, or do you prefer working digitally, laying out the pages and page elements on-screen? Which of the subjects covered in this unit have interested and engaged you?
Below are some pointers of what has been covered in this unit, as a reminder. They are very broad areas, so as you’re reading through the list, reflect upon the more extensive content of each. Consider what aspects you enjoyed the most (and the least!) and make notes in your learning log.
Contextualisation: Researching designs and designers
Typography: Principles and experimentation
Colour: Colour management and working with images
Paper: Properties and qualities
Printing and bookbinding: Processes – traditional, digital
Try to identify a specific topic within one of these subject areas that you are interested in and can look into with more detail. You might know immediately and instinctively what you want to pursue. You may want to know more about traditional methods of bookbinding, for example, or hand-making paper. You may be interested in the mathematical principles underpinning the Golden Mean and Fibonacci series, and how these principles apply to page layout. You may want to design your own typeface. You may want to extend and adapt one of the projects and exercises you’ve already undertaken on the course.
The focus of your interest may be quite specific. Identify it through this exercise by exploring each of your interests in turn and taking note of your resulting thoughts in your learning log.
In this course, I find that there were more exercises on researching than Graphic Design core concepts. I did enjoy learning about the designers, but I did find it a bit more daunting to read so much and research online, as when I do design projects I anyways do these kinds of research in search for inspiration. So, to be honest, I did like these exercise less, and had the itch to just design and create. When the research was a part of a task, it was maybe a bit better as I got to create something afterwards. But I much prefer to do projects and create.
I do love working digitally, and it is my strength, but going out of my comfort zone in some exercises and assignments such as AS.1 Your Zine, P.1/EX5 research & development and AS.4 Altered Books were really fun and challenging.
I feel like every time when I am forcing myself to work by hand (drawing, painting) I am forcing myself to get out of my comfort zone and feel better with imperfection, or with not fulfilling my vision to the fullest but getting something else which might be a happy surprise.
I loved working on P2. EX.4 Designing a Cover, and see how many versions of the same cover I can make out of associations, and working on canvas on illustrator and modifying a bit at a time, not thinking too much and finding lots of interesting surprises.
Also, working with a limited palette of colours, and minimal elements. simplifying the idea, but getting better at more is less.
One of my favourite at this course was AS.2 Form and Function. I loved creating the project of luxury covers, and then the lost islands guide -including creating the branding and inside pages and playing around with mockups (and seeing how my vision can look real).
I loved using my own photography in it, as I feel like I'm more free to use what I want, and the colours of film are my favourite.
I also loved to experiment with typography here and the process of creating the mockups too.
I loved sculpting text and typography on both P.3 EX.3 Experimental Typography and P.4 EX.2 Concrete Poetry. I really enjoyed as I always wanted to create this kind of work, I love typography and really feel attracted to it, and this is why I also loved working on AS.3 My Little Book of... I loved exploring placing texts and creating typography books. Also, including again my own photography and working with images.
I did really enjoy the last part of the course, working with images and creating photomontages according to a poem, and creating meanings and narratives such as on P.4 EX.3 Sequencing Images and EX.4 Collating and Binding It was very interested to dive deeper into working with images and photomontages as I felt it wasn't a strong side in my practice.
I was so excited to work on AS.4 Altered Books as it was so different and put me into a complete hand crafting mode. I feel like I love working with my hands when it comes to crafting and less when drawing (of which in this assignment I had to go into a field I love and don't do much of, and a feild out of my comfort zone).
What I have found even more interesting and new to me, was binding and hand making books and covers. I feel like this is a field I only dove a tiny bit into on AS.1 Your Zine and on EX.4 Collating and Binding I feel like, as I decided to bind my own book, this will be something I would love to learn more about!
I also love learning about the print and paper so I am sure I will learn more about it when creating my book by hand.
I also feel like I want to work on this book more with my own photography and combine the layouts and grids I've learnt on Graphic Design Core Concepts and Typography I learnt in both courses, and put it all together.