After I sketched a few words, which included elements of wit, I decided to focus on the word emotions. I incorporated this word into a design of a poster for a learning environment, possibly for autistic children because they have difficulties understanding emotions. The poster consisted of the word emotions, where some of the letters represented faces with certain emotions, as well as a definition of the word. It also contained a list of emotions with the relevant faces.
This poster related to ‘wit’ but was is not very minimalistic, my broad focus on the project so far led me to an unfocused design. I tried to focus on Minimalism, Wit and at times Reductionism (which can be seen as a distinctly separate process to Minimalism).
I saw this quote from Paul Rand and thought it was appropriate for this stage of my project…
“The big problem in our business is to have too many ideas, because then you have the problem of choosing. I tell my students, ‘don’t make sketches. Just at first, get an idea, and then put it down.’ The more sketches designers make, the more paths they are creating for themselves” (Paul Rand, 1996)
I was unfocused and indecisive, leading to me trying to portray too many lines of enquiry into my work.
Learning from this, I decided to go back to my initial research, focus only on minimalism and decide on my intentions before I created too many ideas.
My new and focused intention…My new focus is on advertisements, particularly ones that focus on safety for the community, such as road safety. I plan to incorporate minimalism into my adverts, similar to how some of the adverts here achieve minimalism: http://www.dzinepress.com/2010/02/30-coolest-minimalist-print-ads
My thought process…To get to this decision I firstly wrote down some of my personal interests (traveling, cycling, socialising, scuba diving, photography, psychology, helping people and communities etc). Being a safety conscious person I decided I wanted to focus on safety within one of the interests I listed above. I chose cycling, thus then leading to road safety. It was apparent from the beginning I wanted to focus on non-profit advertisements, so a good source for me was: http://osocio.org, because it provides a collection of non-profit advertisements, and there is a road safety section too. After reviewing the road safety section I was aware that I had to make my design dramatic and clever to be effective.
My initial ideas…
I started with deciding I wanted to focus on promoting the importance of wearing reflective clothes when on a bicycle, on foot and riding a horse in the dark. From when I was at school, I remember the saying ‘Be Safe, Be Seen’ so wanted to use that slogan too.
At this stage I researched what reflective clothes cyclists, riders and walkers/runners should wear in the dark to ensure my designs were a good representation of what should be worn.
http://www.roadsafety.cardiff.gov.uk/road-users/horse-riders/
http://www.runnersworld.co.uk/general/stay-safe-winter-running-tips/3069.html
http://think.direct.gov.uk/index.html
Source: McAlhone B. and Stuart D. (1996) A Smile in the Mind. London: Phaidon Press Ltd.
Katie's Thinking Space 