Full day of workshops
Today was a fun-filled day of hands-on workshops. The first was a poster workshop led by Dan at Ankle Deep Studio based at Portsmouth Harbour dockyard. This was my first time here at the studio so I didn't know what to expect, my first impression was I really liked the studio space as it seemed to me they encouraged creative play and fully support experimental work within all different mediums.
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| Screenshot showing Ankle Deep Studio https://www.ankledeep.co.uk/studio |
The brief for this workshop was to create a poster that visualises the word WOW but we had rules to work within. We had 60 minutes to create an A3 poster in response to the sentiment 'WOW!'.
Here are the rules of play:
- You can use black and/or blue electrical tape, coloured dots, and coloured paper.
- Your colour palette can not exceed 3 colours (not including white).
- You can cut shapes out of the coloured paper if you wish to do so.
- Your poster must integrate the word 'WOW' which must be created using the materials only.
- You can include additional words but these must be created using the materials only.
To inspire us the quote from Milton Glaser was mentioned.
“There are three responses to a piece of design – yes, no, and WOW! Wow is the one to aim for.” – Milton Glaser
I found myself wondering how can I tackle this brief, and how can I explore the word WOW in a creative way using the materials provided? I decided it was best to sketch out ideas quickly as I didn't have long for this task. Below are images of my quick iterations to map out concepts to work with.
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| Photo showing my iterations for the poster workshop (Jones, 2023) |
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| Photo showcasing final poster designs by my colleges and I (Jones, 2023) |
My concept was to express the word WOW, in a constructivist response that eludes towards the fundamentals of typographic layout that supports whitespace and the use of geometric shapes that formulate parts of a letter. For me this is a great example to visualise materiality and how this workshop was beneficial for my ongoing question of research module.
This next exercise was given by Erika, the course leader for the question of research module. I found myself challenged at first because we had no idea what or how to answer the question and respond to the set reading from the text Practice to Practice-led Research: challenges and rewards by Neal Haslem (Vaughan, L. (Ed). (2017).
However, after the initial stages of discussion in my group, it then became clear that by doing that you formulate an understanding towards the meaning of the text and how practice-led research is based on doing and learning by doing, this expresses your own views and thought process within your own practice.
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| Photos showing group workshop (Jones, 2023) |
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The above images show photos taken by me of our group's visual installation that we used as part of our thought process in tackling our understanding of the text Practice to Practice-led Research: challenges and rewards by Neal Haslem (Vaughan, L. (Ed). (2017).
The idea was to write out one word given by one of our group leaders. I adopted a creative way of sketching out my word (You) in a condensed typeface. This was to convey to the reader a bold statement that the text is aimed at us the creative and how we view this in our own practice.
Each of our words was attached by string which then was scattered at random around the room to formulate a journey of discovery by using the string as an aid to follow and collect the rolled scrunched and folded-up words to make a sentence.
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The idea was to allow the users, being our lecturers, to begin their own journey in collecting research but along the way, they found obstacles, plain paper that had no words on it and had to search high and low for each word that we wrote down on paper.
The concept here was for them to see and for us to witness their frustrations, and thought process in searching for answers and to see how messy practice-based research really is.
The art of doing and allowing your research to take its course is what I found challenging at first. Still, as time went on in the workshop, I became increasingly aware that practice-based design research is acting upon an idea and gathering research around it contextually.
You don’t have to find the answer to it, you just have to learn by doing and keep on doing that thing that you want to learn from and incorporate into your own practice. It becomes a messy process at times and may resort to dead-ends or mountains to climb. Still, by taking each step as it comes you begin to explore through practice-based research and create a mindset that opens yourself up to ideas that may or may not fuse into one specific design area of practice-lead research.
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