PDP

Constellation has been a part of all three years however third year dissertation has been the most important part of all three years for me. I never really gave much attention or credit to constellation in the first two years and found them a bit of a pointless distraction to my subject and field work. However, I now have a completely different outtake on constellation. First and second year constellation were in my opinion a means to helps me develop skills and knowledge to help me with my dissertation. If I had made the effort to engage more with it, I would have practiced my writing skills, learnt how to reference properly and perhaps have had a clearer interest in topics before third year. Of course I can’t change the past but at least now I understand the importance of constellation.

The inspiration for my chosen dissertation topic interestingly came from college and university. Firstly, since learning psychology for a period of time in college it has always fascinated me since and I find that I am quite a perceptive and observant person. This encouraged me to explore how psychology worked within the design world as I could find out more about an interest of mine, whilst applying it to the subject I study at university. As a designer I have also always been interested in how certain design appeals to certain people and how this sways consumerism. So essentially, combing the two, I was intrigued behind the psychology of communication, so this is what I decided to explore, as it would feed my interests and my area of study.

All of my design work this year has contributed to my dissertation choice as it has all involved communication. In particular, the D&AD project because the communication had to be very carefully considered with creating a bathroom product aimed at both males and females and how each sex can perceive colour, type and shape amongst other aspects. Since writing my dissertation it has, to my joy, influenced my latest project ‘The Big Idea’. I have found my dissertation to be very useful as it is influencing the direction in which my current project is going. I am incorporating the idea of perception, subjectivity, imagination and personal experience to create a sensory experience. I feel that learning such an extensive amount has broadened my knowledge and therefore opened my mind, enabling me to enhance the creativity within my design work. So far it has very much contributed to the enjoyment of my most recent project.

Whilst writing my chapter one before Christmas I found it difficult to balance constellation and subject and found that my dissertation was suffering because subject work was very full on. My original question also changed the more I began to read, which I believe was a good thing as it meant that I was learning and forming new opinions and beliefs on the information that I was retaining.

Chapter two incorporated my favourite book for my dissertation but caused me the must frustration due to its length. I found Understanding Comics a very informative and visually interesting read and felt that it influenced much of my writing.

Chapter three was a further elaboration on chapter two which helped me look at it from different angles. This is a method which I can now further apply to my subject work, looking at the same idea but from very different perspectives, even if they are wildly different.

Chapter four was considerably different to the previous three chapters and was taxing in a different way. I did an analysis based on everything that I had learnt and discovered throughout the dissertation. I felt that this helped to reaffirm everything for myself and the reader. It also communicated the importance of the research for artists but also for me, a graphic designer.

Writing my dissertation has moulded my year both academically and creatively. As a person I feel as though I never aim very high to avoid disappointment, however, I really wanted to put the effort in and aim higher than usual. Due to these thoughts I was determined to get a lot of the reading underway over summer so that I felt relatively confident about my chosen topic, more relaxed and ahead of schedule. I found that this head start helped to reduce how daunting the dissertation actually was.

A challenging aspect was not the writing itself but instead was the reading. A couple of the books that I read were fairly comprehensive but the majority of the reading was very advanced and time consuming. This higher level of reading helped me to re-engage with reading on a much higher level than on day to day life.

For me, the dissertation was a test of balancing work and time management which I found I struggled with at times. Balancing subject and dissertation was probably my biggest downfall as both suffered at times. However, I can now put all of my efforts into subject work as I was doing with dissertation before.

My entire dissertation was a process from knowing very little about the topic to learning a lot, which is now influencing my design work. My dissertation helped me to understand that there is so much more behind design than it just being something visual. Behind design there is emotion, personal influences and perception, all of which transform the communication of design. It has taught me to regard my design work a lot more closely and to consider how colour, line, shape and ambiguity largely affect communication. The idea of how ambiguity can create a deeper, more engaged response is fascinating because before I wrote my piece I believed that the very simplistic design work being designed in my design class, for example, was communicating a far lesser message.

I feel as though my dissertation is going to have a big impact on my latest project ‘The Big Idea’. I feel that I am already thinking in a way which is considering all of the factors affecting communication. I think that it will help me in communicating a stronger sensory experience and feel that I will be more understanding towards this project and how the audience will engage with it. I believe that my ‘Big Idea’ project may portray more thought that has gone into it and a better understanding that is not simply visual.

Writing this pdp has put into place how my dissertation has benefitted me and how it will now influence my graphic design work. I feel excited to use what I have learnt and aim to use it to my advantage. What appeared to be a daunting, unreachable task has benefitted me in ways in which I would not have expected. I am pleased that I chose a topic related to my practice as I have made the best use from it.

PDP

Over the course of this year I have learnt and improved on many things within subject, field and constellation. I still have weaknesses however I have learnt many skills along the year. Firstly, in subject I had many workshops in which I was taught things that I had never been taught before. I had demonstrations on more traditional ways of working such as Letter Pressing, Print Making and Relief Printing as well as techniques such as Laser Cutting. All of these I found particularly interesting and useful, especially as I was able to put these into practice in some of my latter projects. I think they have also helped to broaden my way of thinking as graphics does not just have to be everything current but reusing and experimenting with more traditional techniques can be really effective. Subject has really enabled me to improve my research and experimentation techniques. The criticism that I have been receiving from my tutors and piers has been really helpful in encouraging me to push my ideas further and to spend more time exploring carefully before sticking with a possible outcome. One of my biggest learning curves was creating an animation which I’ve never even tried before, it took quite a lot of persistence as it was time consuming and at times quite tedious.

Group field was something quite different and at times a challenge for everyone. Many personal as well as practical skills were needed for this to be done to the best of my ability and work as smoothly as possible. Firstly, I had to be really consistent with my punctuality as working well as a group meant turning up on time and not letting others down. Alongside punctuality went reliability which I am happy to say, unless unwell, I was both reliable and punctual when needed. Another thing that I improved upon was compromise. When working in a group there must always be equal input and so working in my group of three helped me to find the balance of when to gives ideas and when to sit back and listen. I also went to a screen-printing workshop and learnt how to do it well enough so that we could use screen-printing as part of our group project. I also had a chance to contribute to my group by letter pressing for part of our outcome; this also gave me the chance to perfect that skill a little more.

Constellation was probably in some ways one of the most challenging aspects of the year. My attendance was probably the least consistent for this because it was harder to be motivated for something that I wasn’t necessarily always going to be interested in. I’m quite disappointed at my halfhearted attendance for them as I did learn a considerable amount in several of them and I feel that there is always room to learn more. However the things that I did learn, such as Post-perspective, William Morris’ influences, fashion connotations over different eras and my most recent Ecology, Energy and Modernity lectures really helped to fuel ideas for things such as my Constellation essay. Before coming to university and doing constellation I was very unconfident about public and group speaking as I was not comfortable with voicing my opinions in front of people for them to pull apart or give constructive criticism to. However study skills and second term constellation have really helped me with this as they encouraged us to give various little presentations over the year. This also helped me in subject and field as it made me more at ease when talking on my own in front of my class and in front of the large groups that I did not know in field. I originally chose Cath Davies’ fashion option however I didn’t get my first choice so I was with Morag’s Energy, Ecology and Modernity lectures. Although disappointed at first I found Morag’s lectures interesting as I knew nothing of the topic before, so it really improved my knowledge in that area and so I could then apply it to future artists that I look at. I learnt a significant amount of information when writing my constellation essay and it added a new perspective to graphic design for me by looking at how Victor Moscoso worked.