331 P4 Documentation

Manifesto Draft

Don’t ground work in reality.
This is a very personal mantra for me. I always wanted to get into media design rather than anything else because I always wanted to create things with no thought given to how they might work in reality. Make things impossible, make them crazy, make people twist their heads around trying to find the right angle for up.

Celebrate creativity.
It’s hard enough being a designer before somebody wants you to design a bland, corporate banner for their insurance company. It’s very important to keep yourself creative, so even in cases like this, find something to channel your creativity into – be it the font or the subtle gradient on the background. Creativity will get you places where nothing else can.

Make it impossibly.

On occasion you might find that something you make starts turning out looking ordinary, or at worst cliché (assuming that wasn’t the intention). If you find yourself lacking in ideas then take what you have and completely rebuild it out of something completely unexpected. Make whatever you create so that it couldn’t possibly exist. Make it out of smoke, glowing lights, neon pasta.

Make what you want to see.

There is no point trying to create something you have no interest in, sometimes it’s hard enough getting the creative juices flowing on something you’ve been wanting to make for ages, let alone something that holds zero interest. You’ll make something much more impressive if it’s something you want to make.

Critique your work, don’t contain it.

Don’t ever tell yourself off for making something too big or ambitious. Yes, look at your work analytically, and get others to too, but if you or somebody else says “that’s too far-fetched” then don’t tone it down – turn it up a notch.

If in doubt, turn it upside down.

When looking at anagrams, it often helps to reorder the letters backwards. Take the same approach with design – if you’re feeling uninspired, take what you’ve made and flip it, twist it, bend it, whatever. It’ll give you a whole new perspective.

Conceptualise in context.

I may never hear the end of this one, but I find it very difficult to conceptualise something in a medium other than its intended final form. If you’re planning on sculpting, don’t sketch on paper, bash some rocks together. If you’re animating something, don’t sketch a storyboard, make it roughly in your chosen software etc. Trying to fit a stroke of creativity into something other than what it was meant for has only served to constrain my ideas to what can be displayed on paper.

Gross, J. (2011). The Process of Creativity. Retrieved from http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/12/06/the-process-of-creativity/

Dorst, K. (2001). Creativity in the Design Process: co-evolution of problem-solution. Retrieved from http://www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/AY2013/cs7601_spring/papers/Dorst_Cross2001.pdf

Manifesto first concept

Media design as a concept is very ethereal, there is almost infinite space there for building and creating outside the bounds of physics. Because of the highly customized environment you can create there can be very high expectations of what people see as being realistic. As such the way to avoid these expectations is to create something highly stylized or even impossible in order to hide inconsistencies behind a believable fantasy. This is what I always wanted to do as a media designer, to be able to create things outside the realm of possibility. I want to express the potential of media design as a form of creation.

Essay Final! (Hopefully)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8Mw-5NDy-1SWXhfZjlBcHB2MFk/edit?usp=sharing

Phew! I hope this is done, although I'll have to see if there's any major feedback I get in class. It's not too late to reformat it

EDIT: updated

Peer Reviews!

Aaaaaand here's my two peer reviews! I got the two they've done for me back too and I've made a few tweaks according to their feedback - the most obvious being that i've split the landscape design into two columns, which is a bit more standard but I think makes it seems less like a wall of text. I've also placed my images in the center of each page to breakt hings up too.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8Mw-5NDy-1SZjN5WTg5T3cxeGM/edit?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8Mw-5NDy-1SUkpac0NZajFpOGc/edit?usp=sharing


EDIT: Ok just found out we need to upload the peer reviews other people did for us :P

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8Mw-5NDy-1SRDB2eVRkX2tWS1E/edit?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8Mw-5NDy-1STGdYYW16clZmWU0/edit?usp=sharing

Critical Writing - Thesis Statement

Consumer Culture and Globalisation!

The consumer culture that has rules our lives and economy is both a driving force of modern design and a hindrance, encouraging copycat companies and products designed to profit off someone else's successful ideas. Instead of pushing for innovation to sell products, many instead look the innovations of others, seizing any profitable feature or product and making a competing item, designed not to bring anything new to the table but simply for profit. While this attitude is probably stifling many opportunities for invention, it also plays a massive part in driving our "consumer economy". The wealth of a large portion of the globe revolves around the latest iProduct being successful, or a particular runway-based item of clothing making a profit. Apple in particular is famous for 'appropriating' features and ideas from other products and then passing them off as their own ideas - Steve Jobs once paraphrased "Good artists borrow, great artists steal". This consumer economy is holding us back, putting too much focus on jumping on the latest fad as opposed to true innovation, yet it is undoubtedly crucial to the financial stability of the globe.

Graham, H. (2008). The End of Consumer Culture?. Retrieved from http://hughgrahamcreative.com/2008/01/30/toward-a-moral-equivalent-of-consumerism/

Horning, R. (2008). The Design Imperative. Retrieved from http://www.popmatters.com/column/the-design-imperative/

Sheth, J., & Maholtra, N. (2009). Global Consumer Culture. Encyclopedia of International Marketing

(http://www.uwyo.edu/sustainable/recent-research/docs/global%20consumer%20culture%20arnould.pdf)

Critical Selfie Part Trois - Images!

Critical Selfie Part Trois - Haiku

Lost behind mirrors

Echoes of many voices

Stifled in silence

Critical Selfie Part Trois - Perspective Critique

Capitalism is a huge force in our country, the vast majority of power is held in the hands of the select few with the greatest wealth and our urban environment reflects this. The viewpoints of the many working-class citizens are of little consequence and are often ignored entirely in favour of the interests of those in charge of the massive corporations that form the chasms of urban high-rise. The fronts of these corporations, and their interests, make up the city skyline we see every day. Self-contained monoliths of wealth and power, each building in the business sector vies to be the most impressive, yet all are essentially faceless. Of all the hundreds of people that work in each one, not a single one is visible, each hidden behind the facade that is the incarnation of the overall power of one or two select people. The buildings that line our city may be stylish on the outside, but in truth the outside is all that matters - a mirror that gives the illusion of substance while hiding the ultimately inconsequential perspectives inside.

Murray, G. (2006). Capitalist networks and social power in Australia and New Zealand. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd..

Critical Sellie Part Deux

People hardly ever look up. It's a tactic that used to serve me rather well during hide and seek, people dont tend to notice things above them. I wanted to focus my take on this project on the sky, on how the urban sprawl both blocks and embraces it. Buildings actively impose on it, yet glass fronts embrace its image in a reflection. We also create monuments that break the skyline, statues, works of art, bridges, all of which are common in Wellington, and most of which are actively designed to silhouette against the sky.
I want to show how the sky is used to both accent and cover our impositions on nature. The urban jungle holds far more sky than it should, given how much of it it blocks out