God help me!

So, after all this time, here I am writing again. I managed to finish my dissertation and handed it in on the 1st February. Up until then I had worked really hard on the ESA project and had got that to a good standard.

Once I handed my dissertation in, I started to work on a Self-initiated project looking at the differences between a range of newspapers that I collected on the 18/01. After a few experiments I settled with an idea of looking at the space given to editorial and advertising and then produced a series of visuals for that. The next step on this one would be to extend it by adding different information about the newspapers.

Soon after the dissertation hand-in, we were given 3 new briefs to choose from. From those I picked a tabloid format Guide to the Football World Cup in South Africa. On that project I have managed to design a series of graphics and pages so far, but I have not managed to define a route to take the project further and so I haven't been able to finalize anything.

As the 4th project goes, I didn't feel very excited about any other briefs that were given to us so I salvaged the Metrology brief and since then I have also been trying to work on this. As before, I am still finding it difficult to decide what the project is about (content) and so I have not been able to produce anything substantial for it.

Right now I only have 5 weeks left (including the current one) to finish all these projects. I feel that I have not had enough time this year to do my projects and my work is going to suffer because of that. I just hope that I am able to finalize something for all 4 projects so that I can hand it in and let go of it. Also, I still need to print-out some images for the reference section of my project folders and then label the tabs. I will also need to buy 2 more silver boxes for the presentation. God help me!

Where am I?

So the first term ended and I managed to advance on the ESA project as well as making a very good progress on my dissertation. I haven't really been able to start the Metrology project and my attempts to agree on a self-initiated brief didn't really work. The plan that was suggested to us by the tutors, to finish 2 projects by xmas, hasn't been achieved. Rather than trying to start something else now, or insist on the Metrology project – that is not really going anywhere – I think the best thing to do is to finish both my dissertation and the ESA project to good standards, hopefully before the first session next term, and then start on the other 3 projects. It will be hard work to get all these 3 projects done by Easter (16 April), but it's better to do that then not to finish properly what I started already. If I give myself the last month to work on the PPD project that should be enough. I will have 1 month to work on each project up until the deadline. God help me.

Self-Initiated Project

I'm very excited about this, as I know have a real, live project to work on as my self-initiated project. The brief is to redesign a website for Michael J. McEvoy (www.michaeljmcevoy.com). So far, I've been sent some graphics and have looked at his web presence. I have also suggested that we work on his logo to try and echo his music in it and then we can apply that to the rest of his graphics. The next step is to meet him at the end of this week to agree on the brief and then I'll be off doing some research and starting to develop some ideas. Very exciting indeed!!!

European Space Agency Project

The project is very straightforward: it's simply a redesign of an existing brochure by the European Space Agency. I started out by looking at different graphics that I thought could express the idea of 'space' and astronomy. I then looked at typefaces that could express that too and decided to use Gridnik as its form gives an idea of futurism and technology. The format I chose is a booklet (17 x 21 cm) as the function of this object is to inform a wide audience about the European Space Agency and its programmes and should be something easy to carry and read. After having done a first layout of the information and juxtaposed some images, I now need to start experimenting with different forms, shapes and colours to give the brochure a fresh, new, interesting look to the old one.

Metrology Project

On the 30th October I discussed my initial idea of exploring the relationship between the metric system and music during my tutorial and the response I got was that most projects that tried to explore that relationship before have gone wrong. It was said that if I wanted to do that, I should extend this into a self-initiated project. That is something that interests me, but I wouldn't like to waste all the research and time that I've put into this project already and so I now need to decide on a different route to take the project further. One option was to explore the 'confusion' that exists in the UK by having two different measurement systems in place. In terms of the metric system, that would be the route that would most interest me to explore, but I will have to work on my choice of format as I wouldn't like to produce another booklet because I am already doing that for another project. I am going to have to spend some more time to develop this one.

Metrology Project

So after an intensive first two weeks of research into the metric system and trying to decide on a concept to take the project forward, I arrived at the idea of looking at the relationship between the metric system and music. It seemed like a crazy idea at first, but interesting enough to be taken further. Today I discussed this idea with a friend of mine who is a musician and whose father is a physicist – can't get better than that! – who gave me a few really interesting ideas on how I could take this further. He talked about sound frequency, which is something that can be measured as well as the range in which the human ear can hear sounds. He also talked about colour frequencies and how they can be measured and maybe linked to sound frequencies. The result of that could be an amazing graphic that explains this relation while showing what this all means in metrics. I can't wait now to get into a bit of more research...

Kickoff

Today we had our first session with the tutors in the Information Design pathway. In the morning session we received 4 briefs that we can choose from. A few more will be given to us after Christmas. From the 4 briefs we got today I really liked the first 2 ones: one called "Metrology" which is all about the metrics system, and another about the European Space Agency (ESA). The later one being a re-design for print of an existing online brochure. We were also told to start thinking about a self-initiated project, which we'll need to present a brief to be approved soon. I am very excited about all these projects and I am eager to get straight into them.