In our group discussion we had a discussion with a tutor about our ball maze game idea. We said the purpose of our project was and what the results would be (what i said in my first entry 4/11/19). Overall the idea was said to be good but there are some minor things that were brought up that we need to take into consideration: what materials were being made to create our maze, a location within the campus and ways of documenting. from the presentation that was shown to us in class yesterday we both really liked the student work where they were working with salt as it has the same concept of making a trail and letting the participant do whatever they want.

After our discussion my partner and i spent the rest of the day building our maze in the studio. We bought foam board and thick black card paper. Foamboard was a good strong base and for the overall structure on the maze. The reason why we picked think black card paper has it won't get noticeably dirty by the paint and it just makes it look a lot neater we also decided to make the maze walls out of this material too for the same reasons. While making it we encountered a problem as in our maze we need to be able to slip in sheets of a3 paper underneath the maze walls but this was later resolved when we both agreed to elevating the the maze frame slightly higher so that there was enough room to add the paper underneath but not enough that the ball can go underneath and it would still be controlled by moving the frame. We stuck everything together by using a hot glue gun which was our best option if we didn't want it to collapse and it made the structure firm to hold. 

We want to set up our project in the campus and we will continue to search a suitable spot where its not too busy or not too quiet, we were thinking either the classroom or the canteen. An idea of documenting that was brought up was that what if we posted the outcomes online or put them up somewhere where people can see them. 

Today we carried out our interact project to participants. We came to Archway at 11am and set everything up in the classroom. We got the maze and set up 3 cups with with yellow, blue and red. originally we wanted to do 4-5 colours but we did a practice test and it looked too messy and you couldn't distinguish the trials properly as the colours mixed too much, so we decided on three colours meaning we needed 3 participants to play the maze game. A point to add is originally we wanted to do this in the cafeteria/canteen or in front of the school shop but has we tested the game we found that it got very messy and it would not be suitable for those locations so we decided to just stay in the classroom (room 103) as it was easier to clear up and it didn't inconvenience anyone. 

After setting it all up in the classroom we went around other rooms asking we they would like to play our game and 3 people agreed. The night before I thought about how it might be a bit impractical if we had people dip their fingers in the paint with the ball as that would create a mess and maybe get on their clothes so we decided on putting spoons in each cup of paint so you could dip and scoop up the ball with much less paint getting everywhere. On one piece of paper we decided to write the quote and then put it in the maze then have the participant play. On two other pieces of paper we wrote the quote after the participants played. It didn't take us long to carry out our whole project so it was quick but everything worked out well and it was good we tested out before bringing in people to play as we made final adjustments eg. the spoons.

However i think personally it wasn't too successful due to the way we built it. It did all work but it just looked a bit off so if i had to say something i could look into would be materials. In this project id definitely say that concept was a lot better. 

Today we started a new project and i got put into a pair. I found today really fun as when we interviewed each other, my partner and i really embraced the task and had a great valuable conversation.

How did each scenario change the circumstance of the conversation? 

First we started sitting from back to back of each other and we started of very casual and nothing serious or formal. I think this helped a lot because we both felt more comfortable and really opened up well to each other and had a deep conversation about each others lives even though we were put in 3 different situations (not talking just using your body to communicate what your guilty pleasure was, sitting backwards from each other, taking a walk with each other and talking through a booth) I liked taking a walk with my partner and it just felt like a normal conversation and it didn't feel like i was being interviewed. What helped was that we recorded all of our conversation that we'll each review it tomorrow and it was just better than taking notes as we can hear our raw and authentic responses.

When we had to interview each other in a different place and go to some location we also wanted to be different so rather than just taking the tube home together we decided on having a drink or sitting in the church next to the archway campus. We decided on going the church, however although it was a bit strange we didn't really manage to interview each other properly because we were both too scared as the church wasn't open and all the lights were turned off. It was fun and scary at the same time to just sit in the isles and hear the silence/erriness  of the church but we didn't actually manage to take out the task. I took a picture and video below:

when we started talking I didn't want to say a normal guilty pleasure such as "eating too much chocolate" or "spending too much" as i wanted to be more creative or have something more personal that i truly felt with. So has our conversation deepend and widened and i answered my partners questions i thought about how my guilty pleasure is "i like being alone" or "i enjoy my own company".

 I was extremely tired today so i was a little worried that i would pick up everything but for my partners guilty pleasures i have an idea of where I'm going with this. Our conversation was very personal and sensitive so it included topics such as sexuality, family, uni and religion. For my partners guilty pleasure it was about how he enjoys making people laugh and joke around but deep inside he feels guilty because that's not his true self and how he almost has 2 sides that he shows people. we discussed that this guilty pleasure is not something he announces to a crowd of people because its personal to him and at times he mentioned that its something he keeps to himself. With this animation i don't want to make it sad and I'm going take in being sensitive and respectful about sexuality and religion and not make that the main topic. 

It was honestly just really nice to talk about life with someone and surprisingly i'm not struggling with adapting this into an animation. 

Studio Bergini and Regular Practice talks 

The first talk "Studio Bergini" a london based graphic design practice, had a more conceptual approach and it is collaborative. What i liked was how they were discussing about how they were currently trying to write a biography for themselves using a list:

-who/what are we 

-where 

-doing what 

-for who

-how 

This system feels like an easier way of breaking down on what you actually are wanting to write instead of just vomiting out words onto the page. 

Another project i liked from them was one called "Zeen" where the project was based on hoarding things on your computer such as "the file you never look at" I really thought that it was a great idea of using material that is being un used and making it seeing it the day of light in a booklet with images. It makes it feel personal and gives an insight into what the interests or the things the person who created the file was looking at.

 The second talk "regular Practice" is a more practical studio. What i liked about their talk is how the talked about their experiences before going straight into the industry and their experience at uni when they went to RCA. They talked about how they where more interested in doing extra curricular work rather the actual uni projects. It showed me how you can use the resources around you at uni to create your own side projects in areas you are interested in and to not always be restricted and only focus on uni work. What i liked what they said was "being a designer is collecting and archiving" i like to interpret this as if even if something seems dumb you can still save it as you can build on it or take inspiration from it. 

part 1 

What do you think is the benefit of working in a studio compared to alone? 

the benefits i find is that you get to work with co workers who are like minded like you, it could even be people who you’ve gone to school with so you get to work on previous projects together. The only issue would be is that in order to create work together you must understand each other and agree on both sides with ideas. It cannot be one sided. 

Considering your current skills what type of role are you suitable for? 

since i don’t really enjoy working with advertising i think my current skills are best at bringing ideas to life through images or a maker or crafts person as i like interacting and being part of the creation of my outcomes and not particularly good at pitching my idea at a big crowd of 50+ people as i stumble on my words a lot and i feel as i can’t communicate what my ideas actually are. However when in a smaller group i have no problem projecting my ideas clearly 

 Part 2 - Short biography 

My name is Melanie Domingues Dias and i’m currently a graphic design student learning at Ual’s central saint martins foundation design course. I create work that communicates to people creatively in unique and abstract ways. Every week i am faced with new projects that push me to face new topics or areas i wouldn’t think to challenge myself in. From previous experience from learning and taking an a level in graphic design i have taken my basic knowledge to a much greater level to applying in our current projects that we make now that include: digital, interacting with the public, typography and practical projects which all give me broad skills. 

today i woke up and i had an idea which involved scratch cards or like a piece of card where you can scratch out. Sort of like those colouring activities where you can scratch out certain places to fill in colours. but with my idea i could have some text and then as you scratch out the word it changes the sentence and gives it a whole new meaning. 

-15 ideas in 15 minutes task 

to be honest i didn’t really focus on getting 15 ideas instead i took my time and came up with 5 ideas. my favourites out of the five was the scratch card idea where i thought about revealing the truth about the foundation course or an everyday topic or even the true experiences of being an art student. The other idea was a candle idea based on long distance relationships where as you burn the candle there’s a small letter at the bottom of the wax so i sort of interpreted it as it requires patience and time to be in a long distance relationship. I liked both ideas but because this needs to relate to my audience at the open day i think the scratch card idea would be best. 

-Benefits/Challenges of peer pitch ideas?

i didn’t have a problem explaining my idea and i showed a visual to give the people in my group an idea of what i was talking about. Although i could’ve used less text on the piece of paper i think i explained well what the basics of my idea. I also asked them about if i should include images with the same concept of the text and they said it would be a good idea and it would look more appealing . 

-how useful was the post-it note exercise? 

i liked more about the fact we could go around and look at everyones ideas and see how people took this project in a different way/path. but the task didn’t make me change my idea completely.

At the end of the lesson we discussed as a class how to overcome a creative block or how to help yourself when youre stuck and you have no ideas.

we came up with a list:

-try not to think too much, do something else 

-dont panic 

-sleep on it 

-work quickly without thinking 

-help someone else 

-talk to non-art people 

-think broad, create a mind map 

-spend time at the library - random looking 

-research on the brief 

Out of all of these techniques from above i use the “sleep on it” and “try not to think too much” i actually did both of these yesterday. 

over the weekend i made a mock up of my scratch card and created a new title: A design student’s experience. I took in what i received for my crit was to use the same font as the ual logo but i also changed the format of the title too. I tested out using the way ual’s logo is present like and made it for my title, for eg:

     design 

 a: students’s 

     experience 

Next i thought about how the card looks a bit too simple and it needed a background so i looked at my research i had done at king’s cross library and in Micheal Beirut’s book “how to” there was a project he had done for MIT Media Lab. Using a seven by seven grid to create various geometric logos for the lab’s research groups. I played around with a repeated pattern for one of the logos he had created and i used the same configuration but put “ual” and formed the same layout but i repeated it over and over again and it turned into a big zigzag shape. 

Why did i pick this project from the book? because ual’s logo is simple and straight forward and is black and white. The logo’s in this project were black and white and simple shapes put together. 

Next i thought how if i left the background pattern in black it would’ve been too distracting and you wouldn’t be able to read the statements as there’d be too much movement. So i went back to Ual’s website and i saw how for the tabs they use two colours, one magenta pink and the other a turquoise colour. I tried using the turquoise as the colour for the repeated pattern and i turned the opacity down to 50% and it brought it to life slightly. 

I’ve decided to only write 6 statements as i asked peoples opinions if 8-10 statements and they said it seemed too much and it would take long to do and it would be a bit dragging. 

Im thinking of making 50% of the cards im making with the turquoise repeated background and the other half the magenta pink just to make it more varied. 

I also tested out the scratch part of the card and at first it was unsuccessful by only using the acrylic paint as it was too tough to scratch out so i searched up on youtube other methods of making it and one recipe said to mix a little bit of washing up liquid to the acrylic paint. This method worked out a lot better and it was easier to scratch out. now what i want to test out is how to get rid of the slight stickiness of the acrylic paint, its not so bad but its bothering me slightly as i want it to not feel tacky. 

Today i didn’t work on the cards as much all i did was tape them up to be painted. I focused more on how i would present my project at the open day. When i visited the tate modern what really drew me in was the way they presented their cards in the gallery shop by using butterfly clips and at the back of the store there’s a sitting area with a table and on top of it is this geometric stand where you can rest books on. I thought this correlated well with my cards has i do sort of have this geometric pattern going on the background of the cards. originally i did want to paint the stand or put a cloth of it but i think making a stand with a sign saying what my project actually is will be more useful and help people understand better what’s going on. along with the sign/stand i want to make a mini version of the geometric stand i saw at the tate modern. I think it would just make it more interesting to look at rather than just laying the cards out flat on the box. i bought white mount board so i can make them tomorrow and I’m hoping it’ll be sturdy enough.

today was the open day where i presented my scratch cards on my box. at first i was slightly nervous as if everything would look good on the actual box. I placed everything out and i made a total of 28 scratchcards. on the sign i used the same idea by clipping the cards to the sign similar to how the tate modern do it. It was fun and interesting other people’s ideas sort of came to life around me and i liked going up to each of their box stands and looking and talking about their ideas.

As the first flow of people walked in, i acknowledged them by saying hi and encouraging them to take the scratch card by saying how it was free. I think it was a good decision how i made the scratchcards free and it was easier to give out. As the day went along i noticed how it was also good when i was holding my scratchcards and sort of presenting it in my hand so people would be interested. I received a lot of positivity from my cards and it also made me more confident to talk to people. Im much better to talking and presenting to people in smaller groups rather than a huge room. However some people were slightly awkward or shy so it made it a little bit harder to carry on the conversation but i handled it in the end. I think this project was quite successful as i managed to had them all out so i think the amount of scratchcards that i made was efficient. 

i was actually really pleased with the way it turned out and im glad in the end i didn't go with the first idea. The difficult thing about this project was finding a place that was cheap to laser cut vinyl. i don't live in london so it takes me a while to get in. money for travel + the vinyl would've been too much for my pocket. I decided to look online for some vinyl sheets where i could've just cut out myself. the sheets where £16 all together, i got 2 colours and 5 metres worth of each vinyl. In the end, my vinyl shape is just a simple triangle so there was nothing intricate or hard to cut out. 

I stuck the triangles on the door and its exactly what i had planned so im happy with this project outcome 

The first thing we did was have a Christmas review.

For the task over Christmas I was really proud of what I had created as I enjoyed making it. I had sculpted a set of 12 letters out of clay and each one represented a term in typography by have a section of the letter painted. To give it some narrative, I had bought some small figures that were little painters each about 1cm tall and I had them positioned in different ways to make it seem they where painting the different sections on the letters. I used micro photography to take still life images of each letter with one small figure. before I came up with this concept I was struggling for about 3 days with what I wanted to do as the brief said we could use location, figures or still image. So I researched how other designers presented typography terms but I mostly found posters that where illustrated and none really interested me. After some time I came across this poster created by Kim Ho which was illustrated but I liked the concept of it. It had these small people on it and they where all doing something around the letters, the letters where larger than the people and I found it quite cute as it felt like this was like a mini world for the people. I looked at related things to this poster and I found even more posters that used little people in them and I thought back to the brief that did mention you could use figures so I decided to buy some model figures from amazon and I quite liked the painters which is then when I got the idea that these little painters could paint the term on the letters.

Why did I use clay to create the letters?

2 reasons because I had been wanting to try using clay and wanted to try out sculpting as I haven’t done it before and it looked fun. I did indeed enjoy it and I want to create more things out of this medium and it was easy to manipulate and I suppose it had more of my touch to it, literally. Second reason is that when I thought about the painter figure positions for the letters I researched how real painters are positioned and how they paint and I realised they’re all painting, a wall, buildings or some structure. Using clay gave it the texture that all these had so I thought this was even more of a reason to use it.

overall although i was busy in the christmas holidays i did manage to come up with an idea i was satisfied with and that i really enjoyed creating as it felt like i was creating a little small world for the people. When we did our christmas review in class i especially liked 2, the first was made by raden and it was created out of hair and the hair was describing the typography term. I thought this was unique because i would’ve never of thought of using hair as an element to teach with. I also liked how the style wasn’t exactly so realistic but i don’t think this is a negative as the hair styles reminded me of the characters in dr sues which gave the whole set of pictures a comical undertone to it which i enjoyed. The second one was someone using the face as a way of communicating the typography terms for example they used their eye and then labelled it as the x-height. its also another method i didn’t think of using as i was thinking more materialistic so i thought that theirs was successful.

building blocks

First class of the year and we were asked to create a new typeface out of electrical tape. i quite enjoyed this as I’m more of a practical person and this was fun to experiment in geometric versions the letter “a”. With this task i thought i had figured out when i weaved the red and the blue tape together, i did find it pretty although i  thought i could do more and make it more simple as if i had done a weaved alphabet it would’ve been too much to do and it didnt look as geometric as i wanted it to look. In this case, less was more. I was quite tired in the lesson and i wasn’t coming up with something that i liked. After i came home i went back to creating more ‘A’ out of only blue tape, i tried using my scapel as i didn’t use it in class and i began to find something i could work with. I made an ‘a’ where i just sliced it randomly, then i made another that was sliced in diagonal parts i really liked this style but i thought it needed to have more of a rule and be more geometric so the next ‘a’ i made i cut horizontal lines and each rectangle i cut was more measured and it looked more consistant. the letter looked like it was glitched and it had a lot of movement to it which i thought it was interesting to look at.  I then decided this was the ‘a’ i wanted to work with as it was simple but not too simple and i would be able to create a whole alphabet much better with this style.

i went to the library for the whole day and did research tasks. the first task was to find data visualisation books and research data that seemed to fit with our chosen themes. the problem is i haven’t figured out a theme i want to land on yet so it was very hard to find something that i could visualise any data to. i picked three that i liked but it didn’t really boost any ideas. So the rest of the morning i was having a bit of trouble finding examples that i liked so i asked Hannah for help with some chosen themes and asked her more on what exactly we need to do in this project and i was left with a bit more clarity but still slightly confused on again my theme. In our discussion i said when i went to the british museum i noticed a lot of things associated with death like i mentioned before the mummys and there was an idea of what if i catorgorised by how things died like eg: suicide, sacrafise, burning etc. but i just didn’t like the idea it just didn’t sit right with me. 

In the afternoon i was still doing task 1 and found more examples that maybe could be a posibility i could use. Next i moved onto task 2 which was finding zine and journel layouts and this excited me quite a bit bc it was fun to look at all things layouts i found quite a lot i liked from film magazines to interior magazines. This sort of let me visualise how i could see things placed in my publication. I notice that i liked the publications that use photographs to fill up a whole page with very little text and layouts that use a lot of white space. I just really liked this aesthetic of just cleaness and not cluttered. 

My theme that I have come up for the data visualisation is that I am basing it off the idea of how many artefacts don’t have a name/maker added to their plaque at the museum.

My idea started off when I went to the British museum and I got inspired by the mummy’s as I noticed they weren’t identified and they didn’t have a name. There was this loss of identity which in a way if you think about is quite sound because imagine dying and then your body is placed on the other side of the world and nobody knows who you are. 

So having this idea in my mind I then went to the v&a yesterday and went to level 0 where there are European and medieval artefacts. I got a map and then went through this level and counted every artefact (as accurate as I could) that didn’t have a artist/maker name to them and I found there were so many in named. Example: there was this huge tapestry that reached from wall to wall and took years to create, its so detailed and after looking at it there was an unknown artist/maker which is quite shocking because how could something so big and so detailed not be given credit to someone. It was similar to the mummy’s how no one had given them an identity and to this tapestry (along with many other artefacts). There is a sense of loss here as we don’t know who created these things but they’ve ended up in such a famous museum. I researched as to why some artefacts did not have the artists name such as things like: the artefacts could have been stolen, they were given to a rich family as a gift or the artist was so poor they were lonely and no one knew who they were etc. 

So with this project I’m going to create some kind of book created out of some thick paper using invisible ink so I can capture a sense of lost and the unknown. I think I’ve figured out that for each page I want to do it by either countries or museum levels. I realised that if I went to the v&a levels and counted every artefact that is un named, not only is that impossible for me to do with the amount of time I have, it is also in accurate data I’ll be collecting. So while at the v&a I thought about this issue. I remembered at the British museum they had an online collection where you could do an advanced search of all their artefacts. I wanted to see if the v&a website had this also and they did. So this is the method I will be using to collect data. 

For the book all I know is that I want something quite hand made. 

I think i was proud of the problem solving i had to overcome with this project. from the "how to collect the data" to how to present it, to decide what materials would work when printing on it and it would work with invisible ink too. I overcame a lot of hurdles with this project because it wasn't exactly the easiest. Although im really happy with the concept and the idea i was really happy with my idea of the front cover and the inside. what what bothers me is the sizing of the inside page as i feel like there's no breathing space for the text. and i really wanted to use the ink to illustrate the v&a but i didn't get time to do it and i got super ill towards the end so it was hard for me to put it all together. so i think im little bit let down on the physically aspect of it but overall the idea i really love because i feel like its personal and its something i found out myself through discovery. This is the project i showed at my group interview and i recieved a lot of positive comments on it. A way that i would take this project further would be to compare the data to other museums and see if there's similarities or drastic differences, they don't even have to be from the uk it can be worldwide.