OUGD601 Context of Practice 03 Practical Piece Development Sketch Book and Critical Journal Synthesis

As previously mentioned I am creating a dated sketch book to record the full design development process for this project in one place. This will relate to the critical journal I am writing during the process of creation and design, to examine my own emotional proximity to the project, which will also be dated and reference certain pages in the sketchbook.

Below is a sample of the critical journal so far:

17th December 2015:

Today was mostly occupied with planning my context of practice  practical. I looked at each type of proximity that I have and continue to explore in my essay and how I could look to measure and explore their role in me executing craft practice of my own. Because this was mostly an exercise in thought and not creation or trial and error this did not bring me close to the object or outcome of my craft process. If anything I would say that my emotional connection to it was less because of the academic need to so deeply reflect and analyse the process before it begins. Hopefully this will not continue once I start the actual design and creation process.

I then moved on to thinking about and deciding on the quotes that would form the focus of the chalkboards. This was a much more mentally involved process and one that required me to empathise with the possible audience, because I was looking at the most communicative quotes, not necessarily my favourite quotes. Thinking about clear language that would not alienate a relatively young, non academically educated audience. I also needed to think about the length of quote for the same reasons, but also because of the placement of the boards in a transitional space, through which many people will be passing and to be able to read the boards quickly is important for effective communication. Because these ar4e situation in which I could succeed or fail to varying degrees, my emotional engagement with the project immediately increased, simply because I wanted to succeed. Interestingly in this case I would be succeeding in communicating with my audience, emotional proximity is thus connected to social proximity.

I then started to consider the design options and ideas that could stem from these quotes and how the would increase the communication of each board. I considered the typographic design decisions separately one after the other, but informed by one another. This means that they are unified in the message that they are communicating but perhaps approach it in different ways because of the different formats that they need to occur in. This required a lot of mental picturing and the bringing together of a lot of past knowledge not only about chalkboarding as a whole but about typography and lettering, as well as visual and image based communication. This definitely increased my emotional engagement with the project because it connected me to my past projects and the victories and failures that are part of those experiences, creating emotion by association. 

18th December 2015:

Today I started sketching some options for the lettering style to be used on my first, physical proximity board. I knew from my idea generation I did yesterday that I wanted to communicate the idea of ‘the hand’ through the lettering style. To do this I used my large hand lettering reference book for inspiration ‘Hand to Type’ and drew out each word of the quote I had settled on in a different style that I thought could communicate the idea of the hand used in the creation of the lettering. These designs varied from more common handwriting like styles to the mre calligraphic in form as well as flourished. I found that a brush pen calligraphic style communicate the movement of the hand in creation really effectively because of the swooping forms and fluid line weight changes. However, I will have to go on and experiment with how this style sits with a collection of words. This is the next step of the design process. Increasingly, I find as I have to make more decisions about how the board is precisely going to look, I am becoming more involved and emotionally invested in the project and its outcome. Because it is my decisions and no one else’s how this board looked in the end is on my shoulders and will reflect badly on no one but me if it looks bad, this sparks a cycle of sorts which make me want to try harder to make the board as good as possible and that makes me emotionally invest in the project further. On the other hand some of these decisions are directed by and outward awareness of audience, and that creates a sense that the project is not quite as mine as I would like it to be. But using the audience as a focus and reason for the design decision also gives direction and purpose that the project needs. Bit of an oxymoron really.

These entries crrespond with the pages dated in the sketchbook. For example, the entry on the 18th 

corresponds to the spread shown below:

Hopefuly this duel approach to recording the process and simultaneously analysing it will provide an insight into the seprate types of proximity but also how they relate to one another and intertwine at almost all points of the design and creation process.