#commdesignstudies

What I thought was going to be numerous long walks from Swanston St to RMIT Building 45, turned out to be a 30 second walk from my bed to the dining table. As a first-year student, I wasn’t expecting such a turn in events to online learning. Nonetheless, I still feel like we got to engage in group activities through breakout groups, as if we were splitting off into different tables in the classroom.

I have learnt so much about key design movements and historical events as well as modernism and how conceptual design is the start of helping humanity through Andy and Karen Ann’s lecture series. It is through these assignments over the semester that I have really seen growth in putting this knowledge to action and understanding the roles of different contexts, aesthetics and movements in communication design.

I believe that design fits in anywhere and everywhere. The typeface in my pocket and architexture tutorials really enabled me to see that. I’ve been thankful for the connections I’ve made along this journey in the course and the feedback and guidance I’ve gotten from my tutor Bailey. I hope to see you all at RMIT again someday :)

This week, I attended the Introductory lecture as well as the first practical class of the year.

I found the drawing robot mentioned in the lecture very fascinating, impressed how design and technology have been blended in this one project. After hearing about this robot, I delved into research about other automated machines that are able to produce art. 'Ai-Da' is an Artificial Intelligence robot that is able to draw and paint people from sight. 'Ai-Da' was named after programmer Ada Lovelace who created the super realistic (and super creepy) robot. The thing that intrigues me most about these robots is how they bridge the separation between art and technology but rather than using digital mediums like many artists currently do, it is mechanical artists using traditional mediums.

In the lecture, we also talked about hand gestures and how they communicate meaning. This made me think about how greetings are different between cultures and even within cultures. Being of Croatian heritage, it is expected to kiss the person you are greeting on the cheek. However, on the coast, it is expected that you kiss the other person twice whereas inland, it is expected that you only kiss them once. I found this interesting because it shows that gestures can mean different thing and kissing someone the wrong amount of times in any region is seen as either excessive or inadequate depending on where you are.

We also completed the 'Typeface in my Pocket' activity during our practical class. Initially, everyone in the class used an array of pens or straight objects to create their name out of objects they had in their possession. All the letterforms looked similar and static. It wasn't until  we were instructed to find letterforms within objects that unique typefaces started coming together. I enjoyed this activity as it encouraged us to look at everyday objects a different way, trying to see more in what we use on a daily basis. It was quite hard to construct my name out of the objects I had because honestly, I mainly just had pens. However, after looking very closely at objects like my wallet, chargers and keychains, I was able to find some letterforms.

I proceeded to make my name and after this, my table group and I created a complete alphabet out of all the things we had with us. We chose the best letters from our names and added those to our alphabet, then we manipulated some of the other objects such as lanyards and cords to create the remaining letterforms.

Typeface designed by Erika, Stella, Rikki, Tanya, Brooke, Emily and Purita 

Website used:

Reflecting on this course, I feel as though it all happened so fast. And in this time I’ve learnt so much about the design world, coming from knowing basically nothing about design. Andy and Karen have been great tutors and mentors for this course and I find their work and what they’re achieved, inspiring. 

Here are 5 things I’ve learnt from Comm Design Studies: 1. Design is EVERYWHERE - you can find inspiration from the smallest, weirdest things. It’s all about perspective.  2. Your peers (fellow designers) are here to help - I found talking to others in workshop classes allowed us to bounce off each other and come up with really interesting ideas and solutions for any tasks. Sharing ideas and progress with others seemed very daunting but it allowed me to gather different perspectives that I would have never thought of before. 3. Experimentation is KEY - try several ideas before settling with one 4. Stop playing it safe - Don’t limit or doubt yourself, is one of the biggest things i’ve learnt in general whilst being in this Program as a whole.  5. There are no limitations to designing, the possibilities are endless. Any idea or concept is valid and can lead to something new and exciting. You can take it as far as you want with any project.

Something I’ve also gathered is, I would love to explore more on publication design as i really enjoyed the Ask Me Anything assignment and the process of learning about it. 

Moving from Perth to Melbourne has been such a huge inspiration. I’ve never seen so many independent artists and creatives before and the community events that allow them to showcase their works, especially at the Melbourne Art Book Fair. The arts and design community here is insane and its so great to see how much of an impact it has around the city.  I know this is just the beginning for me and there is soooo much more for me to learn about this world. 

Last class of our semester !

Being able to witness other people’s amazing work and creativity put into their zines was really amazing and inspiring. I was able to pick up a few of my friends zines to keep which was nice.

After seeing people’s amazing zines it made me want to try out experimenting more with foldouts with different paper sizes and cutouts etc. as well as different binding techniques. These types of zines stood out to me at the exhibition today.

It was such a great way to end my first sem at RMIT and reflecting on how far i’ve come compared to my first class.

ASK ME ANYTHING 

Last week of our semester! 

I finally got to print my final copy of my zine to hand in and i LOOOve it! Little Print did such an amazing job and i’m extremely happy with the quality of the print. I had trialed 2 types of paper stock, one being a silk/gloss feel. I felt this didn’t work with my design/layout as much as my second option, a ‘newspaper’ style paper stock. It had a yellow-y tinge to it but the grainy kind of texture, I felt worked nicer with the overall feel of the zine.

I also decided to print 5 extra copies for the zine exhibition at RMIT. I had to research and create my own kind of imposition for my 12 pages and the process was very straight forward. The quality was not as good/clear as my final ones but i wasn’t willing to spend more money for professional printing...  

I then set out to gather materials for zine making/binding. I bought a pen knife and cutting mat from Officeworks and decided to go to DAISO (a japanese store that has everything you could possibly need for like $3) and I found the most amazing gadget to bind my copies! Its a stapler that can staple vertically! And then i also bought a really bad paper gullotine/cutter (but it was only 3.80 so it didn’t really bother me) but it was enough to create my zine copies. I loved the process and extremely happy with how they turned out.

Week 10′s Lecture really stood out to me, it was all about ethical design and how design can ‘do good.’ I found this topic really interesting learning about the First Things First Manifesto. Relating it back to our first assignment, i posed the question of: How can design make a difference? 

This got me thinking of how i want to design in the future, I want to make some sort of impact, small or large, I want it to mean something to me or for others. I would love to do a piece like Fischli & Weiss’s work one day!

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Speaking more on ethics and design, one of the creatives on my list for Ask Me Anything, was Tessa Forrest aka @subliming.jpg on instagram. She’s a graphic designer specialising in typography. She has amassed a huge following on instagram by posting quotes and resonating messages with interesting type, shapes and colours. These little graphics make such an impact and I love what she does because seeing her post on my feed is like a dose of inspiration or something i can take away with me after viewing. Unfortunately she didn’t answer my message about interviewing her :((( but she was one of the first designers I followed on instagram and I still love her work!