After my initial brainstorm in class, I focused more on each word to do a deeper brainstorm. I actually found this kind of difficult because I felt my original words linked to my practise/what I want my practise to be really well and so I found myself not wanting to stray too far from the original words. I also found it hard because as I got further away from the original words, I struggled to see any way these would link to my practise.
Selecting new words form this brainstorm was difficult. I was already finding myself trying to pick words that fit within my own practise or work with ideas I already want to try rather then letting the words inform my practise.
After realising this, I tried to pick words that I had no ideas for and would provide more room for exploration. I decided to pick feel as my word because as a communication designer I don't often work with texture and I thought this would be an interesting way to explore my practise.
Once making the decision to push my practise further and pick words I had no ideas for how they would interact with my practise, this task became a lot easier and I felt freer. I chose the word liquid because as a communication my main medium is print and paper and liquids don't often interact well with each other. I want the chance to explore this.
From this brainstorm I picked the word combination. I do really love to mix medias and collage and I wanted to pick one thing that I knew I would enjoy and would feel more natural to me. Most of the words from metamorphosis were leading me in the same direction, towards something collagey.
I was really excited when I linked the word kaleidoscopic to my brainstorm through the thesaurus (I'd been using the thesaurus a lot to help branch out to new words and find new connections that I was missing since I am not that good with words). I thought that creating something that would have the same colourful, reflective and composition as patterns from a kaleidoscope would be really fun.
I found this brainstorm harder because while searching through the thesaurus, I found that how I interpreted experimental was very different from its synonyms and meanings. It kept leading me to words that felt very analytical and to meanings that I don't associate with experimental as a designer. I decided to chose messy because my meaning of experimental (an experimental process that involves testing and being messy) is more aligned with that then most of the other words.
