Secong blog attempt

Today we had our first PAL session with the second years, which I found pretty cool and interesting. I think it's good that we get the opportunity to talk to people who have already experienced what we're doing now; I think it will be really valuable to have someone to look to for help and info on the projects we're doing as so far i've been struggling to get used to this style of teaching, it's so different to college and school. Aside from playing pass the parcel as a 'getting to know each other' game we talked about some of the briefs and they mentioned doing their blogs. They told us that we only need to write two or three inches a week on what we've been doing, which is good because I had been thinking that I needed to keep a diary of everything we'd done each day, whereas we really only need to have a fairly brief overview. So this is my second attempt at recording what we've done so far:

The main brief we've been set is the text and image project where we went on a day trip to Poole to record the environment, in the form of sketches, notes and photographs. We've now found out that this is so we can design three editorial illustrations i.e. illustrations for a magazine, newspaper or book. I had a good day on the trip although it wasn't as productive as I would have hoped due to the fact I was freeezing cold, so it was a bit difficult to draw. I'm looking forward to doing the illustrations as this is the first brief i've ever had which in effect could have come from an actual client. Nothing I did at college was like that, it was all blatantly college work. I think I need to go back to Poole though to collect some more primary research.

We've also done some typography work, researching and watching a film on Helvetica, and researching some typographical terms, which i've done in the past but had forgotten what some of them were. On Wednesday last week we were split into groups and set a task for the day, to design a typeface using sticky tape. Although I wasn't immediately inspired by the brief I started getting in to it when we were brainstorming ideas for the typeface; we spent a lot of time debating over who would want to use it and why, how we could get across the properties and uses of tape, and still make it aesthetically appealing. Overall I was quite pleased with our typeface 'Fusion' which wasn't the most 'out there' idea from all the groups, but met the brief we had been set as it could technically work as a typeface. Some of the other groups did some amazing stuff like taped letterforms up onto the spiral staircases, which looked really cool, but I didn't see how they met the brief we had been set which is kind of the idea of being set a brief. I enjoyed the brief but it's going to be a long time before I want to see another roll of sticky tape.

Another mini-brief we were set last week was to create an illustration of something from the Poole trip using coloured paper. Some of the work created was amazing, although I wasn't overly keen on my own piece; I spent most of the day thinking about one idea, then decided it wouldn't look very effective so started on something new after lunch. I think I could have done better if I'd got organised and stuck to one idea, as I spent too long umming and ahhing instead of getting stuck in to it.

Other than that we've spent Monday's in lectures and seminars with Dr. Anna, which is probably my least favourite part of the course so far. I guess creative people and sitting in lectures/writing essays don't really mix, but I guess it's important so i'm just going to try and get interested. I don't mind doing image analysis and deconstructing images in the seminars, but the lectures just seem to go straight over my head. I did find out I had an audio processing problem not long...still not sure exactly what that means, but maybe that has something to do with it?

We've now been set another brief for next week, to go somewhere new and record the environment, then design a document that records the journey. We're going to London on a trip to see Kyle Cooper which seems like the perfect opportunity to record a new journey, so...looking forward to that :)