My Contextual Studies Journal

Week 1: Design Thinking (Thursday October 4^th)

After attending the first week`s lecture I thought the lecture was quite interesting but nothing that special. The reason is because I did not fully follow some of the points that where being shown to us, e.g. the work of “William Morris” which tries to describe how to add beauty to the work of man. I also dis-agreed with the testimony of the futurists because I think that getting rid of Museums and libraries would be a disaster because it is important to look at our past to see how things have change over time, and it`s wrong to fight against things like moralism and feminism because everyone is equal to another.

On the other hand I thought the manifesto of the Bauhaus was quite interesting because they have some interesting pieces of arts with crafts which they see as both being equal. But despite being equal both arts and crafts have major differences.

Week 2: Design: What is Design? (Thursday October 11^th)

When attending this lecture I felt I enjoyed it better than the first one because I was able to understand it`s meaning and I quite agree with what was being discussed in the lecture. The lecture was discussing about the meaning of Design, which is the starting point of every project made by man, e.g. designing the blue prints of buildings, motor cars, trains and ships before doing the actual construction. Also by creating Storyboard designs for films and cartoons before producing the actual film.

The designer “Victor Papanek” states that Design should be about people and it should be made for people, not for its own sake. This makes me think about the sort of audience I would be aiming my cartoons, for example if it`s a child`s cartoon it shouldn`t contain bad language, too much violence nor anything that would scare children. One example of a mixed message cartoon is “The Simpsons” which contains a lot of strong violence and bad language even though it’s supposed to be for children as well as adults, yet the atmosphere writing appears to be more for adults.

I`d say that Design should be ethical as well as functional.

Week 3: Innovation (Thursday October 18^th)

In this lecture we were learning about the process of Innovation in relation to your own practice. We learned from the lecturer that Innovation is a way of bringing new ideas into your work and in order to get people to respond to your work in a positive way.
The main purpose of the lecture was to show how theory can link with Innovation and how you can improve your works in future to attract a bigger audience.

I think Innovation works better when individuals collaborate in groups by sharing and developing their own ideas together e.g. different individuals working together to produce films and TV programmes.

There are 3 steps of how innovation works, first we`d need a group of people who have the best skills to successfully completed our projects. Then we`d need a place for the project to be viewed by the public and last we`d need a reason for wanting to do these projects e.g. I do animation because I enjoy doing it and I like to share it with the public online to get some feedback about their thoughts on the animations.

I feel that I have quite understood the lecture and I have learned how I can develop further with ideas for my future animations.

Week 4: Designers and Ethics (Thursday October 25^th)

In this lecture we were being lectured about an ethical approach to design. The meaning of Ethics is how we can design and display our ideas to the public without exploiting them.

Ethics in relation to design mainly stands for whether we would participate with certain companies, and whether or not we would  be happy with working for them on certain projects. Such as if they want you to produce a commercial advertising Alcohol, cigarettes or something that might harm people. Another example of ethical design is trying to design something that is not technically needed by the consumer.

There are also good examples of Ethics in design such as producing useful items for the public. Like “Milton Glaser’s” rules for being an ethical graphic designer which describe how all designers should work and avoid exploiting people.

I feel that I have learned some important notices from this lecture on how I ought to be approaching design in an ethical way.

 

Week 5: A discussion of Ethics (Thursday November 8^th)

In this lecture we identified the full meaning of Ethics. Ethics have many relationships to our lives and work, for example it has barriers, social guidelines, beliefs and differences between how we all behave. We therefore have choices for how we can produce our works, just as long as don`t exploit or harm other people.

Ethics seems like a personal choice e.g. we all chose different ways to spend our lives. Ethics could also be a matter of intuition rather than a set of rules that we are supposed to follow because often there are no rules to fit our particular situation, for example there are no fixed rules on the internet and people have to make their own decisions to what they think is right. I think there ought to be some set of rules to show what you can and cannot do because that way you can see what is right and wrong and you can find your way of using your own personal code of Ethics. Although there is one problem, who is going to make up the rules and who is going to enforce them? For example I want to be an animator and I hope that my animated films will provide some useful messages to show adults and children the differences between right and wrong.

 

Week 6: Presentation of 3 dynamo model professionals (Thursday November 22^nd)

In this lecture we discussed 3 artists who were examples of dynamic role models.

The first artist was “Tricia Jones” who is a mosaic artist who works extensively throughout England and Wales. She reveals that mosaic is an attractive art form to children, due to their simplicity and colourful styles. She works from her own studio at home, running mosaic workshops.

The second artist was “Huw Davies” who is a self-employed, creative artist. He does many forms of art, including sculpture and photography. He advises that any art students should not be fake with their careers and should do what they want to do.

The third artist was “Nicola Farrell” who is a web designer. She views that enthusiasm and motivation counts a great deal and will get you where you want to be. She also believes that your skills can help you achieve your goals in life and career.

I think that role models can be important for some people who are un-sure what they want in life or they don`t know which directions their careers should follow. At the moment I`m un-sure for which direction my animation career is going to go. On my recent trip to Bradford Animation Festival I saw a lot of professional animators who are working in areas of animation that I`m hoping to work in.    

Week 7: “Moving beyond the limits of Language” - Autobiographical narrative in animation shorts (Thursday November 29^th).

In this lecture we were watching some animation shorts which all contained narratives that were Autobiographical. Although each one was animated differently, all featured a personal narrative that told a story. Each of the animations were analysed through Autobiographical themes, Narrative structure, Visualisation and Motivation.

I felt I quite enjoyed the animations that where shown, although I was finding some of them hard to follow because some like “The Runt” by Andreas Hykade where not that clear in their animation qualities and I felt they weren’t very convincing in their narrative structures.

I feel that this way of analysing an animation is a good way of breaking down the structure in order to simplify how a film works. At the present time I`m not making animations which are driven by narrative storylines, but I think this way of looking at the autobiographical structure of a film may help me to develop character narratives in my future animations.

Week 8: The sustainable lie-Green wash (Thursday December 6^th).

In this week`s lecture we discussed about the environmental problems in the world, due to the overconsumption of resources by the developed world. We talked about how costly recycling can be in environmental terms, for example although glass can be recycled it requires energy and transport to achieve the recycling. Although metal is recycled, things like aerosols release gases into the environment during the recycling process.

“Paper makes up 50% (by volume) of our domestic waste”.

We designers also play a key role in these environmental problems, this is because it is our job to design and make consumers want new things, even though they may not be needed. As an animator I mainly produce hand-drawn animations by using lots of papers. This has a small impact on the environment, but since hundreds or thousands of papers would be required for certain animation films or cartoons, this could be resolved by possibly getting these animation studios to require the planting of lots of trees to offset the environmental cost of using so much paper. 

I think it is important to recycle certain things so that more of the same materials can be re-produced. But we ought to be more careful about what we use to recycle because of all the costs and issues involved in recycling. While recycling is worth while it may be better just to reduce our consumption.