Unit 1: Methods of Investigating: Visual Experiments, Feedback, Where to Next

Having begun and analysed my process of visual investigation, I began to investigate how best to visually communicate my experience of The Good Mixer to an audience. As a flawed observer, as we all are, my designs were inherently imbued with my own perception of the space. In order to rectify this partially, and ensure my own assumptions and judgements were grounded (somewhat)m in the reality of experience, I continuously referred to my reference materials – notes, sketches, photos.

I began by manipulating one of my photographs in Adobe photoshop, removing or resizing elements and adjusting colours and lighting to more closely align with the experience of being within my chosen space, rather than simply sharing visual recordings.

While this held an element of intrigue, especially in overlapping colours and textures, I felt it was ultimately poor communication in the visual areas I was aiming for.

Next, I took a conversation I overheard and created a rough typographical experiment. With this piece I attempted to communicate the tone and rhythm of the conversation, along with the overall noise of the environment.

While my intentions going in to this design were realised by the outcome, ultimately they lost a significant portion of the successful visualisation found in my sketches which i feel was, largely, present due to the hand drawn nature of these recordings, and the use of illustrative representation which did not rely upon primary digital sources.

For this reason, I returned to my primary research – this time my sketches and hand drawn notes, and began to directly manipulate them to progress towards more finished design outcomes. They were ported in to Adobe Illustrator, and ‘Image Traced’ to create vector graphics that could be directly digitally manipulated – below.

These were then taken apart and organised according to the moment in time they represented – while the interweaving, overlapping nature of these sketches made them successful recordings, there was much needed progression here to communicate the nature of each moment to an audience.

It was at this point that I received feedback from my tutor group. Here I was given a number of suggestions on how best to progress – seen here.

From here, I wanted to expand on both my use of typography and illustration – while my feedback was that the illustration was ultimately more successful than the designed typography, I felt the hand-drawn type of my sketches was a necessary element within my investigations. Therefore, I proceeded with the following ideas:

• Expand Typography
• digitise and experiment with textures
• Hand drawn but digital in nature?
• What will this be – how will you engage the audience
• How will this return back to the community – cyclical observations within a singular space