Designeresearch

Merry Christmas...

2009-12-24T10:15:00.003Z

Okay so my blogs have become a little quite since leaving uni, but I'm planning to start writing again in the New Year. So this is just a quick note to say:

MERRY CHRISTMAS

All the best for 2010!

Love, Emily x

Post-it Motion...

2009-10-06T20:36:00.003+01:00

I love post-its and so here is a great bit of animation a friend showed me:

The Road Not Taken

2009-09-28T12:36:00.006+01:00

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

- Robert Frost

It's Degree Show Time Again!

2009-09-07T11:29:00.002+01:00

Come one come all, if you're in Dundee it's free!

My work will be at the Dalhousie building as of Friday! But Assessments tomorrow so keep your fingers crossed!

Good Luck to all the Masters students! x

The Thirtiest Year...

2009-07-06T10:40:00.004+01:00

And a very very special piece for me which had taken a little bit of my time away from my research...

A new wedding ring designed for my mum. My dad commissioned me to make a new wedding band for my mum for their 30th Wedding Anniversary today, so this is what I made.

Traditionally the 30th wedding anniversary's gem of choice is a pearl. My mum's not keen on cultured pearls and I have to admit I'm not either, so I was very happy to find out that the modern equivelant has become diamond jewellery...though the modern equivelant for most anniversary stones has become diamond therefore rendering the diamond wedding anniverary a bit of a let down.

Anyway, the band is made of 1.5 mm Stirling silver, 18 carat gold and a diamond which I forget the specifications for...but it was more or less colourless, had few inclusions (flaws) and was the first diamond I've ever bought or set. So I'm really chuffed with the outcome and the fact that not only does my mum love it, but it fits perfectly...and I never got to size it properly!

At the drawing table...

2009-07-03T21:51:00.004+01:00

"I wanted to provide 'an experience' for the senses. I have found I cannot resist touching things (particularly in Galleries!) and I am constantly being told 'don't touch!' I therefore wanted to encourage people to instinctively touch and interact with my work."

A good starting point for considering my degree show space. Unlike my undergraduate degree show I want people to touch my work. That was the biggest mistake I made with the chess sets, people wanted to play with them and I didn't want that, but the whole point was not to make static objects. This year I think I've come up with my solution.

Brainforest...

2009-07-01T09:26:00.005+01:00

This is definitely what it would be like to be inside a designers mind!

Brainforest is an enchanting installation by Gerda Steiner and Jorg Lenzlingerbut at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (Japan) from 2004. And while I think it would be my ideas way of displaying the madness that is my thought process, their explanation is far more elegant:

"In the rain forest of the brain, the bio-diversity of thoughts proliferates and the intellect's short-circuits whirr in your eyes. Needless to say, as time goes by the circuits get tired and nervours; there are burn-outs and failures. But chance creates the sparkling ideas." - G. Stiener & J. Lenzlingerbut

In third year the design school gave us two interdisciplinary projects with the other departments. Our first project was to define design - our group decided to show how our design process worked in a mess of objects and the way it condensed into coherant ideas. In the end it was a mess as this installation could have been, except it isn't. It's beautiful and elegant and says everything our project wanted, but failed to do.

(This website has more wonderful photographs of the Brainforest.)

Orbital...

2009-06-21T21:15:00.004+01:00

Orbital use their trademark torch glasses (which you can buy at your local hardware store) during their live performances to help them see what they're doing.

"They're born from necessity but have become what they've become...we customised them ourslves cos the originals kept breaking" (Orbital Interview)

Reset...

2009-06-21T19:55:00.000+01:00

I'm not a big traveller - my friends are often shocked to hear that not only have I not been out of the UK, but I also don't own a passport...shock horror! This isn't because I don't want to gho abroad or that I'm scared of flying or a growing carbon footprint. It's more that as a kid I was in a family of 5 and holidays abroad are expensive and when I go to the wonderful places around the world, I want to go somewhere special, when it can be special and not a moonlight flit where you come home more exhausted than when you left. Is it any wonder people always say they need a holiday to get over the holiday?

Anyway, researchers in Australian have been developing a set of glasses to help combat the trouble that more frequent flyings that I have with jetlag and other people have with insomnia by re-calibrating our biological clock with LED lights. By beaming light directly into the eye of the wearer the battery powered glasses helps to reset the body clock or circadian rhythm which is our bodies response to the sun, moon and seasonal changes which is what makes us wake up and become alert in the morning and feel sleepy at night.

They have also been used in the treatment of S.A.D. (Seasonal Affective Disorder) which normally involves the use of a light box or lamp which the sufferer sits in front of with their eyes open - though not staring directly at the light - for a prescribed period. The glasses allow the user to stop being inhibited by the stationary nature of the light box and the ability to

Re-Time glasses are still in development for commercial use by Flinders Meditech and I just thought that the use of LEDs was really interesting. For more information on the use of light for resetting the body clock see Flinders University: School of Psychology who did extensive research into their use.

Bubbles!

2009-06-21T17:59:00.000+01:00

Anyone who knows me will know I'm obsessed by bubbles, always have been and probably always will be, but I now know how I will paint my studio if I ever get one sorted out. These cool decorations are vinyl stickers you order in whatever colour you fancy and just stick to your wall. I'm thinking if they're not hugely expensive or if I can find somewhere that does big letters closer to home that they could work as part of my display for my degree show.

They're designed by a company called Miraentu Interiors and these cost upwards of £100...perhaps I'll just make stencils or paint them by hand...

Strangled by Words

2009-06-19T15:23:00.000+01:00

Made of laser cut suede, these scarves come in black, grey & white, upper case, lowercase and numerical and could be a good way to made distortions into something tangible.

(I want one!)

Word Games...

2009-06-19T14:55:00.001+01:00

Scrabble based seating area, designed by industrial designers Stephen Reed and Alistair Willmott for the Bloomberg offices in London. The cushions printed with the traditionally point laden letters all the office workers to leave one another messages in a playful, relaxing means.

The end tables also act as double and triple word scores which can be used - as with the smaller more traditional game - to gain higher word scores.

I'm bad at word games, but I love the idea of making things playful, trying to work games into design work. A trend which started in 1st year and dominated my final year.

Fashionable Fads?

2009-06-19T12:25:00.001+01:00

So in my desire to make anything resembling jewellery I took the results from my Fashion Fads questionnaire and made them into a necklace. This is actually a mock-up because the photos I took of it did not turn out very well. Which was a shame, but my photoshopping skills aren't too bad so I'm actually really happy with this picture.

The idea was that they would go in order of popularity and repeated mention, except I dropped them all and wanted to go to my bed, so in the end it was just what went together. Once I get some more results I'll redo the necklace in another form - this year I seem to be all about the iteration and reiteration.

Anyway so for the trends showed:

- bracelets

- bright colours

- multiples & layers

- alternative meaning (friendship, causes & karma)

- alternative fastenings (eg: magnets)

...nothing I couldn't have already told you, but it's reassuring that I'm not completely out of touch and indeed scary at the number of trends I remember and actually participated in.

The shame!

Sound Advice...

2009-06-16T15:26:00.008+01:00

I came across this project today called The Sound Advice Project, which is a project which attempts to deter teenagers from drug use through the use of jewellery.

By recording an anti drug use message or any positive affirmation or frequently reiterated statement, a sound wave is created and then translated into a three dimensional form using varying sizes of beads. This allows the parents to give their child a message which they can keep with them without it being blazoned across their chests. The parents gains piece of mind and the child gets an interesting piece of jewellery which actually means something to them.

Designed by David Bizer, while there is no high tech software or sound within the piece itself, the ideas of using sound waves is actually quite intriguing to me, especially as the one visualisation I would always use on Media Player (before the dawn of iTunes) was the simple sound wave. It's simple, it's personal, but it's not overtly preaching or nagging.

For example, a few years ago my parents bought me a simple little bracelet with a strip of silver stamped with the word 'create' suspended on an orange chord. It was their way of giving me a quiet nudge of encouragement when I was in a period of 'designers block' and was particularly low. Needless to say, I've replaced the chord time and again, but whenever I'm really needing a little bit of encouragement I put on my bracelet and it helps.

Remember Me...

2009-06-15T00:08:00.003+01:00

Remember me when I am gone away,

Far into the silent land;

When you can no more hold me by the hand,

Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.

Remember me when no more day by day

You tell me of our future that you plann'd:

Only remember me; you understand

It will be late to counsel then or pray.

Yet if you should forget me for a while

And afterwards remember, do not grieve:

For if the darkness and corruption leave

A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

Better by far you should forget and smile

Than that you should remember and be sad.

"Remember" - Christina Rossetti

I've been putting this on all my drawings and had it in my head for weeks! So rather than having to search it out every day on the net, I'm putting it here so I don't forget to remember...

Ridiculous...

2009-06-14T23:59:00.002+01:00

Possibly the most ridiculous glasses related invention I've ever seen and this is coming from someone who hates having her picture taken.

Pressures of Memory...

2009-06-14T23:56:00.008+01:00

"...investingating where one surface ends and another begins, the bloom of adornment, and how shifting exteriors reveal as they conceal." - Ariana Page Russell

I am in love with this image by Ariana Page Russell. It reminds me of all those scrawled messages that are written onto your hands so you don't forget them. But before you have a chance to remember they're even there, they've been washed off or smudged beyond recognition. Plus, whenever there's a not on your hand there's always someone who comments on how bad it is for your health, but there never stops us, within hours we've forgotten that warning and scrawled something new on our hands. But when I saw this picture I thought of it as all those messages making a permanent impression on the skin of all those things you've forgotten..."a body becomes an index of passing time."

It would be handy given my poor short term memory.

Backwards...

2009-06-14T23:54:00.003+01:00

Have you ever sat opposite someone as they read a magazine? How much time do you spend trying to read the article they're reading, or at least the headlines?

Leonardo da Vinci wrote in mirror writing and there are many competing theories relating to this, that he was left handed and didn't want the ink to be smudged by his hand as he wrote, that he wanted to hide his notes and ideas from theft but another suggests it could be because he was dyslexic. In fact this is their reason that da Vinci may have been dyslexic, as mirror writing is a rare symptom of dyslexia.

Magic?

2009-06-14T23:51:00.004+01:00

Whilst redesigning the leaflets at work, I was searching for a better quality magic eye image to put into the format. At the opticians they are used to train the eye to converge more efficiently because when you try to focus on the hidden image or three dimensional form it strengths the muscles of the eye. However, I was curious to find out if there were any that were souly made up of text and this was the only one which came up time and again.

Made me laugh.

Style...

2009-06-14T23:48:00.002+01:00

I love this graphic, I don't even know where I found it which is a little unfortunate as I can't cite it, however it does point out something (using specs) which I've been looking at in my research, the idea that styles come, go and sometimes come back with a loud groan until it comes to become the norm. What I currently find scary is that at 24 the fashions that I remember from the 90's are back. For example: leggings!

How do I look?

2009-05-15T19:18:00.002+01:00

I've decided to try and get anyone who comes into my space to try on the glasses I've made and let me take a photo. Why? Well, look how different everyones style is.

A'N'D

2009-05-15T12:40:00.011+01:00

These are possibly the silliest and weirdest design for eye wear I've seen over the entire length of my product research this year.

Designed by Azumi & David (A'N'D), fashion graduates from Central Saint Martins, the couple have designed an extensive range of packing tape 'things to wear' (preferring this term to fashion accessories) including watches, bracelets, belts, ties and the above glasses. The proviso with these products being that you avoid direct contact with the skin.

A funny little twist, but who's never put pieces of sellotape on their skin over the years just to see the pattern that comes off your skin or to torture a sibling?

Among their other designs they sell necklaces which stamp watches and repetitive jewellery patterns on the skin, which is reminiscent of Tiffany Parbs 'Rash Stamps' and necklaces which use enlarged clasps as the focal point, in a similar styles as jewellery Laura Potter, who uses enlarged catches and earring backs (butterflies) to create her contemporary jewellery.

Despite their proviso and the serious doubt that these products actually give any sun protection in the slightest, I actually really love the concept of a lot of their designs. I admit to not liking a lot of conceptual jewellery, I'm really quite traditional - or possibly just overly safe - however, A'N'D's quirky style has actually begun to grow on me and the more I look into their other designs, the more I think this sort of product could fit into the consumerist, throw-away culture that exists.

Stick on...peel of...throw away...or...print on...wash off...

http://www.azumianddavid.com/

Personalised Jewellery

2009-05-15T12:04:00.007+01:00

Rolf Sachs’ Strip Bracelet

This piece is presented as a strip of sheet silver, the hallmark its only distinguishing feature. Initially it seems unclear how the piece could be considered jewellery. However Sachs’ sensitive consideration of the owner’s personal identity allows a transformation from a simple strip of metal into a bracelet based on the individuals connection to and manipulation of the silver. Sachs completes the transition from jewel to jewellery by allowing the owner to have a hand in its formation, thereby creating a relationship and a history which is individual to each edition of the piece.

...............................

I recently wrote this as part of a critical review I submitted for part of my coursework. The review itself was on a jewellery design book called New Directions in Jewellery II, which I love, but argued about the concept of jewellery-to-be in the context of the book. Jewellery-to-be being a concept of designer Lin Cheung, that jewellery is merely an object unless it is worn. This is a concept I actually agree with to a degree.

However, I've been thinking about Sachs' Bracelet since I got up this morning. If anything this is exactly the idea I'm trying to get into my project when I am working with my participants. To gain a relationship with a piece of jewellery or any wearable product, the user must take some role in its creation even on the most minuet of levels. It is also a good example of what I need to mention next week also. So possibly that's why it's playing on my mind.

Incidentally I got a very good mark for my essay, so I'm glad I argued in it rather than being overly agreeing with the concept.

Design Methodology

2009-05-15T11:55:00.005+01:00

I've always hated starting sketch books. Often it's like having my teeth pulled. I don't know exactly what it is about those first blank pages of a sketch book which just makes me stare at it and wonder what exactly I'm planning on going to put down.

Don't ask me why, but make me fold and origami water balloon and off I go. They're just not scary. So. Rather than a pile of sketch books, I've got a pile of inflated paper balloons.

I think most people would think I'm odd, but one of my tutors loves them and if it gets all my ideas out and off of the backs of envelopes and post-it notes, then why not?

Representation

2009-05-13T13:52:00.004+01:00

Jumi used this photo I took as a representation of her trying to get playfulness into her design project. I'm using it as the next iteration in my representation of our mindful design project, which we initially started designing on balloons.

Stage 1: White Balloons

Stage 2: Typed out

Stage 3: Bates the maniacal bunny letting go of my balloons in an illustration

Stage 4: Origami Water Balloons

Stage 5: Jumi and the Magical Balloon (as a little book)

...fun

Stickies...

2009-05-04T23:23:00.003+01:00

I admit to having an unhealthy love of post-its. I have pads and pads of them stashed around my room, my workshop and my desk at uni. They're stuck to everything with scribbled designs and little notes on their brightly coloured paper and what I found astonding in all of my research over the past few months is how often post-its are given as a suggested aid for dyslexics.

I've also noticed the unnatural obsession which Master of Design students seem to have for them also. We have been a class since September '08 and we must have used thousands of them in order to brain storm and critic work, keep and leave notes for one another...even in my case as a form of recycling and entertainment as I make lots of my used notes into origami cranes, which when I reach 1,000 should bring me a little luck.

This short film by Jeff Chiba Stearns animates the huge number of post-its (Stickie Notes) he uses during his design processes is amazing. He's examining the way he works and how, despite his method of documentation, his 'to-do lists' consumed his life meaning incredibly important world events seemed to pass him by.

If you haven't watched it, do, it's about 7 minutes long, but worth it.

Creativity...

2009-05-04T15:45:00.008+01:00

"I must create a system or be enslaved by another mans; I will not reason and compare: my business is to create."

- William Blake

('Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion')

Aren't you glad there's no such thing as mind control...

2009-04-27T09:51:00.007+01:00

These are the glasses I've been designing...fetching no? Although to be fair Jumi and Sun* both look far too cool in them. They're made of laser cut cardboard and are supposed to make people feel a little silly and instead Sun*, Jumi and my sister have all requested pairs!

The glasses are part of my cultural probe which I should get back this week as my participants have had their three weeks to work on them and I'm hoping that they will have gained me the information I've been looking for. They're supposed to create a conversation between me and my participants- the importance of appearance, image and how glasses with coloured lenses for the treatement of visual stress disorders intrupts the flow and stops people wanting to wear them. Or that's the theory.

Anyway, I love this photo of Jumi and I thought I'd share it. She looks like an evil genius!

Design Theory

2009-04-26T17:33:00.003+01:00

Floral Jacks

2009-04-26T11:51:00.004+01:00

I've been experimenting with these little flowers for a few years now, I keep making them and not knowing what to make from them. I've left them empty, put silver leaf on them and filled them with silicone and now I've started with resin. But I'm still clueless about what to do with them!

The first thing my family said when I popped the resin ones out of their acetates was that they looked like Jacks - the game where you scatter them on the floor, bounce a bouncy ball and pick them up between bounces. Given my game theme last year I'm considering giving it a whirl.

However, I prototyped these to see if the printed colour would come off onto the resin successfully, it did, though not as successfully as I hoped as as soon as they get wet the ink runs. If I use this technique I'll have to coat the ink side of the resin with another layer of resin, just to seal it.

The reason I'm doing this is because - apparently - coloured acetates can also be printed.

In the Small Hours

2009-04-24T18:54:00.009+01:00

It sounds stupid, but when I listen to the album version of this song I can feel my heartbeat, like when you're quietly waiting for something with butterflies fluttering around your stomach.

There is a good reason I'm writing about John Martyn, not only is he one of my favourite musicians, but he died in February of this year and this has sparked another bout of obsessive listening amongst three members of my family. However, this still isn't the reason I'm writing about him, the reason is that when I was in sixth year I wanted to do a project on dyslexia based on the first song of Martyn's I ever heard.

When I was a kid my parents used to play a song called 'Fairytale Lullaby' to me and my sisters, on my dads guitar and for years we all thought it was something my parents made up. Of course it wasn't, but I can still see my mum's handwritten version of the song with little illustrations all over the page. This is an image which always made me want to make a children's book out of the song using the imagery of lyrics such as:

"If you want to catch a rainbow come with me, and I will take you to the magic purple sea, maybe we will catch a 100 sugar fish, if you eat them they will grant your every wish, and if you want your friend to come, then bring them all along."

In my head it would have been perfect, I started researching the idea, wanting to add in the elements about dyslexia as well and turn it into my sixth year Advanced Higher Art project. Needless to say I never actually did it, I chickened out and decided to do a project about theatre and textiles etc.

In the back of my mind it's always been there, waiting, wanting to come back out and find a new way to incorporate it into my designs, however, it's taken me another 5 years to find the right application. All my work up until now has been based on poetry, on prose and sometimes on music, always have done and there will always be a little space for a bit of John Martyn somewhere in my sketchbooks. Or even a blog.

Fashion Fads

2009-04-23T10:50:00.005+01:00

Fashion fads come and go, we're often slaves to trends without even realising it. One day you can't be seen dead without something, the next you wouldn't be seen dead with it.

Did you follow everyone when they were wearing charity bands on their wrists? Or Did you have your school uniform weighed down by nonsense badges?

I'm looking specifically at accessories and jewellery, however...

...What are your 5 most memorable fashion fads?

Blog off...

2009-04-23T10:38:00.002+01:00

I had considered giving up on the old blog, starting afresh elsewhere, but to be honest, what good would it do to give up?

I admit, I am in a giving up kind of mood at the moment, my head not really in the right place, but again, what good would it do to give up?

I've got a backlog of things to blog about, and though I doubt anyone reads this, I hope to start blogging properly again once our assessments are through and I can concentrate...or at least have a moment to let my head clear of this horrible fog.

Anyway, instead of giving up, I'm revamping a little to make it feel a little more like mine rather than a template. Haven't decided on a colour yet, but I quite like the grey, it's easy to read off of. Which is probably a good start.

Demystifying Visual Dyslexia in Coventry

2009-01-23T13:53:00.004Z

Students at Coventry University created this animation as part of a project to highlight some of the issues that people with visual dyslexia suffer from. They’ve obviously read The Gift of Dyslexia by Ron Davis because of the reference to words simply crawling off the page and under the carpet. I’ve been wanting to try and illustrate this in my journal since I read about it but couldn’t come up with an illustration that could represent it that I could actually draw.

The students at Coventry however have created a DVD, cleverly titled ‘Demystifying Visual Dyslexia’, which is aimed at parents to all them to encounter the difficulties in visual perception that their child may be suffering from.

“If you can’t see it - you can’t read it!
For educational ergonomists it is important to understand the learning requirements of all children, and to design interventions and environments that can enable them to fulfil their potential.”

Sarah O'Hana Lasered Titanium

2009-01-23T13:30:00.007Z

Sarah O’Hana came to do a lecture at DoJ a week or two before the Christmas break, a lecture I missed because of snow (the day I was also in a complete panic about the submission of my research poster) but I really wish I’d gotten to go.

O’Hana is a jewellery designer whose work is based on using laser to heat titanium and because of the way it oxidises the metal creates a myriad of colours in incredible detail. Now in third year a lecturer visited the jewellery department of DoJ and gave us a class in how to create anodised titanium effects using a electrolyte solution and also a micro torch (image 2). My most profound memory of this day was the nib of the micro torch exploding more than once and making us all jump a foot in the air. For future reference when using a micro torch don’t forget to make sure it has enough gas and that you don’t burn yourself with it...the flame’s so hot it’ll burn to the bone pretty swiftly. That’s one of the reason’s it’s so good for colouring titanium, the hotter or cooler the temperature and the longer the contact the difference in colour, the same in solution, the stronger or weaker the electric current running through the electrolytes the different the colour effect.

Titanium however is also a really hard metal, which is one of the properties that make it popular, my test pieces never really turned into anything, but the idea of the day was just to learn a new technique. O’Hana’s approach of using a laser cutter should theoretically remove the problem of gaining the right heat to produce the right colours. Because the laser can be set to a specific strength for each colour you’re able to plot exact patterns in the metal and know that when you hit ‘print’ it’ll be reproduced as long as you’ve got them written down correctly.

I’ve never really got much colour into my jewellery, I don’t use a lot of stone, the resins I use most are black and white and I don’t use enamel that often, however it’s something I love. When I used to paint at college my figures were Technicolor, I painted all the colours I saw...not particularly naturalistic, but I just loved using every colour available. However, since becoming a jeweller, the colour’s kind of faded out of my art, I want a bit more colour this year so I’d like to look into this a bit further and maybe experiment a little without blowing up the laser cutter!

(O'Hana, S. (2007) Walking with Scientists: a dialogue in jewellery. Manchester: Ars Ornata Europeana
BBC (2007) BBC News: Engineering Beauty [online] http://www.bbc.co.uk/manchester/content/articles/2007/07/03/020707_laser_jewellery_feature.shtml [Accessed: Dec 16 2008])

Just a Pin Prick

2009-01-23T11:37:00.005Z

Scott McMahon's collection of pinhole cameras (http://featured-photographers.projectbasho.org/)

Geddes and the art of seeing...

Patrick Geddes bought part of the old Edinburgh School of Art in 1892 and converted the building into the Outlook Tower, a place which was supposed to enliven the minds of the people of Edinburgh and give them a new outlook of their town through the use of the camera obscura.

Now, my friend Kam Chan made the most beautiful pinhole cameras for her degree show last year and throughout the show she took photographs with them and developed them for display. Even though she is my friend and I’m baise, it was still one of my favourite pieces in the whole show. So, while Kam spent a year making really professional looking pinhole cameras to very great effect, I’ve never made one...unless you include using a colander to look at an eclipse when I was a kid. Hundreds of tiny little crescent moons with the giant shape of a colander surrounding it. Nice.

The principal of both the camera obscura and the pin hole camera is that within a darkened chamber a tiny hole lets through enough light to converge on a backing to create an image. The part of the lecture which I found really interesting was about the distortions caused used a stereoscope, which creates two imaged that when layered creates a more three dimensional image, adding more information therefore more depth.

Try this wiki one by moving a little bit further back than normal and try to refocus so the two images become three and the centre image kind of pops out...just go cross eyed.

Anyway, the reason I found this both interesting and really bloody hard is because I actually have a convergance problem with my eyes. Which means I have trouble with double vision caused by something in part of my brain, thus I have a poorer ability to focus my eyes. As a treatment for this, my optician (my dad who’s just drawn a mass of scribbled diagrams to explain this all to me in a little more detail) had me doing excercises when I was a bit younger which involved me sitting in front of a computer with glasses with one red and one blue lense and then I’d have to make two squares on the right and left converge in the centre.

Not only did I look like muppet, but I didn’t really take it seriously and this is where I’m really glad I went to this lecture today because image is a huge part of my Masters project. Because I wasn’t taken seriously and was vain enough to feel stupid in the glasses, I stopped myself from improving. Just the way people do with dyslexia treatments. The way I did with my colourimetry specs.

Reflective Journals...

2009-01-21T19:46:00.006Z

Mike Press mentioned something today about creative writing in academia and the importance of recording everything and finding your own style. It's gone along with the theme of a most of the lectures this week and one of the things that has stuck was the difference in attitudes to reflective journals between designers & fine artists.

Raskolnikov (Detail) and You're A Wolf by Louise Boyd

My little sister Louise is a fine artist in the middle of her third year, she's recently come under critism in a review which has brought her spirits down and made her doubt herself. Now I'm not saying this to embarrass her, in fact I hope to do the opposite. Mike's comparison about the fact that fine artists seem to use reflective journals more effectively than designs is entirely true in the case of my younger siblings and myself. She fills sketchbooks with her thoughts and reflections, her notes on her research, on her practice...these sketchooks are at bursting point, but she'll keep going back into them time and time again and drawing out more information.

When it comes to these books, I'm jealous.

I also know the complete and utter dispair she's feeling at the fact that this is where all her thinking & work goes and while at Masters level it would be looked over carefully, at her stage it's barely glanced at. I had that at her stage of uni - tutors not looking at sketchbooks and only at finished products - I remember being frustrated and angry because the working is as important if not more so. I mean in math you'd fail if you didn't show you working, why art different?

This first week back all our lectures have either been about or touch upon the importance of reflective journals and showing your working and it's something I need to work on, but it's also something I think that needs more emphasis on at an earlier stage of learning.

Rough and Ready Folios

2009-01-21T19:32:00.008Z

Why is it such a struggle for designers to share? We spend our entire lives pouring over research in order to create our designs and yet when it comes to talking to people about it, sharing what we know and how we got there, we've got a bit of a mental block.

Thinking about our lecture from Richard Harper on Monday afternoon, he talked about how when we go to pitch to someone we only ever show the glossy images or finished products and don't show any of the rough and ready bits in between, when really the thinking's the interesting part and the articulation of these ideas is where you're probably going to impress people. Recently I revisited my 4th year portfolio. It was just as Harper had said, glossy images with little if no explanation. No quick and dirty.

When I've been asked for my folio I send my CD-ROM CV with all my images in an order which I think is cohesive...but I don't have any info about my thinking apart from ambiguous titles and material lists. But why not? What am I scared of? At the degree show and New Designers I loved talking to people about my work and what I'd based it on and how I'd made it. It was easy and it was fun and after I talked to them people understood my work. Ask me to present the work formally and I'd have freaked out, but that informality was wonderful and being able to go into more depth was wonderful and it made me feel proud about my work because of the meaning behind it.

How to Cure Dyslexia: Little Else

2009-01-21T12:01:00.006Z

Little Else by How to Cure Dyslexia. My sister bought this EP months ago and I never really paid it any attention, though I did like the bands name. She described the album as not very good. But I've fallen in love with this song because of the video I found to go with it. It uses finger spelling (American, not British despite them being Londoners) throughout the video and I love that use of a visual language. Reading is difficult because people with disorders such as dyslexia have problems with the fact that they think in visuals.

In The Gift in Dyslexia by Ron Davis he discribes the scenario of a 3 year old being introduced to a kitten. The kitten is curled in the corner in an amorphus lump of fur, but the child instantly recognises it as a kitten. At a 5 he's introduced to the word and doesn't make the connection because he doesn't realise the two are connected. He works in visuals.

However, with the song I've know idea what they're spelling out.

v i s u a l

Reflecting on Reflecting

2009-01-21T11:42:00.007Z

My favourite picture of Pepper who died in July. He was such a poser!

What happens when a cat is confronted by a mirror? Absolutely bugger all. In fact what I'd always pegged as a dislike of mirrors is more likely a complete disregard. But my cat's aren't to be trusted with this sort of thing...Dizzy's scared of the blue vase in our living room and Pepper was an unashamed camera whore.

Jonathan's analogy was basically saying yesterday that unlike cats we reflect on the reflection we see in the mirror. Reflective writing is a way of thinking through things, it's a way of finding links and meaning in our design practice. It forces you to think about what's happened and what may come out of that or come before it.

Reflective Journals are confusing...or at least I find that they are because of their contradictory nature. They're personal and private but their also public and revealing...that's weird. Now, I've kept a diary since I was at school in one form or another. I've also kept sketchbooks since I started college (at school they were discouraged because you couldn't send them to the SQA). However, the two have rarely met. I've always kept them separate because my diary is private, my private view on the world, it's the way I vented troubling issues with friends and family. My own personal issue too...I'd hate it if someone read it. My sketchbooks were my public ideas which needed input, but any writing was usually quotes or formal and stunted.

I've always wanted to combine the two, but there's just something about that need for privacy. Sometimes, as with the Rituals Project Journal, sometimes my thoughts felt to personal to document, other times too mundane...

I need to find the balance!

Christmas...

2009-01-21T11:28:00.002Z

Flu...or at least a colourful interpretation.

Fidget...

2009-01-21T11:27:00.004Z

Silver Bracelet with 9ct Gold Fidgets

Now, this was for my granny Betty. My dad wanted to give her something special and she's been threatening to steal my poetry bracelet since she first saw it, so I designed something brand new for her based on it.

If you knew my gran you'd know how obsessed she is with bracelets. She has them wrist to elbow some days and you can always hear her before you see her. The funniest part of making this was actually sizing it. Gran may where bracelets all the time, but if I asked to borrow one she'd have been suspicious. So dad and mum tricked her into trying on mine and then giving me an excuse to get out my bracelet sizer...the bracelet is tinier than all her others, but is still a little big.

These are both easy and a complete bugger to size! I want to make a series of things based on this now, I just need the time and the money to buy the materials.

Beehave & BeeQuiet

2008-12-09T18:21:00.002Z

Yet another blog to report. As a last project at the end of our first semester in the Master of Design we're working with the Design Ethnographer in a joint project based on future gazing and rituals.

I've been working with Sam, Arlene, Annabella & Grace for the past week and I'm havnig great fun.

If you'd like to look at our project research head over to ritualstories.blogspot

We've been working through this project and started trying to write a short childrens book to explain our research. Tonight I've been putting it together and Gracie has been designing beautiful illustrations of 'Bee Boy' whom we are using throughout. I love them!

Ode to a Research Poster

2008-12-08T00:00:00.005Z

My Research Poster has finally been finished, handed in and today it will be being marked by the tutors...keep your fingers crossed!

I finally clarified my question as:

Can critical jewellery design help to solve dyslexia's image problem?

My sister Sarah helped me word it so that it made sense with my rationale, I'm just hoping that the tutors think it's a good play on words and not just a bad pun. Apart from that it's finished after hours of nudging images side to side and I've discovered the joy of the white board for designing on rather than using a computer or wasting paper...and yes, I photograph each incarnation.

Live Scribe

2008-12-07T21:52:00.004Z

‘Live Scribe’ is a product intended to alleviate the pressure of note taking & facilitate the process by recording sound bites as you write.

I found this online recently after wondering about using sound recording devices as part of my design work...or at least looking at it as a possibility. If anything I’d just like one for myself as half the time my notes make sense to a point and then I’ll miss a vital piece of information because I haven’t quite kept up or I’ve only written down half a comment.

The fact that the Live Scribe Pen records what is said as you write and you’re able to access specific parts of the recording by tapping on the Live Scribe Dot Paper pad provided is brilliant! The Pad acts as a control panel and because of the arrangement of dots on the surfaces allows an infrared camera on the pens tip to record everything your right or draw, you can even print your own, so I think, would really appeal to dyslexics, or even people who’s hand-writing strays (much like mine) half way through their notes because it can act as a back up.

Let's Make a Song and Dance About It...

2008-12-07T21:33:00.007Z

Okay, so normally I don’t watch Britannia High, it’s a little bit too cheesy for my tastes, however I watched ‘Charlie Brookers Screen Wipe’ and ‘Never Mind the Buzzcocks’ and both made reference to the Dyslexia storyline which is afflicting one of the main characters. In this episode of the all singing, all dancing High School Musical based drama, Danny, played by Mitch Hewer (of Skins fame), has his undisclosed suffering of dyslexia brought very publically to the surface, while interviewing two members of Girls allowed. Unable to read the cue cards the normally confident Danny’s mind starts to play out an elaborate song & dance number based on the torturous relationship he has with the written word.

It’s reassuring that teen dramas such as this are in fact tackling the issue of dyslexia, however, the fact that this condition is only present in Hewers character on an irregular bases has sparked responses from dyslexics who are annoyed by the misrepresentation within the plot:

Having watched both now, I do understand why David Morgan, from yourfaceisanadvert.com, is annoyed by the portrayal of dyslexics and the lack of realisms which it is rooted to the show’s plot. The character flipping from a high achieving student to one who cannot read cue cards is possibly a tad unrealistic even for a teen drama where conditions tend to be shown in extremes. However, I do believe the fact that such shows are portraying characters with dyslexia at all is a great step forward & will be reassuring lots of the adolescents who are watching it.

Plus, where is the harm in associating celebrities with the condition as examples of high achievements. Fair enough actors are possibly not the best ones, but they are people whom children/teens will know and respond too. As a response to this I’ve also searched the web for well known people who’ve suffered from the condition, these include:

Leonardo da Vinci; Winston Churchill; Walt Disney; Erin Brockovich; Thomas Edison; Albert Einstein; John Lennon; Pablo Picasso; George Washington; Alexander Graham Bell; Michael Farraday; Ansel Adams; Auguste Rodine; Andy Warhol; Richard Branson; W. B. Yeats; Issac Newton; Fred Epstien; Fred Astaire; Orlando Bloom; Anthony Hopkins; Billy Connolly; Eddie Izzard; Will Smith; John F. Kennedy; David Bailey; Michelangelo; Steven Spielberg; Tommy Hilfiger; Hans Christian Anderson; Ernest Hemmingway; Lewis Carroll; Mark Twain; Jamie Oliver; Henry Winkler; Patrick Dempsey; Agatha Christie; River Phoenix; Keira Knightly; Ann Bancroft; Live Tyler; Danny Glover...there are hundreds more.

Empire Biscuits...

2008-11-12T18:12:00.005Z

Today we had a class by Alan Monroe about Scenarios & Persona and as part of it we decided to make something to bring in for lunch from the country we were born in. As a Scottish delicacy I made Empire Biscuits from my grans recipe and using some of her homemade jam. What's better is they all got eaten, so I was really chuffed.

Yum!

The lecture was interesting, however between the first part and second, I got to talk to Alan about my own project & about Meares-Irlen Syndrome & how it manifests itself. It was interesting because he said a lot of the symptoms he actually suffered from and he seemed really interested. He also had been talking about how we generalise people into pigeonholes and end up designing for the wrong people which is why persona are so important.

Hazel ever suggested that Alan himself could end up being on of the persona's for my project.

Supressed Creativity...

2008-11-12T09:22:00.011Z

WATCH THIS VIDEO!

This is the most fascinating argument I have heard about the education system and its relationship (or lack there of) with creativity. Sir Ken Robinson speaks candidly and emotionally about his concern over child education and his belief that the traditional hierarchy of subjects is going to eventually drown out their real potential. Robinson does this in an incredibly comedic fashion which I think just makes his more effective as a speaker.

During the video above Robinson reveals that at school choreographer Gillian Lynne (who is responsible for Cats and Phantom of the Opera) was told she was hopeless & she may have a learn disorder. After a consultation a specialist left a radio on & told her mother to watch Lynne. He then went on to tell her, she wasn't sick, she was a dancer. She had to 'Move to think' and what may have been termed ADHD, a condition that at the time 'wasn't an available condition' was simply her manner of creativity. I think that's fascinating because he's right, at school we are taught the traditional hierachy of subjects: English; Science; Social Science; Art and Music. and we are steared away from the latter and told we will won't make a career of them even if that is where our strengths lie.

In my opinion Robinson's right "We are educating people out of their creativity."

http://www.sirkenrobinson.com/

Once upon a time...

2008-11-12T09:21:00.015Z

...there was a strange pair who entered the world of the Masters. Quietly they moved into the room filled with inquisitive looks & worried faces, but as the Masters wondered who these people were, the stranger approached and began to tell their story.

While the stranger spoke the Masters sat and stared, fascinated by the tales of stingless bees and the the travelling folk that clung to the mans hair. He was a Storyteller and his companion was training to be a doctor of story telling.

Thinking she would hate the class the girl sat nervously, dreading the moment where she would innevitably be called upon to tell some sort of tall tale. But as day swiftly turned into night and the Storyteller gave the Masters task after task to complete in order to gain the rewarded of another story, the girl realised how much fun she was having and that years of reading old local myths was time well spent.

......................................................................................

Okay so on Monday we had two Storytellers come and do a workshop with us, which I have to admit that I thought was going to be very silly, but it was incredibly fun. Our last task was as pairs so I was put with Gio and we had to tell the group a story together about a Raja who was afraid someone knew what was in his heart & the search for that person.

It was really fun and it actually reminded me of two things, the first that my friend Fiona had based all my work last year on some of the travellers the speakers were talking about & that I have to tell her about the storytelling group that happens at Dundee Rep. And secondly a conversation on DeviantArt with a French woman called Sophie. We'd been talking about local history of our home towns and I'd been telling her about all the old fables & myths surrounding Blairgowrie such as; The Green Lady of Newton Castle; Jean Mercer and the Meiklour Hedge & Lady Lindsay's pennance. These were all stories I was told as a kid by my Primary 6 teacher, Mrs Harvey, from a book called The Ghost o'Mause: And Other Tales and Traditions of East Perthshire by Maurice Flemming.

A few years ago, when I was frequenting the BBC's H2G2 website, I had an article published about Blairgowrie & its mythology which I wrote when I was about seventeen. Now if you search for Blairgowrie Ghost Stories, my article is the first to come up! Which I'd never realised until I was looking back at it this year. I left the site just after it was published & I've just had another pang of wanting to go back. So, as a homage to h2g2 I've added a Douglas Adams Daily Quote to my blog.

Today's is Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so, which is perfect given h2g2 stands for Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy & is one of my favourite books.

Visual Brain Dump...

2008-11-08T16:56:00.008Z

Hazel's been encouraging us to do a 'visual brain dump' as a way of giving people a visual means of understanding our research up to this point when we're not there to explain the mess of rubbish going on inside our heads. I've got a lot of stuff up now - including my origami cranes and far too much pink for my liking - except my work shop at home has everything already pinned to the wall & I'm so reluctant to dismantle it that I've got to find a whole host of new material to put up so people get an idea of what else I'm interested in...

...and I have to get up lots before Tuesday when we do our desktop tour as our talks about our research. Help!

Brand Me

2008-11-08T16:51:00.007Z

Branding...okay, so in my head, after two years of researching body modificiation, my head immediately went to the practice of physical branding onto the skin using a hot wire. I joked with Kate that maybe we should take it literally as jewellers and create our own brands and imprint something into our skin. I was joking, I'd be too much of a wimp, Kate however - who is really into body modification, tattooing etc - says she's always fancied doing it.

Anyway we have to do a presentation about 'Brand Me' and rather than premanetly scaring my body to do a we bit of joke for my PowerPoint, instead I went for the pen and ink tattoo option. I don't think I really need Emily stamped on my wrist until I start loosing my mind, so give me until the end of my Masters. I wanted for this to be a little tongue in cheek because I have been struggling with this project a little I think I've now gotten into it a little more and realised it's more personal and not literally branding in the form of logos, hot wires & hallmarks. That has actually dissapointed me, as I've been trying to get one made & have yet had the insentive to part with the money given I'm not currently making. I have however finally downloaded the forms and half decided on the design. Which is a step forward.

I may use this as my reading week postcard (#6) but I haven't decided yet.

iBirdie

2008-11-08T16:37:00.005Z

Postcard design for week 7 - during our group project I kept folding up the old post-its and ones I'd scribbled notes & ideas down on and started turning them into little origami cranes.

Yes, I'm obsessed.

At work at my dad's opticians in Blair we've just taken down the window display full of cranes which my sister and I spent three days making & it is being shipped off to the practice in Broughty-Ferry because we got such a good reaction to it. Apparently lots of people have been just popping their head in the door to say how much they liked it & to find out who made them...one of the local primary schools has even asked for us to come and teach the kids how to make them during a craft day.

Anyway, because everyone was going a little iCrazy, when Grace saw them she called them 'iBird' which I've corrupted into iBirdies and iLove them and I'm hoping that the Japanese tradition that anyone who folds a thousand cranes will be granted is true. Need a bit of luck.

iHappy

2008-11-08T16:16:00.007Z

So it's post reading week and I have to admit I was sceptical about whether I would enjoy being part of a group project - I've only done one once before and it was a bit of a farce and jewellery tends to be a rather solitary practice. However, I really enjoyed it.

Over the first semester we've been given lectures by Professor Tom Inns and this three day projects put into practice all of the lectures on processes, branding, strategy, ethics etc which we have been given in which we had to come up with a theoretical product for Apple based on three questions. First we were put into groups - I was with Jumi (my studio buddy) and Brandy from design ethnography and then we were given our task: design a product based on monitoring happiness...

...yep. Vague, but curious and then we were given various methods in order to work our way through the design process including:

Edward de Bono "6 Thinking Hats" as a method of improving decision making.
Brain Storming (individual & group in a mass of post-it joy)
Prototyping
Stakeholders
Ethics (what are the products ethical standing)
Intellectual Property (copyright, patent, designer right etc)

It was really interesting and I actually really enjoyed this week. Working with Brandi & Jumi was brilliant, we had lots of fun making models & using a rainbow of post-its & I know I'm being vague, but I think I've come up with a possible idea for my own research project & because I've not thought it through completely I'm going to let it mull over in my head for a bit first. Sorry!

Laser Dance...

2008-10-25T09:26:00.001+01:00

Lights, Camera, Jellyfish...

2008-10-18T15:50:00.009+01:00

Jelly-lights are light sculptures designed by Dirk Rutten & Jeroen Kascha (for NXT Designs), they are made of transparent rubber, laced with fiber optic strands throughout its structure. They range from 1.5 - 3 meters in diameter, produce little to no heat, have no electricity passing directly through them and by fitting an optical colour wheel programmed with a range of colours, they can, 'create a huge assortment of dynamic colour schemes, a lightshow hanging from your ceiling'.

They can alter their environment , the mood of an environments theoretically the people within it through subtle colour changes.

I love them, for two reasons, one, they remind me so much of one of my favourite designers work, Dale Chihuly's Persian series. In particular his epic piece in which he places hundreds of pieces of glass sea forms onto a false glass ceiling above the exhibition space. In one image I've seen (though could not find) he ceiling has been suspended so close low in the exhibition that although people were able to walk around beneath, most lay on the ground and viewed Chihuly's work that way.

Two is the slightly sad fact that I absolutely love fibre optics. There's just something about the iridescence that kind of shimmer that dim glow of colour that I just love. In third year I did a project based on tidal water current maps which I made this large neck piece out of them. But I never got as far as adding a light source which I always regretted. Eventually I hope to manage incorporating fibre optics and LEDs elegantly into my jewellery (so it doesn't become ridiculously fragile or look like a bottle brush)...that or maybe I should just start trying to design ambient lighting?

(re)presentation

2008-10-18T11:19:00.003+01:00

Yesterday morning prior to my Bowler Hats with Sleeves lecture I dropped into Border looking for a birthday card for a friend. Needless to say I didn't get a card, but I did come across a cultural research probe.

Down the main stairwell of the Dundee branch of Borders there is currently a small exhibition of photographs being displayed (2nd-31st October) called '(Re)presentation' which portray's two images of seven members of the branches staff and asks the public to pick the correct tribal grouping for the staff member. I think of social groupings such as goth, girly, geek, scene, trendy, sporty etc as tribes on the basis of a Talk to Frank study on the social groupings of school children which I studied as part of my undergraduate dissertation last year. This exhibition asks a similiar question to my dissertation study on personal appearance with tag lines of 'What is self image to you?', 'image maker, image taker' and 'fake doesn't make friends' and I am really quite intreged by this social experiment. Image is so important, yet entirely subjective.

My intent is to return to the exhibition and look at it properly, plus, since Rhiannon - in the 3rd year class I work with - works there, I'm going to ask her about the exhibit and see what she knows about.

I'll try and get some sort of image to add to this post when I get along there again.

Try a little Randomness...

2008-10-18T11:06:00.003+01:00

Us by Regina Spektor.

One of my favourite music videos, it's so mad!

Bowler Hats with Sleeves...

2008-10-18T09:45:00.006+01:00

Bowler Hats with Sleeves, I love this reference to good old Billy Connelly used by David Townson as the title of his lecture today. I admit it, I am a complete and utter comedy geek, so it made me smile.

It was an interesting lecture about the importance of communication and community in design so you don't come up with ridiculous ideas scotch taped onto an exisiting one. That designers shouldn't design for themselves they need to design for others.

'be selfless, not selfish'

Which is of course a point we should probably all take on, but it was particularly pertinent as generally in undergraduate courses you design for you and your tutors and rarely think of the world outside. Or at least, not in a 'my jewellery must solve world peace' kind of way. But David's point was that designers need to be aware that the public should/need to be of huge influence to designers. The bit however, which really struck a cord with me was on Research Prob Packs given out to a community of children during one of the projects he worked on.

Questionnaires in my experience never tend to be as fruitfyl as you expect thanks to people responding with yes/no answers. Interviews can often seem stunted - especially when the interviewer isn't exactly the most confident of themselves or that they are in fact asking teh right questions...plus the interviewee can often just give back desired answers. But this idea of Research Prob Packs, that could really offer some insight into peoples experiences with dyslexia and the current manifestations of treatments/aids, their coping stratgies...even just a critic of the university/school/work environment (something which I have started myself during my lectures out of my own curiosity and I shall put at related posts).

I have no clue how I'll go about it or what I will put in them. But it's an idea.

Disclaimer: Please note I have no control of Billy Connelly or his use of the f-word. Apologies if you're offended.

Reading by the Colours...

2008-10-16T11:23:00.009+01:00

So I finally finished Reading by the Colors by Helen Irlen, and despite giving me a killer migraine after two days of non-stop reading - a fact which Irlen herself would probably think as incredibly ironic - it was really enlightening on how coloured filters air people with dyslexia.

Irlen's research is based on the study of people suffering from a condition called Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome. S.S.S. is a sensitivity to certain wavelengths of light in which you have difficulty processing the full spectrum of light, this results in perceptual problems (not visual) which makes reading certain things such as black text on white paper (I know, I know!) incredibly painful. It also effects not only academic sucess but sporting ability, driving, reading music, coordination and generally you whole life.

What I found most interesting however was Irlen's study of the social aspects which are affected in S.S.S sufferers. In many cases these people are misdiagnosed, labelled as dumb, lazy, disruptive, unmotivated, failures...they are labelled in as many derogitory ways as you can imagine. This results in a poor self image and low self esteem and becomes a stigma which makes even more people remain undiagnosed and suffer in silence.

This is also down to the fact that they are unable to recognise that what they feel - headaches, restlessness, fatigue, nausea, distortion etc - isn't actually the norm.

Think about it for a moment, we all know that we can read, but we don't comprehend that we don't all read in the same way. We all see things differently. So why do we assume that there is anything such as a 'normal' way of reading? Does print look the same to everyone?

One sufferer in Irlen's study discribed reading as a 'harrowing' experience and yet the unidentified suffers create coping strategies in order to appear normal. They learn through phonetics, they read the start and end of pieces of text in order to gleen information and they find all sorts of little tricks in order to appear the same as their friends. They are the invisible handicapped and yet despite the anxiety they feel, teachers often don't notice any of these issue or don't agree with the diagnoses, the child is punished for not being able to function the same as their peers.

That fact is staggering to me.

Even this week I have been faced with issues surrounding the Reading by the Colors theory. In our Methods and Methodologies lecture this week we were handed out an extract from a book to read. At which point (sharing of course which always makes life more interesting) myself and Jo had to read two pages of bright white paper with black print in the space of seven minutes under bright flourescent lighting...we are both slow readers but I managed to skim through well enough with one eye shut and my hand shading my eyes...did I actually take in any of the information? Very little. I needed to re-read the pieces as the lecturer asked questions, which when given a task like that is usually how I respond. That's my coping mechanism.

I push myself so hard that I either end up unable to think straight and have a migraine that won't go away or I gleen information and take longer to process it. It shouldn't be like that when simply printing out documents on coloured paper or giving us all a hand out and a few extra minutes would help. One of Irlen's suggested coping mechanisms without the aid of coloured filters is even to simply highlight entire documents for easier reading.

Anway, anyone who's interested in Dyslexia or Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome I would heartly recommend reading this book, it is thoroughly enlightening.

Irlen, H. (1991) Reading by the Colors: Overcoming Dyslexia and other Reading Disabilities through the Irlen Method. United States of America: Avery

Processing Information...

2008-10-16T11:06:00.007+01:00

In school art classes, I was given a process by which to Design, it was this:

RESEARCH---------->DEVELOPMENT---------->OUTCOME

Pretty basic as you can see, and I suppose at school, with limited numbers of boards allowed to be submitted for exams this was a perfect equation. Two boards of Research, two boards of Development and your final Outcome board. Yet, this is still the bases I work to 5, going on 6, years later after my final Blair High exam.

In my DLPSI lecture last week, Tom Inns set us the challenge of making a visual representation of our design process. This is mine.

It's based on the urban sprawl model that I referenced before and seem to be so fond of, except with fail safes and more communication...so kind like having more slip roads on the motorway as you break the law by answering your mobile phone - something I have never done or condone but I hope you get what I mean. These two elements (fail safes & communication) are both really very important in my design process, especially now that I have been through a degree and worked for and as a designer. Without discussion about projects I can't be sure anyone other than myself feels that they are worthwhile, or solve the questions which arise, which is where the fail safe 'slip roads' come into play. It doesn't matter how much work you do, how much Research and Development (R&D) you do...you can't plan for everything. You always have to be prepared - like a good girl guide - and adapt to the new obstacles which arise.

When we hung them on the wall I had to try and explain this - Tom picked on my design and I was terrified it was because it wasn't complicated or detailed enough - especially the looping quality, which he thought of as like kneading bread in order to develop the texture, mix the ingredients and form the loaf...so I guess that makes my Process model a great big Stottie?

A Room of Ones Own...

2008-10-10T18:49:00.003+01:00

This is my postcard for week three, it's supposed to show how I feel this week has gone and what I have learnt...

...I've learnt I miss making. I miss my tool box and my workroom and just making things. So I took a photo of my toolbox trapped in the room at the back of the masters studio.

It has been a genuinely interesting week, we had a lecture on Wicked Problems and the Process's we use in order to create designs. We critically assessed a piece of work at an exhibition - which is not as much fun as you'd imagine - and I had my first day as Designer in Residence within the jewellery and metalwork department at DoJ.

It was great, I actually feel like I may have helped some of the girls in the class with the issues they have with their designs (mostly created by the conflict between tutors opinions which had confused them). Plus some of them talked to me about their experiences with dyslexia and my chosen area of research. So I have two willing interviewee's already, which is brilliant as one has only recently been diagnosed and the other has a long standing history with the condition and uses the coloured lenses. I'm really excited to be working with them all, it's nice to feel helpful again. I've really missed helping them out since leaving uni the first time.

Home Away from Home...

2008-10-09T11:26:00.004+01:00

Is it wrong to be missing my old studio way of life? I'm not surprised to be missing the workshop, I've not made anything in nearly a month, but right now I just feel like my workspace is so souless. It's all white boards and book and me on my computer for the majority of the day...and yet, when I go home into my own environment and with everything I need around me...I'm stuck. I can't work or read and I don't want to brave my workroom because by the time I've done my ritual clear down I'll have to leave it again. So instead I've wasted a days worth of petrol coming to a place where the most interesting part of my desk is the variety of coloured postits and the constilation of pin holes left by the last student.

I think I need to do a little bit of personalising... make my space my own and fill it with things that will distract me in a good way rather than making my head hurt.

Wicky Sticky Problems...

2008-10-07T13:32:00.016+01:00

Nathan Cole: The Lamp of Sacrifice, 286 Places of Worship

Today's lecture was based on Research Methods & Methodologies: Wicked Problems and Sticky Toffee Pudding. The theory as far as I have grasped it is that Wicked Problems are problems which are messy, complicated and often need to wonder in and out of other subjects in order to create a hypothesis...nope, nothing to do with Wicked Witches...and the way in which these problems are visually explained is through the idea of putting your finger into a dish of Sticky Toffee Pudding. Obviously if you did that you'd get very messy and very sticky and generally get told off by someone for making a mess, but as you removed your finger you'd also drag a column of goo with you. At the base of this column is all the existing information and at the top there's a new plateux of information, but in the middle of the column (at its weakest point) is the area to begin your research because this is the area where a solution to a problem is needed...or at least that's what I think it means.

The way I've started to think about it however, is like urban sprawl following a concentric formation. You have a central nucleus of a city which sprawls out into new layers of industry and housing and each additional circle has either a primary, seconday or tertiary purpose. If you reverse the order so that you go from the outer less structured circle and work your way in through the various layers, then this is how I see research.

My idea, based on the Burgess model for urban sprawl is that gradually as you research you'll get tighter and tighters into the circle before you reach an answer (or at least a defining question), in other words:

GREEN = the broad subject & the existing

YELLOW = narrowing the field of study

OCHRE = questions form at several points

ORANGE = define your rationale

RED = discover new information

I am basing these zones on the process of academic research we have been introduced to over the past few lectures, and there is obviously over lapping and you can get lost in research the same way you get lost in streets. But it is a basic idea of how research defines itself by the methods it uses.

(Incidentally, the first image is of Nathan Cole's work 'The Lamp of Sacrifice, 286 Places of Worship' in which he documented all the churches around Edinburgh by making scale models in cardboard. It was exhibited in The Gallery of Modern Art in December 2006-May 2007 and filled two of the galleries exhibition spaces. I fell in love with it because although it's a really simple idea, it was beautifully executed and given I was speaking about Urban sprawl I though it was appropriate.)

Post Call...

2008-10-04T13:08:00.006+01:00

Each week we have been asked in class to submit a postcard designed to sum up our week. This is my postcard for this week and I just wanted to show the complete and utter overload of information that's going on in my head. It's also a response to the ridiculousness of my travel schedule this week - I've been bouncing between Blairgowrie, Dundee and Crieff trying to get everything ready for the Strathern Gallery, going to lectures and actually sleeping...

It's also supposed to be representative of on one of the issues dyslexics have with black on white text where the lines distort and wander across the page. Personally mine shimmer...that's harder to show when it's a postcard...unless I go glitter mad.

Elexia...

2008-10-03T21:38:00.001+01:00

The Elexia Keyboard has been developed by BabelTech Ltd, the purpose of this product is to try and help ease the discomfort caused to some dyslexics when looking at the traditional black and white lettering on keyboards.

Elexia has been designed with a transluscent, back lit keyboard which, can produce up to '1.6 million colour' variables. The colours can be altered and blended via the red, green and blue dials at the side of the keyboard, even dimmed and brightened to change intensity and have been modelled on those defined by the treatment of Irlen Syndrome. As with the treatments of Irlen Syndrome (which includes dyslexia, visual difficulties and to help prevent migraines or headaches) using coloured glasses and overlays, the keyboards colour can be taylored to the individual sufferers needs and is designed to help help them percieve the letters more easily.

Although this product is not actually avaliable until 2009, I do think that it's a really interesting design, it could eventually be encorporated into computers as a standard given that so many already have backlit keyboards. I've never really looked at my keyboard as a dyslexic. I can touch type relatively efficiently and I am from a generation who grew up using computers from relatively early age (the first computer class I took at school which have been in Primary 4, 15 years ago, but it does flicker the way text does in books and on a computer screen for me. It does blur a little, but perhaps because the lettering is actually very far apart I'd never considered it. Either way the Elexia Keyboards has really intreged me, I would really like to see how it aids people.

In Need of Directions?

2008-10-03T19:06:00.001+01:00

At uni we're being encouraged to mind map as an alternative to the traditional method of franticly scribbling down every piece of information thrown at you throughout a lecture. I have to be honest, I've never really gotten to grips with mind mapping. The general format is to go from a central point and branch off with main pieces of information and then creating a new branch with each additional piece of information added...

...my mind maps always end out incredibly conviluted.

Tony Buzan - who claims to have invented 'Mind Mapping' and is an authority on the subject - suggests that mind maps reflect what's going inside our heads when. That they help us classify and clarify our thoughts and also aid memory in business, studying etc. In the last few lectures I have made every effort to try mind mapping and even though I'm still geting slightly muddled, they do seem to help. I admit, I can't keep to the 'one branch, one word' concept and my maps turn out less like trees and more like webs, as each branch seems to end up connected to another miles away. They do, however make not taking notes a little easier and I can definetly see why they would be beneficial for brain storming design ideas.

This year shall be a mind mapping year.

The Tipping Point...

2008-09-30T19:05:00.002+01:00

The Tipping Point was a very surprising book which explains and analysis the way ideas and social trends go from a normal level to epidemic proportions. I never really expected that it would have been so interesting or relevent to my subject.

What I really found interesting was Chapter Two - The Law of the Few: Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen, in which Gladwell discusses the different personalities that aid the progression of social trends to the point where they tip.

Connectors are people who have that special nack of bringing everyone together. The seem to know everyone which leads to a wider social grouping and the spread of information.

The example Gladwell gives of this is the six degrees of Kevin Bacon, a game where you have to connect him to any other actor in 6 movies or fewer...for example (as Walk the Line is about to come on the TV) Joaquim Phoenix to Kevin Bacon:

Joaquim Phoenix [Quills] Geoffry Rush [Pirates of the Carribean] Johnny Depp [Benny & Joon] Oliver Platt [Flatliners] Kevin Bacon

Easy peasy...although I've now thought how to do it in fewer :

Joaquin Phoenix [To Die For] Matt Dillon [Wild Things] Kevin Bacon

This pop-culture reference makes a good example of connectors because everyone knows who Kevin Bacon is, and could play along, it's interesting though when you consider your own social grouping and thinking about the important connectors within them.

The next term, Mavens, are founts of knowledge. These people absorb information and want to solve problems by passing it on for the benefit of others. They repeat the information they learn because they simply can't hold onto the it. They enjoy learning and they enjoy educating people as they go. Salesmen on the other hand are persuaders, they convince us of the importance of something that we are generally skeptical of through their personality and the way they express themselves.

In our lecture today, Jonathan Baldwin asked the M.Des students which category they fitten into, were they a connector, a maven or a salesman? I don't know what I am, but the book has certainly made me think differently about the way in which the design world works.

[Oh and I'm certainly not a salesman after that disasterous presentation!]

The Problem...

2008-09-29T13:46:00.001+01:00

When it comes to deciding on a subject to research for my Masters, I had to think about what was important to me. Obviously jewellery had to play a part in it, otherwise why did I study it for three years for? The other (given that I would like to go into teaching) was dyslexia. I've been mildly dyslexic all my life and I have also been exposed to a lot of information about it since I was a kid thanks to my dad being an optician. It's kind of a family thing as well. What I find interesting however in relation to teaching is that it's become a label. Children are dyslexic at the drop of a hat these days, and it is a very important issue to address and in my experience at art school there is a huge number of dyslexics. Knowing that so many people, even in just the jewellery department, were dyslexic made my decision easier as understanding it would help me understand them (& myself) a little better.

In relation to design it's even simpler to realise the downfalls in what is actually a very affective method of helping dyslexics. Colourimetry is the use of coloured lenses or overlays in order to make reading easier. Think about it. How often do you look at a bright white page with black lettering and your head goes a little fuzzy? Or twinkly in my case. By using coloured overlays it helps to relax the eyes and aid reading - however it has aprox and 80% failure rate as children just don't use them.

A proved aid is being ignored because overlays are cumbersome and glasses hold a certain stigma - in particular at a young age - so is there an easier way?

Let's see over the year!

Strathearn Gallery...

2008-09-29T13:32:00.002+01:00

Yesterday I took all my wears, my chess & draught sets and gave them to the Strathearn Gallery in Crieff, it's been forever since I went there, but it's a lovely space and this will be my first official exhibition outwith of university - scary, but good.

Strathern Gallery, Crieff, Graduates 2008

4th Oct- 8th Nov 2008

What is the point ?

2008-09-29T13:19:00.001+01:00

The point to this new blog is to use it as a tool for documenting my research & experiences during my Master of Design.

Hopefully over the next few days I'll have a little more on here, but for right now I can't think what to write.