It's Degree Show Time Again!

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

Strangled by Words

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.

Designed by The Little Factory.com

(I want one!)

Magic?

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.

Design Methodology

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?

Stickies...

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.

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

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!

Demystifying Visual Dyslexia in Coventry

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.”

How to Cure Dyslexia: Little Else

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

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

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.

Supressed Creativity...

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/

Reading by the Colours...

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

Elexia...

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.

The Problem...

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!