At the beginning of the year I was thrown (through choice) out of my comfort zone and into a completely new working environment with completely new surroundings, ways of living, friends and tutors. As scary as it was to begin with it was what I would consider the best decision I could have made, it helped me to develop as a person in general becoming a lot more responsible for myself and my finances, but also helped me develop hugely as a designer, with my practice. Having the option to experience new culture on a daily basis helped to widen my scope for ideas and insights into how people in other countries live, design and work. Although I'd only been living in Leeds for a year previous to moving away, having lived in a north of England for my entire life, it wasn't as big of a change in comparison to moving to Oslo. The university life itself was much, much difference to here at LCA, the daily schedule, the ways of teaching, the university environment etc. As opposed to working on multiple briefs at once we would typically be working on one brief for 2 months at a time, this had both ups and downs to it. Naturally, the workload was of course much easier but it did mean my creative process changed somewhat drastically. Typically within first year I had the bad habit of rushing into my ideas without being as thorough and conceptual as I should have been, but given the timescale we had for projects in first semester it meant I spent a lot more time going slowly through the research and idea process. This ultimately resulted in every design decision being more concise and informed, which of course had a future impact on this years modules, CoP, PPP & 505.
It has also meant that I've began to enjoy the research side of things more, which is why I
enjoyed doing the CoP module this year more so than within the first year. Usually research is something I would do for the sake of doing and try to rush through this stage, but when in actual fact I've realised this year it's the foundations for everything you do within design. Reading more into my question this year for CoP meant that I better understood what I was talking about, using more books and research studies which I took an interest to helped me to inform more of what I was talking about. Whereas within my first year essay reading back through it this year, I felt it was much more subjective and less supported than an academic essay should be. But ultimately, my essay this year had a much bigger impact on my practical side of things, the thought process behind my final concept was hugely informed by the theorists, psychologists and existential thinkers that I made reference to within my written piece.
Screen printing is something that I'm glad I've made more of a focus on this year, it's something that I've touched upon within first year when we had the traditional print exhibition last year. Although the piece for the exhibition came out roughly how I wanted it to, screen printing was still something that was intimidating to me; I would avoid at all costs simply because I wasn't too confident in the process as a whole. But over the summer and also for the traditional print exhibition again this year, I created a lot of prints that helped to improve my confidence and skill using the traditional print room to a point of where I was able to help out others within my class that maybe were struggling with certain aspects of the process. I think this has been a big benefit to my practice this year and going into third year since it now opens up the option to have screen print as an option of producing my work with ease whereas typically I would have avoided it all together.
A big difference between this year and last was the interaction we had to make with industry professionals, having to make contact with one or more people to ultimately interview them and make a create report from. Having really only worked and been within my own little bubble within first year, it was somewhat intimidating to venture out into the real world to make connections and speak to those who have plenty of experience and therefore knowledge behind them.
My first taste of this for me was becoming part of a collective during first semester in Oslo, the collective name S.O.D was a group of people who come together to design for social issues in the hope to make some form of change to people and society as a whole. Becoming a part of this meant I was able to work alongside industry professionals, tutors and also other students, all of who had their own thoughts, views and experience of design and the industry itself. But this became a much bigger focus in the second semester when I made contact with two professionals from the industry; an old friend at M&C Saatchi Berlin and also Craig Oldham from Office of Craig. Although very intimidating to begin with, both of these were an inspiration to me for different reasons but it was great to make contact with them to learn more about them. Having made these connections hopefully going into the future they're people who I could keep in contact with to ask for feedback on projects, possibly get an internship with etc.
Overall this year has been the biggest change for me in most areas of my practice, it's had the biggest impact but has been the most beneficial. I think going into third year my practice will be more thorough and informed. But there is one area that I think I need to improve in if I want to make the most of third year to utilise the time remaining on this course. This is my time management which is one key area that I want to focus on, balancing out my time so that I don't make the mistake of putting my full effort into one module and less into another. Finding that middle ground of being able to spend an equal amount of time on projects on a daily basis will help to ensure that I can make the most of each brief and ultimately the course.
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