S.O.D Final Pieces

The deadline submission for the pieces was yesterday, these are to be sent off to Jonathan over in New York who is planning to curate the exhibition for the second year in a row.

We began to test our idea by printing these off as stickers and putting them into context in certain places. We figured although these pieces are for the exhibition, they could potentially be expanded out into the real world and dotted around cities.

S.O.D Exhibition piece

After discussing our idea more we came up with some content for the notifications as shown in the sketches and from those, created a few digital mockups of how we thought the ideas could look.






The plan with these was rather than to have these maybe on a full scale poster within the exhibition, these are something that would be 1:1 size of a regular notification (about 7cm wide) and would be stuck around the exhibition. The format of these would be recognisable since we see notifications everyday and so when noticed from a distance these would hopefully draw in people's attention, for them to really take in the message of the notification.

Reply Letter from Craig!

He replied!

Obviously I could tell from the letter header that he wasn't in Manchester like he typically would be, instead down in Falmouth lecturing and so it wasn't a definite that I'd be able to interview him face to face. But at the very least I'd be able to interview him over email. He also sent a cool business card in which his very personal and realistic tone of voice shines through.

To follow up the letter I sent an email, thanking him for the letter but also to ask whether or not it would be possible to interview him in person or over email and so hopefully we can sort something out.

S.O.D Upcoming Exhibition

Talks of this years exhibition for S.O.D have been in the works for about 6/7 months so far, up until recently we decided on a theme for the exhibition which is to be turning annoying things into nice, essentially negative things into positive. For the exhibition everyone involved in the collective has the chance to create a piece of work that fits in with the theme.

Both me and Jon decided this was something we could work on together to create something that turned everyday negative things into something more uplifting and positive.

Initially our ideas began to focus more around technology more specifically our mobile phones, because although these are useful and help us everyday, they are also something that can be harmful to us, psychologically. Using our phones too much can make us anti-social, as although we think that social media is connecting us in more ways than one in the virtual world, realistically it can be doing quite the opposite in the real world. We talked about how phones can be a distraction during the day, especially during uni/work etc. as constant notifications can take our focus away from whatever we're working on. 

The reason why we decided to focus on phones more specifically social media is because this is something that affects the majority of people but more so because it's something that we both felt affects us on a regular basis. The constant need to keep up to date with social media profiles, worrying about how people will think of you when you post pictures on Instagram for example, stressing out because you haven't messaged someone back in the past 10 minutes.

We started to put more of a focus on notifications in particular, it seems that these can be considered a negative thing in day to day life. Often they're unnecessary and excessive, not just visually but audibly as well, hearing the *ding* or vibration every 5/10 minutes can become extremely distracting and also annoying.

An idea I had was to take the format of a notification (the annoying thing) and switch out the content for an uplifting/satirical (positive) message that could hopefully brighten up someones day. E.g. an Snapchat notification that might say 'Missed something? Don't worry it still happened', something that might make be humorous but at the same time makes a comment on our obsessions over our phones and social media.

Rough initial sketches

Getting in contact with Craig Oldham

Craig is someone who I came across when I found out about his book In Loving Memory of Work which is a visual record of the coal pit strikes that took place in 1984-85. His work immediately struck me because of the amount of passion and effort that's been put into every aspect of this book. The strikes and the events that followed is something very personal to him, considering that his dad was himself a coal miner who lost his job to the closure of the pits, which ultimately led to some tough times that followed.

I could instantly tell that he was passionate about this through his work but also through his tone of voice during his talks. This I would say is partly due to the amount he swears, which is entirely appropriate given the context of his talks.

During his talk for Nicer Tuesdays, he makes a big point about how design shouldn't be for the sake of design, instead it should have a purpose, have a meaning, it should be communicating something. His strong opinions on this are evident through his work as his work has a clear obvious point he's trying to communicate. This is why I'm so interested to find out more about him and his views towards design, because I myself, like to think that I design for a reason.

I wrote up a letter explaining my reason for wanting to chat with him, I think that a letter is much more personal to the recipient but also because back in 2012 Craig did The Hand Written Letter Project which was based around how personal a letter can be in this day and age when our inboxes are filled with spam, junk mail. I think that sending a letter is definitely a much more personal form of communication, it requires a lot more effort to hand write a letter, buy a stamp and post it off than to send a quick email.

S.O.D Collective Pitch

For the third brief within this module, it was to form a collective of up to 6 people and to pitch an idea/concept for a collective group of work. The output could be an exhibition, publication or online presence , or perhaps a combination of these. Given that both me and Jon are already a part of S.O.D it made sense that we pitch this already existing collective and to push the group further so more people become aware of it and have the chance to join in as well.

'Through research and planning you will explore the basics of how to identify an appropriate venue, audience and market, structure your team to optimize your individual and group skills and knowledge, investigate the legal and financial obligations of developing and launching a creative initiative, seek appropriate professional support & advice, plan and control finances and effectively promote, brand and communicate your presence to external parties and partners.'

This is something that has already been considered that we've help to develop also for as long as we've been a part of the collective which is all included in our presentation.

Questions to consider:

• What skills and services do you have to offer individually and as a group?
• Who is your target market?
• What form will your showcase take?
• What are your costs, charges and financial considerations?
• How will you structure your collective?
• Who will be responsible for what?
• How will you promote your showcase? To who? Using what media?
• Is it set in a physical location ? then where?
• How will you manage communication through the group?

Presentation

My PPP Presentation

Presenting in front of people has never and probably never will be my strong suit, but it's something I've always tried to improve mostly because it's something I'll likely have to do a lot in the future, so there's no avoiding it. Also doing presentations like this on a regular basis will increase my confidence, both talking in front of people but also in myself and in my work.

One thing I picked up on last year from Stefan Sagmeister's Happiness by Design talk was making the presentation flow, with one thing leading onto another and not jumping from one topic to the next. I think this helped me hugely in my first year presentation as I would typically have a very choppy presentation with each section divided up by a separate title slide but is something that definitely stuck with me into my second year PPP presentation. Making use of every slide as almost a visual aid to my speech also helped me a lot this year, I aimed to have little to no words on the majority of slides so that the audience will be taking in by the picture, taking the focus off me a little bit. But also so that if I do happen to forget what I'm supposed to be talking about at any point, the slide itself will give me a hint and hopefully get me back on track.

I feel like my presentations are always on a very personal level, often using pictures of my life and on goings not just always my work. This gives me much more confidence and fluidity when I'm talking, but can hopefully inject some humour into the talk.

Within my talk, I began chronologically at the beginning of the year as this made most sense to me; starting in Oslo and finishing with what I learnt from this year. A lot of my presentation talked about my Erasmus trip to Norway for the first semester as this is what I would consider a big step up in my life. Moving to a different country, experiencing a whole new culture and with that new people was a challenging thing to do for me, especially considering I'd never lived in another country before, let alone on my own. Also getting involved with a collective over there was another big thing, being a part of something much bigger than just my own work within university meant that I had to the chance to do good with my design work and to have it displayed in exhibitions in other countries, this was something again that boosted my confidence.

Presenting in groups also means that I was able to see other people's presentations and their way of presenting things, which helps me in some ways. Some people have clever ways of presenting which helps give them confidence, this ultimately gives me a better idea of how I should be presenting and ways in which I can improve.

Doing a presentation of this scale and importance did a lot for me and my confidence, it puts into perspective the difficulty of situations like this but allows me to tackle it one slide at a time, only for me to realise afterwards that it's not as hard or as nerve-racking as my mind often makes it out to be.