J ([info]drunkontea) wrote,
@ 2009-03-26 11:01:00
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Current mood: rushed
Entry tags:projects, school

Reworking...
I have come to realize, in the process of becoming a graphic designer, that design is married to communication. The topic of communication has grown through shifts and advances with technology, with the Internet at the forefront of it all. I am interested in how the Internet continues to permeate everyday life, as well as the dichotomy between physical and virtual communication. As a designer, I am intrigued by exhibition design, and the process of gathering art as well as its presentation within a set environment. Contact is an online exhibition which explores aspects of both web and exhibition design by presenting artists who would not otherwise come together in a medium which may be accessed by viewers anywhere. This online exhibition within a physical exhibition, Hello! My name is:, speaks to the continuity of communication.


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[info]v0lutes
2009-03-26 11:41 pm UTC (link)
I worry a bit about the first sentence in your statement. It keeps throwing me off in many ways. At first I thought that maybe you should rethink it, that it might be read as sort of a clueless thing to say about graphic design, that if you didn't know design was about communication then what did you think it was about? Then I thought, well I guess it depends on your audience, who is reading this statement. A lay-person wouldn't find it odd to say this, but a designer might. I was going to suggest that you take out "I have come to realize, in the process of becoming a graphic designer," and have it read something like, "Design is married to communication." I see that it is a statement that is supposed to set up a context for the rest of the paragraph, but it's not quite working.

Then I thought that it's something else, it's that the term "communication" is just very broad. I wanted to be a designer since high school and 10 years later I'm thinking back to what it meant to me, what a designer was. Back then and even as an early undergrad, I'm not sure that I would have used the word "communication" specifically, but I would have known that it was about that.

So in saying all that, I think that you probably were aware of the fact that graphic design was somehow tied to communicating, through color, font choices, layout, etc. But that now you see that there is a new type of communication going on, a change through technology and one that you want to explore and use now and in the future. So maybe you should say a bit about what type of communication you thought it was before you came to the realization of what type of communication you think graphic design is now.

I don't know, I can get really, really wordy and stuff about this sort of thing. As a grad student I probably spent like a year finicking with my statement and finally finding the right thing to say, then of course writing a 20 page document explaining in detail. It helped to have 2 professors constantly wanting me to explain each sentence hehe, so I guess that is where I get it from. I'll give you a link to my Master's Report and you can see in the "abstract" portion what I ended up printing in our catalogue for the show.

www.finearts.utexas.edu/aah/design/graduate_program/gradsite/may_2008/selina_silvas/report.pdf

Also, take my advice with a grain of salt hehe, and hopefully I don't sound like a HUGE asshole. I have and still continue to struggle with communication and one of my biggest hang-ups is "do people understand what I'm trying to say" and I end up talking A TON

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[info]drunkontea
2009-03-27 12:06 am UTC (link)
None taken. This is by far probably the most constructive critiques I've gotten, since neither of my thesis professors nor the GSI's are graphic designers. This is intended to be displayed along side my thesis project, so I'm assuming not everyone will be familiar with design. I am trying to figure out how to specify communication without being too wordy.

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