23.09.13 - 360 "half way stage"

Now at its half way point, I thought this would be an opportunity to post up some info about what I have been running as my specialist pathway project as part of 360. 360 is 4 week long rotational project designed to enable students to move around each of the specialist pathways and to ultimately get their fingers wet in as many creative disciplines as possible. As visual communications pathway leader I have produced a series of design based tasks to open them up to the ideas of what visual communication could be about. I didn't want to approach the brief with stereo typical design brief IE: poster, typography, packaging but instead I wanted to extend the challenge by giving them something that hopefully they had never considered. 

My approach was to get them to explore conditional design and the act of creating work under rules and notions of processes rather products. It is a tricky one to explain "especially if you are a fan of definitive outcomes". The series of tasks delivered responded to the conditional design handbook I had read over the summer, I felt that this angle allowed the students to engage with the design process, and that journey of development that led to refinement rather than a single idea and execution "something that seems to happen when your at college". All the tasks started off as a series of drawing games, in groups where each had its own set of conditions. Some games were fast paced, and other took various approached in remembering the rules of the game that you had to strictly follow. Although the outcomes are preset to a certain degree, you could very rarely if ever produce as identical outcome, and this got them consider about being responsive, individual and unique about how you could approach design briefs. 

Below are some pictures of the processes being performed, they do not look like anything in particular "again its process driven not product led" The team who created the series of conditional design tasks are a real inspiration and I would recommend a look into their thesis, ideas and influences.