13/02/11 - Self-directed project with Paulus
The vague idea I presented to my tutor group a few weeks ago regarding my first self-directed project of the term was to look at designing a form for my writing — design and descriptive writing being two things I enjoy but haven’t experimented alot with bringing together in the past. I liked the prospect of having some sort of experience, writing about it, and then finding a form for the text.
The feedback from Rathna, however, was that I should perhaps look at bringing more of myself into the project than I’d suggested – which I did agree with. Weeks later, when expected to start working on it, I went home for a weekend and decided on home as a starting point.
When I first moved to London two years ago and was visiting home occasionally, I found that memories of my childhood were suddenly slightly fresher — and that it was easier to link them with certain parts of the house. At the time I’d thought it a good idea to keep track of these memories in some way before they disappeared with age, but never did get the chance. For my self-directed project the other week, then, I decided to build on this urge to record them somehow.
Another thing I’d wanted to bring into this self-directed project if possible was illustration (photography/collage/drawings/paintings). I’ve recently realised how much I miss it since doing “design” projects in which illustration work doesn’t really fit into (especially considering our two-week briefs).
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I began that weekend by taking photos all around the house (home since I was born) and drawing a fairly accurate two-story map including each room.
Taking the map as a point to jump from, I tried to label certain parts and write memories for each. I liked that each of the memories were linked with a particular space, and enjoyed so much trying to dig deeper and deeper in every corner of a room.
Talking to someone at college who didn’t see the use of the piece of work, I tried to rationalise why this record should exist; who it was aimed at. And this did stunt me a bit. I started seeing the project as a guide to the house for the next occupants to see. Consequently I decided to use the map format as a way of making the memories easily accessible for anyone visiting the house.
I felt the urge to express with more than just words, and so my keenness to get into doing some illustration prompted me to simplify each memory into an abstract collage or drawing that I felt picked up the feeling well. Choosing one room (the hallway), it was so liberating and refreshing to draw again, and pick colours and paper stock based on a(n informed) feeling in the moment rather than planning things out in the imagination.
To get me into the right frame of mind, I found that looking at other people’s work helped. I looked at a lot of Dutch graphic design from the early 1900’s, at work by David Gentleman, at Dan Eldon’s journals, at Kustaa Saksi and work by No Brow. I wasn’t taking from them in a sense of copying styles of course, but getting into a way of thinking where I wasn’t worried about every mark I made.
“The radiator warms fingers and toes after snow”…
“There’s the strain of learning shoelaces on new light-up trainers”…
“…and standing on the rough doormat to wave goodbye to visitors — each time excited at reclaiming my house and freedom”…
“There’s nerves sat on the bottom step of the stairs before the dentists”…
“…but there too is the new magazine through the post”…
“There’s the now long-gone ancient monk-seat, whose hidden compartment holds strange musty cloths and old films”…
“The cutlery drawer had the same smell, of the glamourous grandmother I never knew”…
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I admit I’ve become quite rusty when it comes to imagemaking (particularly by hand)!— so some are better than others. Regardless, I decided to then mix these illustrations with the shape of the hallway, to enable someone to link each illustration with the physical space that the visitor to my house would be stood in…
I imagined individual rooms being separated onto different pages, and being navigable in a way similar to an adventure book I used to read (see http://designandinteraction.net/willq/2010/05/11/101/), where the reader could choose where to go next. A-Z’s were something else that I looked at for this, where each edge leads onto the edge of another page…
The graph paper I’d printed onto was an attempt to make it feel more like a map, and I kept the text separate from the illustrations because I realised they could then be taken in on their own.
Interim Crit
I was happy to have illustrations to show, but wasn’t convinced of how I’d then used them.
I’d picked Paulus for my crits because he described his area of specialism as ‘type and image’, and I found the feedback was really helpful. Although he held his hands up and admitted that he’s not the best person to ask about illustration, he strongly felt that the illustrations were restricting the text; he said that he got such a vivid imagining from reading ‘The radiator warms fingers and toes after snow’ but seeing the illustration limited this mental picture.
If it had been him, he said he’d concentrate on just text or just image, because in the work so far they were both trying to do the same thing. He suggested taking just the text and putting it on a blank page, or putting a small piece of text on a wall and seeing the reaction from people — which I don’t think excited me as much as it did other people. Alice suggested that I could use paper stock that resonated with each piece of text — which I liked but thought was also too simple/abstract for the kind of work I wanted to produce.
From the feedback I felt I wanted to hit a halfway point between the really quite literal work I’d brought along and the abstraction that they were describing. I agreed that as it was, the illustration wasn’t adding anything.
Paulus did like how I’d described each page of a book as a physical space that you move into and out of by turning the page (I think I remember Fraser Muggeridge talking about something similar at an event a while ago, but can’t remember the name of the book he was referencing now), so I wanted to keep this element if I could.
Developments
From here, I started to compare what an image can do and what a piece of text can do.
I realised that while a piece of text conjures a fantasy that is infinitely more fresh than an image, an image can show details that can’t be described very well in words. As a result of this realisation, I wondered if my illustration work could be the germ or seed that the imagination then builds from using the words; more of an abstract hint than a literal depiction.
I also decided here that the piece wasn’t for a visitor to my house, but more an experience for someone to imagine my house and the memories I have of it.
Through developing ideas in my sketchbook, I decided that the illustration/design should work with and build upon the navigation method I’d chosen, so that it felt more like a whole. Each room’s illustration should reflect the character and details of the room that would otherwise be unimaginable through text. Each page would then contain a different set of components, and the edge leading onto a different room would hint at that room’s feel.
In the way that a house can be explored, and have nooks and crannies, I wanted the illustration to offer the same sort of wonder. In fact in my dissertation (on ‘designing to intrigue’), I’d looked at how creating a detailed world can be a worthwhile effort to hold someone’s interest in a piece of work, and that’s something I was attempting with the illustrative parts…
I chose to print the illustrations (just smaller than A5) on old sun-stained paper that I’d found at home in Solihull in a sketchbook. I felt this gave a quality of nostalgia, like an old children’s book when in combination with the typeface I’d chosen (Century Schoolbook).
The intention was then that these would be a couple of pages in a book of the whole house.
Final crit
The feedback was really positive, in that the work was strong in doing what I wanted it to. I went along wondering how well the image and text worked together, and Paulus said that visually the harmony between the weight of the lines and the weight of the typeface worked well. Paulus did question the fact that the stanzas were justified, in that there were wide gaps in some cases — but I felt like the justification of the text was important for being in-keeping with the architecture of the house. I may experiment with this when I come to produce the other rooms.
Paulus did suggest that I print all of the illustrations on one big sheet that could then be folded down into a book-like format (so the illustrations really could lead onto each other). I’m open to this idea, but still like the idea that a book only gives you a glimpse of a section of the whole at once. A poster, where you can see everything all at once, sort of gets rid of that interaction of exploring physically.
What I’ve produced so far, though, is a system that can be continued onto the rest of the rooms in the house — I’m quite looking forward to doing the others!
