What Is Graphic Design? Part III Brief.

Context

Use your Design Context blog to record your critical investigation of the following three questions:

1. What is Graphic Design for?- What function does it perform or what problem is it trying to solve?

2. Who is Graphic Design for?- Who is the potential audience or audiences? Who is meant to 'get it' and who isn't?

3. Where is Graphic Design found? Where is it meant to be seen? In what situation or at what scale? How is the audience supposed to recieve it and are they meant to interact with it?

The Process

Select a set of examples of contemporary graphic design that you feel reflects your emerging practical, conceptual, and theoretical interests in Graphic Design. Your selections should reflect a breadth of production and distribution methods appropriate to current creative practices. You should aim to identify at least:

10 x emaples that use type driven work.

10 x examples of image driven work.

10 x examples of work that uses type and image.

Critically analyse and evaluate the success of the appropriateness of the work in relation to the problem it is trying to solve, the function that it is trying to perform and/or the context in which it is intended to be recieved.

The Deadline

You should aim to use this task to help develop your ongoing critical investigation of contemporary graphic design practices. The examples that you select should help inform the decisions that you make about your own work and reflect a growing awareness of the kind of designer you want to be and the work that you aim to produce. The Design Context blog will be assessed as part of your studio modules and you will need to update it regularly and ensure that all posts are tagged/labelled appropriately.

This task will be assessed as part of the OUGD103 Design Practice module (see module information at e-studio for submission deadlines and further details).

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You may find the following suggestions useful when starting responding to this task:

Visit the 'USEFUL WEBSITES' section of e-studio in order to identify potential starting points for your investigations.

Select examples from a range of sources including books, magazines, research visits and examples that you may own. Do not just rely on what you can find online.

Keep your investigation broad in terms of media and methods of delivery. Try not to focus on one specific area at this stage.

When selecting examples, consider how they relate to your own creative preferences, ambitions and intentions. It will be just as useful to identify examples that you don't like or that you think don't work. 

Collect more than you need. This is one area that you cannot do enough. The more design you see, collect and analyse the better and more informed you will become.

Above all ENJOY IT! if you find this task boring or a chore you are looking in the wrong place. YOU should be finding work that you find interesting, exciting and worthy of comment.

Look at each other's blogs. Comment and discuss what you see. It is the only way to learn who you are and what you want to be. More importantly, it is the only way you will get "good" at it.

OTHER KEY POINTS:

-To complete over Easter in preperation for the 'speaking from experience' brief- though continue for as long as my practice does!

-Spend around half an hour to an hour on this brief every day from now on until we return from Easter (at least) for a substiantial blog amount.

-Focus on the design that you want to develop to, and what you respond to.

-Focus on each of the three statements and analyse carefully in your choices.

-Evaluate your own work and how they relate to these statements also.

-#3: Where is the design found? Interactive? Geographical? Is the work driven by aesthetics or semiotics?

-Image: Where the image is responsible for the communication. NOT JUST A PICTURE!

-Look deeper than just aesthetic taste- review and expand your analysis in regards to the three statements.