Traditionally self-initiated projects can be the launch of a publication, manifesto, exhibition, product or service. They’re also adopted by designers to express personal or political opinion, used as a vehicle to launch a project that aims to highlight a social issue or miscarriage of justice or as a reaction against contemporary society.
Lecture Notes
HOW DO YOU IDENTIFY THE SUBJECT OF A SELF-INITIATED PROJECT?
Veronica Fuerte- Hey Studio in Barcelona
She created self initiated projects at the beginning because she didn’t have enough clients and wanted to build a portfolio. Now, some projects come from ideas that the clients didn’t like but she wanted to develop further anyway and some come up from zero to explore ways of working and ideas.
Vince Frost – Frost Collective
He created Design your life book. Looking at everyday things like wellness, mental health, drinking too much etc. and using design principles work on improving them. He wanted to help others.
He created a brand as well as a book. His podcast followed to keep momentum around the people he met and how they deal with problems. Defrost events – talks in the studio each month. Debates and positive interactions.
Sam Bompas – Bompas & Parr
They create full creative experiences. Breathable drinks etc. Making strange ideas happen.
James Stringer – Werkflow
He created a self initiated video game called Sovereign. The basis of the idea started with experiences that James and collaborators have had growing up in the suburbs of the UK.
HOW TO STRUCTURE AND PLAN?
Christoph miller
Stick to themes that you are interested in and list of rough ideas for projects.
James Stringer
Involved teenagers in the creative process- what they would play and if they were receptive to the idea.
Lecture Reflection
Veronica Fuerte started to make self initiated projects as she didn’t have enough paid work from clients. From previous modules this seems like something designers often do. It allows them to create the kind of work they really care about, and often leads to them being able to make more of it when potential clients see what they have created. This idea really resonates with me, and makes me think that I should ensure my self initiated project reflects the kind of work I would like to be doing for clients.
I also think keeping a list of rejected project ideas that you like and things you want to explore further is a good idea. That way, when you have a bit of free time or want to make some work to boost your portfolio, you have some ready made ideas or starting points to explore.
James Stringer used his own personal experiences to build the idea for his self initiated project, Sovereign. This is another possible start point I am going to use when coming up with ideas this week.
Reading notes
A design brief needs to easy to read.
Kim Zarney thinks it is like a stir fry – you need to have all your ingredients ready beforehand. This is what a creative brief does, it gets everything ready fr you to start making your design.
“In order to establish a clear simple message in the minds of consumers, we first need a clear understanding of what this concept need to communicate.”
Kim Zarney
In a design brief you need to set out the parameters in which you need to work, e.g what your timescale and budgets are. You need a clear understanding of who you are selling to, your audience demographics and your competition.
“I believe the kind of design brief I am advocating for can actually enhance creativity, not stifle it.”
Peter Phillips believes a written brief ensures designer and client are on the same page and working in the same direction. If design is about problem solving, then great design comes with a strong understanding of the problem and therefore a great design brief.
“Too often, non designers in a business setting think about design as a decorative art service”
He thinks that design is often just viewed as a ‘decorative service for the company’s ideas’
The basic ingredients of a design brief:
- Project overview and background
- Category review
- Target audience review
- Company portfolio
- Business objectives and design strategy
- Project scope, time line and budget
- Research data
- Appendix
The project overview needs to be like an executive summary for people who will not read the entire brief. Then share how you plan to execute the brief and what phases you will undertake. When it will be completed and what the budget is.
Audience – you need to work out exactly who will be looking at and responding to your designs. There are usually multiple audiences. Who does it need to be attractive to, who will interact with it. Regional data is also important.
Reading reflection
I think Phillips brings up some really interesting points about the importance of a design brief. A well written design brief and a clear research question can set you up to create a successful project. It is easy to get excited about a potential idea and jump straight into the design, however I think taking the time to consider what you are trying to achieve and who you are aiming your project at, are incredibly important in making sure your outcome is as good as it can be.
I also think his insight that too often design is misunderstood as simply making things look good, is very true and the actual importance of design needs to be given a higher profile.
Workshop Challenge
From the lecture, I decide to I look at the work I want to be making and my personal experiences as starting points to come up with my four self ignited project ideas.
I wrote down some ideas to work out what interested me most and what I could take forwards into a project.
The kind of work I want to be making:
Looking back at the first module, the very first project I did in GDE710 I depicted an organutan to show how I wanted to use design to make a positive impact in the world. This is something that has grown throughout the course so far and that I would like to ensure stays at the forefront of my practise going forwards. I am very interested in the role design can have with preventing climate change and creating a positive impact on the planet.
My personal experiences:
My personal background is within marketing and communications and I am interested in how design sits within communications and the power they can posses together.
I also thought about things that affected me personally and about how my experiences could influence a project. My sister found some magazines that we had made as children on rainy summer holidays in Cornwall. They are full of bizarre content and unselfconscious creativity that I think is brilliant. I am interested in using these as a starting point for a project at some point.
I have recently moved cities and started living within a building that contains multiple other flats. Having not lived in a flat before, expect during my time at university, it has made me question how we often live so close to other people that we know nothing about. This is something else that I would like to explore further using design.
I took these starting points and developed them into potential self initiated project ideas.
How can I use design to reinvigorate my childhood magazines?
Using the content and ideas from magazines made by me and my sister on rainy summer holidays during our childhood, I want to reimagine these into something new. I am interested in the imagination and freedom in them and how unselfconsciously bizarre they are. It could become a strange and amusing magazine exploring childhood creativity and freedom of thought.
How can I use design and humour to raise awareness of peat?
Peat bogs are the unglamorous climate change fighters. Peatlands store twice as much carbon as all the worlds forests, but they are being dug up and destroyed to create compost unnecessarily. I want to create an awareness campaign to get people talking about peat. My idea is create an unglamorous illustrated personification called Peat (Pete) to feature in a series of humorous adverts to capture peoples attention and raise wares of the role peat plays in the climate crisis.
How can I use design to help build a sense of community within my building?
As a society we are very unconnected and often people feel very alone despite living physically very close to others. I want to see if I can use design to bring my building together and create a sense of support and community.
How can I show the issues surrounding orangutans as a critically endangered species in a new light?
Orangutans are fascinating animals with whom we share 97% of our DNA, but scientists think they may be extinct in the wild within ten years (The Orangutan Project 2019). I want to raise awareness of how amazing, beautiful and humanlike they are, in the hope of inspiring more people to fight for their protection.
Ideas Wall
I posted about a few of my ideas on the ideas wall to get some peer feedback on which ideas worked.
I feel an equal pull towards both ideas so it is difficult to decide which one to take forwards. The idea of using my childhood magazines as a starting point for a project has gained a lot of interest, but I can imagine the development of my peatlands project more fully. I decided to write a project brief for both ideas in the hope that the process of writing the brief would show me which idea would be best to pursue.
Research
I was drawn to the peatlands idea, so I did some more research about the role peat has to play within the climate crisis to start of my project.
“Peatlands are one of the most important natural resources we have in the fight against climate change, yet they are being systematically drained and dug up – all too often to simply fill a cheap bag of compost in your local garden centre.” https://www.lancswt.org.uk/news/lancashire-peat-free-campaign-launch
Peatlands store twice as much carbon as all the world’s forests, and if kept healthy they will continue to take carbon out of the atmosphere almost indefinitely.
It is used in compost because it is cheap, readily available, has low levels of natural nutrients so the right amount can be added and it holds water well. There are however, plenty of alternatives, some of which are waste products of other processes.
More than 94 per cent of the UK’s lowland peat bogs have been destroyed or damaged. (Mitcham 2020)
Peatlands are also an important wildlife habitat, but their importance is often overlooked.
Peatland is a type of wetland, made up of soil formed from slowly decomposing plants. In fact, peat bogs grow at a rate of just 1mm a year, but in just 12 months, machines can extract 500 years’ worth of growth(Mitcham 2020)
Peatlands are highly significant to global efforts to combat climate change, as well as wider sustainable development goals. The protection and restoration of peatlands is vital in the transition towards a low-carbon and circular economy. (IUCN 2018)
Project Brief 1
The Project Question:
How can I use design and humour to get more people talking about the role of peatlands within the climate crisis?
Aim, objective and critical context:
Peatlands are a significant part in our fight against climate change, but they are often overlooked. Peatlands store twice as much carbon as all the world’s forests, and if kept healthy they will continue to take carbon out of the atmosphere almost indefinitely, they are also an important wildlife habitat. However, over 94% of he UK peatlands have been damaged or destroyed (Mitcham 2020).
My aim with this project is to bring peat more into the conversation about the climate. I want to grab peoples attention with bold design and humour to tell them about the importance of peat and what they can do to help.
I aim to do this by creating an engaging, amusing and accessible awareness campaign and turn peat into something people understand and care about. I want to create an illustration of ‘Peat’ and place him within situations that show the different issues with peat, the benefits of peat and what we need to do to protect it. I want the images to educate people as well as amuse them.
I plan to research more about peatlands, explore other climate awareness campaigns and look at posters and designs that use humour to spread an important message.
I will then develop a graphic direction for my campaign, come up with some consistent messaging and create an illustrated Peat character.
Audience:
I want my project to be accessible and engaging for everyone but the main audience I am focusing on is
Young to middle aged adults. Middle class. They have time and money stability to worry about the environment. Possibly home owners, but they probably look after their garden and have some house plants. They are overwhelmed with the weight of the climate crisis and negative news that is shown about it. They want to help the planet but don’t know where to start. Frequently use social media.
Anticipated final outcome:
My outcome will be an awareness campaign, I will look at making humorous posters, shareable social media graphics and stickers centred around an illustrated figure called Peat.
I also want to ensure that my project has a minimal impact on the planet, so while I do intend to create some printed materials, I will research eco friendly ways to print my designs, and let this also impact the design of the posters themselves if necessary. For example, choosing specific colours, creating designs that don’t use much ink etc. I will also create digital designs and sharable photographs of the printed designs.
Project Brief 2
The Project Question:
How can I use the magazines I created as a child to explore childlike creativity and freedom of thought and turn this into an inspirational resource for creatives?
Aim, Objective and Critical Context:
As children we create in a free, unselfconscious and bizarre way that comes very naturally. This natural creativity is often lost as we grow and adult creatives spend time trying to get this back.
In my designs I struggle with overthinking, worrying about what people will think and uncertainty if what I make is good enough. The magazines that me and my sister made as children have none of that within them, they are weird, full of personality and exploration. I want to use this content to explore the idea of creativity further and turn the magazines into a resource that makes creatives smile, remember their childlike creativity and inspires them to create for the joy of creating again.
I want to explore the typography, illustration and content within the magazines, as well as researching the creativity of children further.
Audience:
My final outcome will be aimed at creatives – designers, artists, writers etc. Mainly targeting those who are early on in their careers, facing uncertainty about a change in direction or looking for inspiration. They will already have an interest and knowledge of design, typography, illustration etc. so I can assume a certain level of understanding from my audience. The look of my final outcome will be important to this audience, however, due to their creative nature I think I will be able to push boundaries further
Anticipated Final Outcome:
At the moment I think the final outcome of this project is likely to be a magazine, a zine or a short book. However, it may develop into something different like a series of posters or an exhibition.
I decided to take my childhood magazines project further as it was something really personal to me. I think that I can use these magazines to start some really interesting research into childhood creativity and hopefully create an engaging and inspiring outcome for creatives.
Reference list
IUCN. 2018. “Peatlands and Climate Change.” IUCN [online]. Available at: https://www.iucn.org/resources/issues-briefs/peatlands-and-climate-change.
MITCHAM, Tim. 2020. “What Are Natural Climate Solutions? | the Wildlife Trust for Lancashire, Manchester and North Merseyside.” http://www.lancswt.org.uk [online]. Available at: https://www.lancswt.org.uk/blog/tim-mitcham/what-are-natural-climate-solutions [accessed 23 Sep 2021].
PHILLIPS, Peter. 2004. Creating a Perfect Design Brief : How to Manage Design for Strategic Advantage. New York: Allworth.
THE ORANGUTAN PROJECT. 2019. “Orangutan Facts – the Orangutan Project.” Theorangutanproject.org.uk [online]. Available at: https://www.theorangutanproject.org.uk/about-orangutans/orangutan-facts/.
Lizzie Wa Design 
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