Design Research Methods - RSA project - IDEAS

Some ideas for the RSA project

Here are some ideas to the Design Week schedule. 

The first idea is about give to each student a post-it with this sentence printed: "Graphic Design is..." and the students (and teachers) have to complete the sentence with what they think. It could be a word, more than one word, a draw, anything!

Thinking about the target's age I thought i would be interesting that this illustrators could paint a big frame/score board/panel with the students, asking them for some ideas and work with them.

While I was searching, I saw a competition online where the topic was defining Graphic Design in a poster! I found this idea great to implement in this project as well. We could to this as an enterprise. Students would have to design a poster defining graphic design in one week and the best poster would be showed in the Design Museum.

The other idea is to invite illustrators/designers to show their work and give some lectures, hopping that with that we can engage some students about Graphic Design and show to teachers other ways to approach this subject in the class.

 

And because the design week will be running for 5 days, why not 5 different ideas/projects running as well? OK! So the 5th idea is to create a playful area. The students will have the freedom to draw/create/design what they want. It will be provided silkscreens, t-shirts, posters, areas to play a sport while creating, and a craft room. LET'S BE CREATIVE!!!!!!!

Business for Design - Task 3

Task 3
1 What object would best explain you, and why?

The object I chose is:

A CONDOM!

2 Create a mood board and/or mind map that represents yourself/your company.

 

 

Design Research Methods - Task 6

Discuss the museum/exhibition visit and topics of interest

Friday the 19th of November was a great day for me. All the things we saw were amazing! I really enjoyed! 

Shadow Catchers is an amazing exhibition, it was my favourite one, and I'll explain why. When I went to Secondary school I had analogical photography as one of the subjects, and we had to do lots of photograms, as well as a pinhole camera. It was magical for me because I had never experienced nothing like that before in photography. And even today I am still amazed when I think about the hole process! It's unbelievable! How can you have a clear image with just one black box and a hole? Or amazing and perfect shapes just placing objects on top of photographic paper? For those who don't know how does it work I totally recommend to give it a try! It's amazing and "Shadows Catchers" sent me back to those days of discovering the essence of photography! 
This exhibition was absolutely inspirational! Some of the works exposed were made in light-sensitive surfaces, like Floris Neusüss's images, and those ones were my favourites. Why? Because I've done photograms before and looking to his images, I feel that I could have explored more about this technique. He completely broke the limits of photogram process and he inspired me with that, as I thought I couldn't go any further than placing objects on top of a piece of light-sensitive paper and even more than that, I never thought it could be possible to create movement with this technique! After seeing that exhibition I felt an enourmous desire to go into a dark room and (re)start to explore more about photograms. 

Calendar Nov/Dec

This is the calendar with the work plan I'll try to follow for this month and the following month, until the end of the 1st term. If I can't keep up with this plan, an updated plan will be posted!

Design Project A - RSA - Task 5

Task 5
Based on your research you are asked to prepare a project outline (what you are doing and why)

At the moment is thinking and writing down some ideas for what are going to be the contents of the Graphic Design Week knowing the kind of workshops and lectures that the Design Museum have, as the Design Museum will be a partnership in this project.

The aim of this project is to Design resources or strategies for use in Secondary School, to help STUDENTS and TEACHERS understand all the POWERFUL things that DESIGN CAN DO!!!

So, to achieve this goal, I will create an event in a Secondary School.

This event will be a DESIGN WEEK.

The Design Week will be a week for different areas of Design. There will be the GRAPHIC design week, the FASHION design week, ARCHITECTURE design Week, PRODUCT design week and PACKAGING design week.

My main focus will be the Graphic Design Week!

In this Design week, I will have, as my partnership, the Design Museum in London. We will organize young, innovative, irreverent and interesting projects and workshops, as well as lectures with some graphic designers. This workshops will have a playful side as well as an educational side with information about DESIGN.

Task 3 - RSA project - Ideas/Contact 2 organizations

Create! Don't hate!

While I was researching for my RSA project I found this project. This project is amazing! I would like to do something like this, but instead of this subject/theme I would like to do something about Graphic Design.

For me, as a designer, it's so difficult to explain what graphic design is about. So, why don't ask the students to define graphic design and see what they come up with and the way they have to explain is designing a billboard or a poster to explain what graphic design means to them. It has to be something that people can understand, it has to communicate really quickly and in a simple way, the message, because, if it's a billboard, the people who are going to look at it just have few seconds to see, so the message has to be clear! And that is the challenge...!!

And it will be a contest, so the winner will have the poster/billboard on the streets, on the tube, everywhere!

I think this could be a very interesting project or strategy to engage students about design, because they will be DOING IT! They will be engaged, they will be involved, because they will be creating and solving a problem! And that what design is all about!

Task 3 - Contact 2 organizations:

I went to some Secondary Schools to make an appointment with the teachers of the Design and Technology department but, so far, no answer from any of them. I also went to the Design Museum to find out what kind of workshops they organize for students in Secondary Schools.

They have lots of workshops and enterprises projects running all the time but the workshops take place in the Museum and most of the enterprises are given to Secondary Schools' teachers, which means that Design Museum never goes to a Secondary School to set up a workshop or a project. So, I thought it could be a good idea to change that. Having the Design Museum as a partnership we could do something inside the Secondary Schools for the students to fully engage the project and feel part of it, and consequently, be more aware with Design!

Business for Design - Task 1 and 2

TASK 1: Brainstorm bout at least 10 possible names that could work for my company name:

- True Design

- iDesign

- 4Design

- D4U

- Play Design

- OutThere

- One Design

- More Design

- Off Limits

- Mind Design

TASK 2: 

Select 3 names and develop design concepts for how you might use them typographically and symbolically.

I've just chosen 2: OutThere and D4U, because those are the ones I see with more pontential.

The name I choose is OutThere. And this is the logo:

Task 2 - RSA project/research mapping

TASK 2 - Take a scenario of your chosen Design Project A and show how one observation or idea might be developed through a research process or series of questions. This will take the form of a sequence of images (storyboard) and/or line.

These are my mapping and my scenario for the RSA project. I hope you understand what I'm planning to do, but if you don't please read the following information:

My next tasks are: - finding if there is any Secondary School associated with this project, trying to go there, see which subject covers the Design Area, see what they've been doing in that subject, talk to the students about design to see how aware they are about what design is all about, find out what could I add that would make them understand a little bit more about design and motivate them.

I decided to choose the RSA project “Design - my favourite subject” for my brief. The issue is, first of all, frame and make clear what Design is, as the concept itself is very broad, so I decided to divide it into disciplines and choose one as my main subject.

Issues/questions which arose from the mind mapping process

1) What do students, in Secondary school, learn about Design?

2) Who are the parties involved? ie- The teachers, the students, the media...

3) I am a designer. What is that for me? What do I think design is?

4) As a student, what made me feel interested and choose design for my career?

Primary research

1) A case study in one Secondary School - Go to one Secondary School

2) See what is the subject in Secondary School that contains Design

3) Find out in which Design discipline do they approach.

4) Talk with the teacher(s) of this subject and find out more about the program

5) Perform a mapping with the students about Design to see what’s their idea about DESIGN.

Desktop/secondary

1) Research the official programs that schools follow to teach this subject.

2) Research methods of teaching that the school follows.

3) What are other ways of teaching and approach students. Like TV, workshops, contests?

Framing the context of my project and user scenario

1) Who is the target audience? STUDENTS AND TEACHERS in Secondary School

2) Once found the content of the subject that approaches design, start to visualise possible solutions and new ways of engaging students with this subject: DESIGN.

3) Encourage students about Design by doing interesting projects and encourage teachers to customise teaching, breaking with the conservative thinking and to be more pro-active and more innovative.

One good example of something that was made in a Primary School: "Green Day". It was a brief given by CABE to a primary school. Watch the video:

Green Day