The last card challenged me to look at the mistakes I made (“Emphasize the flaws.”) and I had to figure out what I could improve. I reviewed my previous ideas and the research I did and started designing my own record sleeve. As I wanted to include movement, but also a human body in my design, I started messing playing around with floating bodies. This approach was inspired by Brian Eno’s idea of creating music that makes you feel like you are suspended in the universe.

In a next step, I tried to find a balanced composition between text and image. I messed around with different layouts that include an excerpt of the floating body, the name and of the artist, and the name of the record itself. At that point, I also decided to include the typography of the original Music for Airports sleeve in my design.

Choosing the colors was for me the biggest challenge of the project, as they changed the appearance of the design completely. During this stage of the project, I got a lot of inspiration from the artworks of Brian Eno’s close friend and artist Peter Schmidt. When painting I listened to music for Airports and I tried to combine different color combinations I found in books with my own ideas. I started paintings with acrylics and watercolors but decided then to switch to Lino-cut, as it allowed me to create a more even and less busy design.

To explain the purpose of the project better, we decided to include symbols in our visual language that relate to our idea that playing drums could possibly reduce stress. The result was a street-sign inspired sign that consists of a symbol (meditating person) and text (Stress-free zone). We also added a drum symbol on the front of the drums as a kind of instruction. Furthermore, we attached statements to the drums, that point different stress-reducing activities out.

We placed the drums in several spots around the university building and observed the way in which people reacted and interacted with them and made some interesting observations 

1. In 1,5 hours 20 people used the drums, 10 girls and 10 guys, mostly young students in a group
2. Most people used the drums  in the entrance room of the DJCAD building, the main corridor was the least popular spot
3. People that used the drums were laughing afterward
4. Everybody walking past the drums looked curious at them
5. Some people seemed confused
6. The noise was too loud

While doing the observation we realized that we made mistakes during the design process. When developing our idea we focused on the visual language, the colors and the signs we wanted to use and we researched different designs that express noise or relaxation. What we didn’t really research or test are the individual emotions and experiences created by the object. We didn’t realize that a lot of people experienced the drums in a completely different way than by us intended, for example, they were annoyed by the noise. After recognizing that problem we changed the sign behind the drums to something that encourages to rock on, and just have some fun. That message expressed the project much better. 

This project showed me that it is important to understand what experiences the user gets from a product/object or design before installing it. Also, I realized that combining graphics with a physical object is not quite the same than designing something that goes on a flat piece of paper. Something that surprised me a lot was the fact that we are surrounded by massive amounts of signs, messages, and instructions which we subconsciously use to find our way around. 

Based on this first observational task, we were asked to interview a person from our course and create a portrait while doing the interview. Also, we were asked to include LED lights and a small circuit in our project. I experienced a lot of problems in the beginning because I thought I would have to create a perfect live drawing in order to complete the task.

That didn’t work out very well and I started experimenting with one line drawings. The idea of transforming the complex human face into one line fascinated me and I created several portraits from different perspectives. I combined the portraits and used different colored LED lights to highlight features of the face, which should present the different character traits of the person.

The second portrait was based on a long and deep interview and is a visualization of the person’s personality. Transforming a person’s character and believes into visual context was challenging and exciting at the same time and I decided to use different mediums and materials in order to that. I started with a small photography project and created 3 collages combining the photographs I took with pictures from a magazine, leaves and black line drawings. The mediums I used for my portraits should present the different perspectives of the person’s character.

While performing these tasks I started questioning what a portrait is and I learned that it doesn’t necessarily has to be a perfect drawing, it can literally be everything. It can use different mediums, colors or technologies to present a personality. Also, I realized that a portrait is not limited to physical features,  it’s much deeper than that. It’s a reflection of a person’s character, behavior, dreams, and ambitions transformed into a piece of art.

We had to work independently to complete two briefs each day during the second week of the module: we had to create one drawing that represented something we did that day and we also had to create a pictorial map of our day movement. The first brief was a good opportunity to work on my drawing skills, for example, I experimented with watercolors and I did some urban sketching.

In the end I decided to build my character in a simple but efficient way: I layered a lot of paper circles and scrunched them to build the body of the jellyfish. Then I cut some transparent paper into stripes to create the tentacles. I combined everything and added a color changing RGB light and some blue LED lights to my model, in order to create an intriguing interaction between lights and shadows. 

This project showed me how exciting it can be,  to play with lights and shadows. It was fascinating to observe how some simple lights can change the look and the meaning of an object completely.  Also, we had the possibility to experiment with Arduino and learn more about it. This new knowledge will definitely be useful for future projects.

I finished the module with a sketchbook full of drawings, brainstorms, and prototypes that show the process I went through, the mistakes I made but also the successful final pieces I created, and the experience I collected.

Ways of seeing challenged the way in which I visualized my ideas and thoughts every day. I had to experiment with different mediums and I had to find creative solutions in order to complete the task we were given. It was not always easy to find a solution for the challenges and questions we had to deal with, mainly because I was limiting my creativity a lot. I stuck to what I was familiar with instead of trying something new. For example, when asked to create the portrait I drew a person because that is what you would expect a portrait to be. However, a portrait can be everything and it took a lot of attempts before I managed to abandon the fixed ideas I had in my head in order to try something completely new.

This module helped me to look at tasks, problems and design projects from a different and more open perspective. I did not only explore my creativity, I also learned that there is an infinite number of ways in which we can visualize our ideas. The only thing that is limiting us from using all of them is ourselves.