Design Principles: Project 2

1st February - 11th February 2022 / Week 5 - 6
Alana Sofia Othman / 0353451 / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Design Principles
Project 2

LECTURES

Week 5

Design & Observation

Designers exist for many reasons, one is to solve problem. Sometimes, problems that others cannot identify or even notice. Therefore, it is the designer's job to identify the problem and rectify it. To do this, designers must be observant.

Being observant does not just mean 'taking note of'. Being observant means to be attentive, analytical and notice details. Being observant doesnt just mean to use our eyes, but our other senses of hearing, taste, smell and touch.

INSTRUCTIONS

Project 2: Sense of Place

Finding a Place

My Favourite Places

I started with a list of the few favourite places that came to mind during the lecture briefing for the assignment. These places are places of calmness and serenity, where I am in awe of my surroundings or just comfortable to be around.

- In the LRT

- My JB home

- My KL room

- The beach (especially Penang's)

- Ontop of a hill

I like being in the LRT when it isnt extremely packed. I like wondering what everyone else has going on for their day and how theyre feeling. Basically I love being a busy body and imagining their lives. I've always made it a habit to not touch my phone when im in public transport and just pay attention to my surroundings and I liked feeling different and more powerful than everyone else. What I mean by that is that everyone would always be so engrossed staring at their phone.

The beach and on a hill is probably self explanatory. You're just offline and its just being surrounded by nature's beauty. There is nothing but peace and beauty there. Especially if you catch the sunrise or sunset.

I ended up narrowing it down to my KL room and my JB home as it was what most resonates with me when I think of "sense of place". Recently I have been home sick, so I felt the urge to have it centered on my JB home. I continued to make a mind map about both these places to see if some ideas would come up.

Mindmaps

Figure 1.1. Mindmap of My Room in KL

Figure 1.2. Mindmap of My Home in JB

Ideas Round 1

Backstory

After the mindmap, I decided I wanted to try combine both my JB home with my KL room.

Although I always hate on JB, my hometown, deep down, I love JB and unfortunately I am a proud Johorian who does not allow anyone from out of town to hate on JB. It has something KL does not have, it somehow feels different from other states too, or maybe I am just biased. However, In JB, the sky is always blue, clouds are always much cuter, fluffier and white, the air feels and smells cleaner, we actually see the stars and moon at night, and obviously, traffic is not as horrid.

My JB home is absolutely beautiful and adorable. Its a basic terrace house but my parents love plants and cherish the mini jungle garden we have. I love sitting and laying on the couch that faces the glass door that leads to the jungle garden. From there, I see the trees and the sky and the clouds. I can smell the rain and feel the breeze. Despite all its beauty, being at home has its negative emotions. My parents are hoarders and have junk of sentimental value everywhere. I share a room with my 2 sisters and it is bound to feel cramped. Although I am already 21, I am still my parents little baby and going out is hard. My parents do not trust anyone, are always over protective and a little too controlling. When I am in JB, I lose my freedom and my independency. I feel controlled and cramped.

This is different from when I am in KL, away from my parents. My room in KL however, is dull, empty and boring. There is always the noise of traffic and the LRT passing by, the sky is always grey and sad. It's the city life and it sucks, but I feel free and calm.

I thought of combining both of these to have some contrast and irony. The pretty place where I feel trapped and the dull looking place where I feel free.

References

Figure 2.1. My JB Home Garden

Figure 2.2. My JB Home Garden

Figure 2.3. My JB Home Garden

Figure 2.4. My JB Home Garden

Figure 2.5. My KL Room Window

Figure 2.6. My KL Window View

Figure 2.7. My KL Window View

Figure 2.8. Reference for Sketch 2.1 & 2.2

Figure 2.9. Reference for Sketch 2.1 & 2.2

Figure 2.10. Reference for Sketch 2.1 & 2.2

Sketches

Figure 3.1. Sketch 1.1

Figure 3.2. Sketch 1.2

Figure 3.3. Sketch 2.1 & 2.2

For Sketch 1.1 and 1.2, the idea was to capture what I see outside the window in both places.

In Sketch 2.1 and 2.2, I got the idea from looking at the reference of Figure (INSERT NUMBER). It kind of spoke to me as KL is quite literally my escape. Before my SPM, I used to dream of the day I would escape and move to KL, away from everything, start a whole new life and be a whole new me. I literally changed my whole identity as I started introducing myself with my second name, Sofia, when I moved to KL. It was a new place, new me scenario. I may not have ran away, but it felt like I did. In Sketch 2.1, it would be an escape to the dull and busy window view in my KL room. In Sketch 2.2, the escape would be to my dull empty room.

Ideas Round 2

References

Figure 4.1. Reference for Sketch 4.2

Figure 4.2. Reference for Sketch 5.1 & 5.2

Figure 4.3. Reference for Sketch 5.1 & 5.2

Sketches

Figure 5.1. Second Mindmap for My JB Home

Figure 5.2. Sketch 3.1

Figure 5.3. Sketch 4.1

Figure 5.4. Sketch 4.2

Figure 5.5. Sketch 5.1

Figure 5.6. Sketch 5.2

Figure 5.7. Sketch 6.1

Figure 5.8. Sketch 7.1

Figure 5.9. Digital Collage Sketch 7.2

From feedback and advice, I realised I did not have to make it look/feel/seem realistic to the place and my tied connections. I was advised to ask myself "where am I when Im these places?" and "what is this place to me?". I realised that I needed to dig deeper. I then decided to just focus on my JB home as I feel more connected to it since I grew up there.

Sketch 3.1 came from the fact that my mind is spaced out but physically I am partially trapped in a box. Even when I am home, Im not really home, Im in my own world, Im not paying attention to whats happening around me most times. In a sense, its a glorified box. I love JB and I love my home. I miss my home and the view it comes with, yet at the same time when I go home, the only thing I can think of is “I cant wait to leave. I need to get out of here”. My home is a glorified box. I put it on a pedestal and nothing compares to it, but also, being anywhere else is better than being at home.

Sketch 4.1 came from the relatively same idea but instead I focused on the clouds and my negative feelings. When Im home, I sit on the sofa and stare out to that tree and the sky beyond. The tree has been there forever. I remember the shuttlecock getting stuck in the tree when my sister and I were playing badminton. For this sketch, I decided to just focus on that tree and forget the rest of the jungle garden. I also wanted to have the clouds look somewhat like a frowning face to signify the emotions I have when I am at home.

Sketch 4.2 also focuses on the clouds but a garden in the clouds. I used to sit outside staring at the clouds, wondering if there were beings living on the flip side of the clouds staring down at me. I used to sit outside there when my parents started fighting or after my mother scolded me or just to pass time in the evening. The clouds were my escape before I even knew the word ‘escape’. I closed up the cloud to have that feeling of being trapped, instead of a home or a box, a garden. A contrast between the positive and negative.

Talking about a trapped garden, I thought of terrariums. In Sketch Set 5, I played with the idea of my serenity being trapped in a jar, a terrarium.

From all these sketches I thought to myself "Why must I be so negative? Why am I only looking at it this way?". I realised that I, again, as always, was looking at it too one sided. I was so focused on one thing and revolving it all around that perspective, the negativity, and I felt stuck and confused at where I was trying to go with this.

So I tried to change that. In Sketch 6.1 I thought of a garden in the clouds. Complete beauty and serenity. I wanted to replicate my home garden and tried placing the same plants in the same placements.

While creating Sketch 7.1, I thought a collage would be perfect for it. I could paste leaves and use cotton to make clouds and it would be therapeutic. However, I realised it looked boring, too repetitive, and if I turned it into a physical collage, it would be messy and simple, basically work for a kindergartener.

So I thought of doing a digital collage instead as it would be more controlled, faster, easier and allows for more exploration. Since I was back home in JB for the CNY weekend, I collected leaves and flowers from the garden and scanned them in, making the digital collage Sketch 7.2.

Ideas Round 3

References

Figure 6.1. Reference for Digital Collage Sketch 7.3

Figure 6.2. Reference for Digital Collage Sketch 7.3

Figure 6.3. Reference for Sketch 7.3

Sketches

Figure 7.1. Sketch 7.3

I decided to push forward with the digital collage eventhough I felt I was in a rut and uncertain. I wanted to stick with a digital collage as I felt it would bring more natural and nature essence to the artwork. I randomly put a bunch of leaves and flowers together in photoshop and my mind went back to the garden in the clouds. I thought of drawing the clouds in to not take focus away from the "garden". I drew the squiggly lines in the cloud as its all in my mind. My mind has all these messy, jumbled up, broken chain of thoughts.

Progression

References

Figure 8.1. Reference for Progression

Figure 8.2. Reference for Progression

Figure 8.3. Reference for Progression

Digital Collage

Figure 9.1. Progression 1.1

Figure 9.2. Progression 1.2

Figure 9.3. Progression 1.3

I looked at images of flower arrangements as reference for placement and layout of the flowers and leaves. I also realised that colour played an important role with flower arrangements, even with the artwork references from earlier on. So I edited the colours, played with hues, saturation and value.

As a common knowledge rule, brighter objects attracts attention. So I wanted to keep the main flowers with brighter, vibrant and more saturated colours. I kept the main leaves a vibrant green to keep its authenticity and went with a triadic colour scheme for it to have contrast while also being harmonious.

Experimentations

Figure 10.1. Colour Treatment Experimentation 1.1

Figure 10.2. Colour Treatment Experimentation 1.2

Figure 10.3. Colour Treatment Experimentation 1.3

Figure 10.4. Effect & Filter Experimentation 2.1

Figure 10.5. Effect & Filter Experimentation 2.2

Figure 10.6. Effect & Filter Experimentation 2.3

I tried a few different colours as well because why not? I might just stumble upon something that looks better from experimenting and playing around with the colours.

Final Outcome

Sweet Escape

A gif of two images.

the reality and the dream,

the things people see and the emotions you feel,

the skin and the x-ray,

A garden.

although bright, natural and pretty,

it's just the surface,

and we all know what may lay under the surface

is not always so pretty.

The clouds.

empty, free, comfort,

but also storms, thunder and lightning

there is nothing to them,

or is there?

My mental escape. The place I go to when I zone out, especially when I am back home in JB. The sweet escape talks about needing to escape from the surface and bringing myself into my sweet escape, the garden in the clouds.

FEEDBACK

Ideas Round 1

- Ask myself "where I am in this place?" & "what is this place to me?"

- Don't think logically, use my senses

Ideas Round 2

- Show and share my own experience

- Be unconventional

Progression

- Look at flower arrangements from florists

REFLECTION

Experience

This assignment was challenging and confusing as there were no classes the whole week for the CNY break. I was uncertain of the artwork having to be a replication of an existing space or if it could be completely imaginary. I pushed forward with my work eventhough I was unsure and to top things off, I made it a digital collage, something I have never done before. All in all, it was a week of uncertainty.

Observations

I noticed I hold myself back quite often, if not always, due to my uncertainty. I usually listen in on Dr Charles giving feedback on my peers work which at times helps me with my own confusions or work since I struggle with finding the words to phrase questions. I heavily rely on my peers who would ask good questions that give me some insight, ideas or clear my confusion up without me having to ask, in a sense, I leech off their conversations.

Findings

I realised that I have a serious lack of confidence when it comes to my work. I am afraid to push the boundaries, explore and do not believe in my instincts, skills or capabilities. Although I want to achieve work I am proud of, I struggle reaching there on my own as I seek constant approval and validation that I am heading in the right direction. It is something I need to work on as I do know that no one else knows the answers, I need to look for it myself.

Alana Sofia Othman (0353451)

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