designatural: February 2011

2.20.2011

Minimalism / Juxtaposition

this is the last diary of progress.

Thoughts about today and tomorrow left me dangling on a barb wire.

Hypothesis
Designatural is a project for designers to get inspire on. Due to the over reliant on technology, the creavtivity of a design has been limited to screen spaces. Nature has been the initial stage for most invention and thoughts. Semester 1, i've been trying experimentation on the visibility of nature. The wind, the water and the trees. However, Stanley had told me "Your projects did not include take-away messages, if you say it is for designers how are you going to give them inspirations?"

Design Problem
The thought of using nature as a platform has been too wide for me to handle, but I believed in the power of using design to wrap or streamlined my thoughts and executions. Graphic designing have the ability to redraw, interpret, plan, execute problem situations using methods like, layouts, typography, colour, mood, photography. This versatility in design helps me gather and define certain thoughts in a much solid manner. Hidayah said "acting as a form of inspiration project is too brim, not impactful, only falling your designs on a grey area".

I need to better define and support my hypothesis in order for this project to carry on another semester, thus I need to document my thoughts, my words, comments, work in progress, people's thoughts. Designatural, has progressed to a stage for designers to use as an application instead of just aesthetics. I was constantly reminded about the functionality of design, the application of design in my process this week. Thus, Designatural has to be better defined.

Executions.
Now, all stars and constellations. 88 visible constellation falls around our universe. However, this mass information has been too big for a project to go on a year. To streamline this idea of using stars and natural elements, the map of Singapore was mapped out using map coordinates of the latitude and longitude. Eg, N102* 233.469, falls on Marina Barrage.

I clipped the 88 constellation as a form of projection onto the map of Singapore, I was able to better visualise my objection with 18 venues located all around Singapore. Like i said, this mapping acts as a direction for my project to flow into. 18 venues, 18 applications, 1 objection, not just inspire, not just aesthetics, but take aways messages, application, functionality.
I've placed myself as a tool to go into these 18 places.

Analysis
With just a camera, a pen and a notebook. Observational skills are all I have to rely on when I go into these places. I struggled now, I know I will struggle later too, probably sabotaging myself in a way that either I failed or I do it well, forcing myself into getting informations from these places.

I've gone this far, i might as well go in all out. Documentation to go into my self set struggles, to observe, to learn, to collect, to recreate, to design, recreate again and define application for my target audiences. I will put myself as a live example to support the hypothesis. Stages from observational, problem faced, to problem solved. I'm excited but i'm confused as well. Adversity will forced me to be a better designer, in terms of a greater height in designing, generating images to designs from places in future will not be a problem for me.