Week Seven
Lecture Notes:
L1P1
L1P2
L2
Lecture Summary:
L1P1
Kenjiro Kirton with Hato, the main points that really stood out for me within this lecture was around the printing press that had become this support structure for the community. The way that kirton talked about how any money that was made would go back into the printing press and purchase of more equipment to take on more people which i thought was just such a lovely circle of process creation. I also was really taken by the student society with Hato and how they support students outside their design education with a platform that gives students free printing workshops and 50% discounts. Kirton also spoke about taking this further to becoming an online platform that allows more students to benefit from this service.
L1P2
Axel Peemoeller and Rita Matos, New Studio. This was a particularly interesting layout in terms of the structure of their new business which was mainly discussed throughout. Working within collaboration was the basis of their studio practise as-well as being able to work on your own projects, you can collaborate with others too. They also spoke about how they have so many different time zones that they could be working just 24 hours straight as a business, which was really interesting. But what really shocked me was their main way of communication was skype and hangouts. A lot of the time they are unable to get on the same call / sometimes be working at the same time so this could be an interesting area to explore within the workshop.
L2
Within lecture two, this was all of the companies answering to some of the questions like previous modules / weeks. One of the questions that i thought was the most interesting was the second one of creative opportunities for students studying online course. A-lot of the answers were very similar in that theres a huge can do attitude as-well as being open minded. Intro mentioned about how on the course we all have the same or similar interests which is what brought us together and those dialogues and conversations that we are having with each-other is collaboration and encouraging that as much as possible. This also linked to regular practises answer of online education brings you today with dialogue as you are interested in the same thing. This did spark an idea for me with the workshop task, about how do we collaborate when this is over?
Resource Notes:
R1
R2
Resource Summary:
R1
Mucho’s, Rob Duncan and Brett Wickers, within this interview they spoke about their partnership collaboration with different companies across the world. They also spoke about how each of the partners has a special area of expertise. A range of interesting outputs for different companies but I was more taken to the partnership as-well as the ballet font for san Francisco, being the oldest ballet company with one of the most modern ballet typefaces.
R2
David Turner Interview with design boom. In this interview, Turner spoke about how his business ran things a little differently to others which i really related too; he spoke about how a core team leads the projects but the initial creative is explored by a wider range of designers. There is competition between different studios but it encourages designers to work together and the winning concept then takes that pitch. The person that judges that pitch is the sister studio. I thought this enabled so much collaboration within the studio business but also rotating designers to keep it fresh. The other part of the interview that i was interested in, is how he didn’t see the company as a specialist, just saw it in doing what he thought was right and being open minded. But i was shocked to think about how he was spot on in how every one is a designer these days with how fast technology is moving forward, creating opportunities from technology that are exploited by designers.
Research:
Global Studios – Approaches and Strategies for Working Today and Delivering Creative Services
Research, analyse consider new modes of personal practice.
Hato
https://hato.co/projects/must-should-could
We’ve had Hato for a couple of weeks now, but i continue to find the talks that he does so inspiring. I wanted to do more research to see if they did any collaborative platforms that i could use as inspiration for the workshop challenge this week. Although there wasn’t any that were super collaborative, I really liked the idea of this digital exhibition gallery and how we can reimagine art education within lockdown, enabling everyone to have access from their own homes.
The solution is much like a normal art gallery walking around all of the exhibitions. It was based around students really thinking about Must, Should and Could. Hato also talks about how past projects with digital platform allowed this to happen. This got me thinking about how could a artist benefit from a collaborative ‘digital art gallery space’.
Universal Everything and Human Studio
A similar project to the Hato one above was this one, which is a VR exhibition that allows artists to display their work in virtual worlds. They talk about how people want more than just white walls with pictures on the walls. “"It will grow to allow artists, designers and producers from the film, fashion, art and music worlds to extend their creative vision and construct the ultimate home for their work. There's the potential to live-stream fashion shows, immerse fans in a band's music video, or wrap video around surfaces, objects and even the viewer's hand.
"The platform may also enable people to seek out meditative solo art experiences, without the crowds of a physical gallery or museum space."“https://www.creativeboom.com/inspiration/a-new-platform-by-universal-everything-and-human-studio/
I think this is a really good addition to working from home as-well as with VR becoming a normal thing to have in your house, this is a great way to see art from a distance.
Hato Press
I also did some research about the Press that was mentioned within the lecture and found they were doing this Riso from Home packs where you are able to create your own prints that you can then send back to get printed with Hato Press. I thought was such a lovely concept as-well as the collaboration with Colophon Foundry. “Each pack gives you access to a video tutorial that will take you step by step through the process of creating your artworks in layers, with knowledge and tips on colour mixing as well as how to effectively use the materials in your pack for the best results. Once your artwork is complete you'll need to post it to our studio where it will be carefully printed and sent back to you as A3 artist prints x 3 copies.” https://hato.store/collections/riso-from-home/products/riso-from-home-type-edition-002
Turner Duckworth
I found Turner Duckworths way that they work really interesting and wanted to find out more which is where i found this video. Within this video, a designer, Christian Eager, from Turner Duckworth talks about the designs and why the designs are unmistakable and what is really important within creating for a brand. Talking about why the interior and the exterior tells and story for the brand is a whole. They also look at different processes and how you can bring the craft to different brands that make the brand really valuable. How to get the brand to be as one instead of having multiple identities for loads of different brands. Stripping down to the key assets and trying to unlock a new world, love the unmistakable. I found this really insightful to hear about how they designed different brands, whilst having the knowledge about their design process. Their process really got me thinking about a platform that enabled the work to be shared at the same time as other studios and how this would be possible?
New Studio
I was also really taken by the interesting layout of their business especially due to them using skype to collaborate. I did a little bit more research about the company. I really like the about us on their website that summaries their company perfectly; “New Studio is the definition of a remote studio with the ability to cast each individual net at a different location. The decentralized approach supports autonomous operation under a collective umbrella, agility to form project teams as and where needed, and a vivid and diverse creative exchange. New Studio recognizes each project as a unique endeavor and each person’s individuality as the key to their collective growth. Together they are working on all strategic and creative aspects of branding and editorial projects.’ Although not alot of their work is collaborative, i feel that them themselves are a collaborative platform due to their approach to working together online. https://newstudio.studio/2020/12/10/love-renaissance-branding/
Thomas Patrick
https://fast.wistia.net/embed/channel/442tfhl7jj?wchannelid=442tfhl7jj&wmediaid=vol8hdlqup
I was feel a bit stuck on where to start research for this week, I saw a post from Harriet that looked at Thomas Patrick’s lecture from a previous week. One of the things that stood out for me was the tool that he created at his graduate show, that ended up being a tool that people could use to interact with the work. He also spoke about how he was interested by things that hadn’t been designed by designers but had been designed by printers - he found these stickers and cards that advertise different thinks across Europe. I was also really interested to his approach to the redesign of Desigual redesign, it was a really clever approach and an rebrand that seems timeless for the brand. There was also a collaboration with a book company making stencils / creating stencils using these outlines from the 20th century to use it to make their own protest posters. I thought this was a super clever approach to creating a tool that would allow for collaboration.
He goes onto talk about Open Collab; a project that is the most exciting project. It’s developed in a 2 month residency whilst in Rome and was born out of necessity and he couldn’t use a proper printer and resulted in using a office printer. He wondered the streets of Rome and took pictures of information which he then layered. He calls it reverse archeology by building up layers. It tricks students into collaborating together. Self run collaboration, moments tagged in on instagram. The Apollo Mission was people ignoring the wall graphic brief and started to do their own thing, which led to an interesting output from this brief.
Open Collab 2.0 became a web based tool where you no longer need to be in the same physical space, you can work with anyone in the world. Very simple user interface, you download templates which you then create your layer which then allows you to upload it. Your layer is then mixed with someone else’s layer mixing in real time. This looks to be a great collaboration tool that allows anyone, no matter the discipline to collaborate with each-other.
After this lecture I went to research Thomas Patricks Open Collab Further and came across this article from Its Nice that https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/patrick-thomas-jonathan-auch-open-collab-graphic-design-digital-design-indaba-280520 :
Within this article he talks about how the process is the main aspect of the project of Open Collab two and the opening of the website was fast forwarded due to covid. This clip from the article really summaries the positive feelings toward the project and the collaboration:
““Obviously one of the big – if not the biggest – lesson we have learned during the pandemic is that we are stronger together and that by working together, and helping each other, we will overcome this and any adversity. Therefore any kind of collaborative project would appear to make sense right now. The experimental nature of Open Collab encourages dialogue and requires a certain amount of adaptability which I feel can only be a good thing.””
Since the start of this they seem to have an ever changing exhibition sessions that are focussed on different topics, scrolling through some of the variety of work is really interesting and inspiring with some that are more focussed on print and some that are more focussed on imagery. https://www.open-collab.org/exhibitions/exhibit-everyday/
Open Studio Club
After finding out about open collab, I wanted to see if there were any other sites that were similar which is when i found Open Studio Club, it is based on a couch surfing model but instead for creatives with studios “Browsers can contact people for collaborations, swapping studio space or renting out their own. Couch says, ‘People are working in more flexible ways and relying on their own networks. The other thing is cloud technology – people don’t need to always be physically located in the same place any more. Office servers are redundant and we can work anywhere now. I think with the nature of our economy the way it is people are having to find new and more interesting ways of working.’”https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/december-2011/open-studio-club/ I thought this was an interesting additional way to collaborate with different people from around the world but physically connecting them by sharing their studios.
Unfortuently, after doing more research, the club isn’t around anymore but this is probably due to the limitations of the pandemic.
Nearly
I was also doing research to see if there were any collaborative platforms for graduates and came across this platform that was designed by people at university which they have called Nearly. Nearly is a platform that “ creative process, the submissions that never got published, the ideas that never came to anything, the mistakes and the lessons and "the wild and wonderful thinking behind making".” "We're part of a collective of students, currently facing a lot of uncertainty as to how and when we will complete our degree," says Abbie. "We saw this as an opportunity to bring a fresh approach to what a digital space can be; building a platform to lean on each other, share our working progress and watch how we can flourish into the creators we know we can be."
This is such a great concept especially within the pandemic that could help so many graduates and people at uni get a chance to share their work to a larger platform. https://www.creativeboom.com/resources/nearly-published-two-graphic-design-students-start-a-platform-that-celebrates-processes-mistakes-and-failures/
Workshop Challenge:
Based on some of the debates and discussion covered so far, outline a series of ideas that could help you to work in new and more exciting collaborative ways.
What media and communication platforms could help support this? (This might be to help you collaborate with new design partners, introduce yourself to a new network or culture or area of investigation.)
Present your ideas as a one minute elevator pitch video (with the aim that you will develop one of those ideas further next week).
Idea One
From this weeks lecture 2, Intro and Regular practise were talking about how it Is important to talk to people that are doing the same thing as you encouraging collaboration. This gave me the idea to think about how this would work when you graduate a course and loose that sense of physical collaboration and dialogue and are unable to get a job straight away due to lack of experience / limited portfolio.
I thought about creating a tool, where businesses could post multi-disciplinary jobs that would allow graduates from different courses and background to come together to collaborate on projects for the businesses. Like a freelance site but just aimed at creative graduates, allowing them to communicate, share their progress and ideas with others. This would then allow graduates to gain experience aswell as work for their portfolio and have the support of fellow graduates without needing the 3+ years of experience that are required for graduate jobs.
I think I will need to work on the whole concept of this idea and how it would be made easy for the companies as well as the graduates.
Idea Two
We have all created Pinterest mood-boards and Pinterest is a global used platform but it often shows similar results. I was thinking about a creative platform that had sections where people could upload / share trending typography, trending colour schemes, trending materials Aswell as 3D models and personal creations. I was also thinking that this would include a news/inspiration section where you can search for inspiration in one place under different tabs, instead of looking through all the different websites. This would also allow the user to see how many people have pinned it to mood boards / what's trending today.
Idea Three
Screen-sharing has become a vital element of working from home over the past year. My third idea is creating a platform that allows you to be on call whilst all having access to the same programme at once. This would allow you to see and edit things at the same time as someone else and help to explain ideas and progress better. I was thinking this would be good for 3D work and models / Animation / Video editing / Large publication documents.
After I had some ideas from my research and the lectures, I wanted to explore some of the most popular collaboration sites for designers / artists that wasn’t slack and some of the other common sites.
Figma
Figma is mainly aimed at designers where you are able to design and collaborate in real time which basically is my idea 3. It enables you to have all the files you need within the cloud that enables you to have access to them all the time as well as a chat and other features. Although this isn’t a free feature that is available to anyone - it is still available for companies.
Mural
Mural was another platform that was really popular for creative collaboration. You are able to access the platform which is made out of whiteboards for loads of different visual collaboration. You are able to add any content that you want and there is collaboration so you are basically able to view it on any platform. I thought this was a great idea as you are able to edit the content for someone else to view and then edit back. https://www.mural.co
Sketch
This was the other creative collaboration software that has been popular. You are able to collaborate in real time which is a huge bonus to working apart from other people as well as gaining instant updates when things have been updated for one person. I believe there are also two sides to this platform - the design side as well as a different collaboration side. One thing that does make this app slightly different is that it is for mac users. https://www.sketch.com/collaborate/
After researching some of the above, I wonder whether one of the ideas for this week could be a physical collaboration instead of one that is online.
I was also really intrigued by Thomas Patrick’s Open Collab so wondered if i could take elements of the Open Collab as inspiration to create an fourth idea.
After reading back through some research about the VR gallery space, I wonder if there could be a collaborative website that takes peoples submissions of videos of their art work or creations editing them down to snippets as-well as music submissions to make them into pieces or clips of finished videos.
From a previous I looked at the D&AD collaboration with Hato and how they created this collaborative space that enabled the public to come and draw in a 3D software that then presented this as the front of D&AD. I wondered if something similar of this 3D could be taken forward for an online platform but then is this too similar to the Open Collab project?
I could also potentially take on the research that i found out last week during the interview with my mum. If i wanted to use that as inspiration then when my mum spoke about having a ‘buddy’ that is there to help improve mental health aswell as moods within the workplace, I wonder if this could be applied on a larger platform like a graduate is paired with another mentor from a different discipline and different briefs could be explored.
Or taking the mental health of health workers and have them fill out how they were feeling each-day which could then be turned / cross data with the amount of patients that were cured? Again not a physical output. There could also be a connection to colour and light within the briefs - that i could explore.
This then led me too…
My final ideas, Instead of having a digital website platform I was thinking of something physical that can be sent and collaborated with. I was thinking about how book exchanges happen across the world and people send their favourite books to others. I wondered how this could work with favourite art / graphics / creative objects or pieces as well as other peoples art work or even just work.
Having a completely randomly generated website that you could upload your own work too and then it would also send you a copy of someone else's work that you could then use to then create a variations / collaboration with that piece, then take a picture of and send back or upload to social media. I guess this could work in collaboration with well known artists / creatives too! This concept could then be recycled using the work that had been sent back of peoples collaborations!
I did think about within the platform having a digital element but then feel this is a bit too close to the Open Collab 2.0 project.
The artist trading cards that lorri mentioned above were:
“Artist trading cards (ATCs) is a conceptual art project initiated by the Swiss artist M. Vänçi Stirnemann in 1997. He called it a Collaborative Cultural Performance. Artist trading cards are 2+1⁄2 by 3+1⁄2 inches (64 mm × 89 mm) in size, the same format as modern trading cards (hockey cards or baseball cards). They are self-made unique works or small series, signed and dated on the reverse by the artist/producer, exchanged and collected by the people who participate in the collaborative performance.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist_trading_cards
The great art exchange reminded me of a concept by oblique strategies, where cards would ask you questions or tell you to do things in a different way. Maybe if the artist card that would be sent within my pack, it would say something random that would tell you to do a collaboration with that piece in your interpretation? Or that may over complicate it.
After writing out some of the ideas, I chose two to work on and develop for the pitch video for this week.
I felt this would be able to give me one process as well as a platform:
Going to just really refine my ideas for both now:
Graduate Platform:
Graduate Collab is a platform, where businesses could post multi-disciplinary jobs that would allow graduates from different courses and background to come together to collaborate on briefs for the businesses.
Much like a freelance site, this platform would be aimed at unemployed creative graduates, allowing them to communicate, share their progress, past projects and ideas with others graduates from different fields. This would then allow graduates to gain experience as-well as work for their portfolio and have the support of fellow graduates.
The platform would have two sides to it: One for the businesses and one for the graduates.
The process for the business:
Any business would post a brief of the work that they need doing with a deadline, they do not need to specify who the work is aimed at. Graduates would then apply to the brief, with just their name and their degree specialty. After gaining applicants, the business can choose how many people from different disciplines they want on the brief. Those selected would then do the work with as many feedbacks as needed. When the work is completed, the business will gain how many collaborations they have completed.
Process for the graduates:
The process is that they would see a brief that they would be interested in, apply to that brief with just their name and their degree specialty, then work on the brief with the collaboration tools that would be available on the site. Private collaboration rooms and a live time collaboration space. The graduates would also be able to access mood board pages as well as a graduates forum full of other work that has been posted. When completed the project, the name of the business and work completed will automatically be placed on their pages. C
The Great Exchange:
Creating a collaborative process for work of peoples favourite art / graphics / creative objects or pieces as well as other peoples art work or even just work.
Having a completely randomly generated tool that would allow you to upload your own work and then, when you subscribe, it would send you a copy of someone else's work. You could then use that work with the brief thats attached to collaborate and make your own version. Then take a picture of and upload to the platform for someone to use your work as a collaboration. I guess this could work in collaboration with well known artists / creatives too!
The process:
Subscribe to the platform, then randomly receive pieces of work on a postcard through the post with a brief or a question that may help you look at something in a different way. You will also be able to ask for an email copy meaning you can do digital manipulation. Once you have finished the collaboration with that piece, upload it to the website. Once their have been significant collaborations, the platform may decide to send out work that had already been collaborated on, paired with more briefs or questions.
This platform would be for any person no matter age or discipline. Can be interpreted in anyway.
Possible room for collaboration with well known artists each month and addition of online workshop / kits in the future.
For the pitch video itself I wanted to highlight both these ideas, so decided the most time efficient way was to do a voice over / an animation of me drawing with a voice over.
Weekly Reflection:
I found this week really enjoyable, particularly hearing about different companies and what they did within their business plans and layout. I think its amazing how people have changed and adapted with the current pandemic. Even before the pandemic, studios like New studio were working collaboratively across skype and other platforms. I do think that this has enabled platforms online to become more advance with adaptions of working from home.
All of this information led me to influence about the workshops challenge this week. I really struggled to come up with ideas that were different, as a-lot of the ideas I had when researched had already been done. I ended up choosing a online platform as well as something that could be physically manipulated. I feel both the ideas could be used to create a new form of working and generating ideas.
Ideas Wall Posts:
