THE VALIDITY OF IMPERFECTION

The written thesis is done, after many hours of writing, checking, writing, checking, designing, checking, rewriting and so on and so forth its all done, handed it in on tuesday, thanks to everyone who helped me along the way, i felt the whole experience of writing a thesis on a subject of your choice was an interesting one, as the last time i wrote an essay was probably at least six years ago, so it was a shock to the system, but a good one never the less! It taught me to think about what i was trying to say, and puts your subject in the spotlight and in context to the bigger world outside jsut design... anyway now i can concentrate on doing some visual designing, check back for more updates.

FORMATTED, PRECISE & WRAPPED IN IMPROVISATION

My plan now is to have a very specific and formatted outcome, with very strict guides and boundaries, and design it as well as i can to make it look great and read well (one spread is in the picture above, great fluro colour!). Almost the complete opposite of improvisation, a complete contradiction to what i am writing about in...

THE CONTRADICTION

"To write a book about improvisation is partly a contradiction in terms. Improvisation is spontaneous. It's in the moment."

Sally Schneider

MOVING ON

I was talking to one of my tutors today about my visual outcome for my thesis, and as i have previously said in other posts to create a space in the book/magazine that i am doing that illustrates the point of myself having to improvise around a set of rules and time limit, now i think this would work on some levels, however it may be to pre-determined, and the issue was raised that i could reject some ideas on the basis i could not do them etc, so we were discussing how we could relate this issue, the fact of the matter is i dont think there really is a proper way to show improvisation of something, in something as pre-determined as a book/magazine, because they are conscious decisions that i will have taken to lead to the "improvised" outcome. It is a vicious cycle that i have got myself into really.

BROWNS - HOWARD SMITH PAPERS

Browns are a fantastic design company based in Bermondsey, who have an amazing archive of work. One of the many great projects Browns have done is a set of posters to promote the second Howard Smith Paper Graphic Design and Print Awards and the Howard Smith Paper lecture series, these posters were simply...

DIMENSIONS

I have thought long and hard about the format of my thesis, thinking about what size its going to be, what sort of binding am i going to use, how many pages am i going to have in it, and so on. I have however decided to use a paper size of roughly 21cm x 25cm possibly a little less than 21cm on the width, because i need...

ONGOING

At this current moment in time i am getting my visual side to my written work done, its going well. It looks like my written work will be within a 54 page book/magazine style object, should turn out to be pretty interesting, keep checking back in the next day or two for updates on the work, it going to be a hectic week...

TITLES

For the writing i have also been thinking of titles, ever since i started to write it, as we were made to have a working title right away from the offset, which of course was subject to change, however i have thought of quite a few titles to date so have had trouble trying to pick a definitive one. Here are a list of the titles...

SETTING OUT THE GUIDELINES

So over the last week or so i have been thinking of ways to present my written work, there are many ways that i could do this, however i would like to represent the notion of improvisation, and how we use it in all sorts of ways. Having thought of ways around this in the 'what if' series i came to a holt, in the sense that showing improvisation within a written piece is just a predetermined thing, because i would have made the decisions consciously and that would mean the outcome is not improvised. Within the group discussion we looked at the problem from a different angle, and thought maybe i could get people to set me a confined set of rules, and a confined set of time and do something that was within the rules but was improvised, due to the time that i had to do it in, and this outcome therefore would be totally improvised, for example, the "brief" so to say could be, make a chair out of paper within three hours, basically i would have to improvise to make a chair out of paper within three hours, and with this outcome photograph it and then display it within my written piece.

So there would be two pieces within my final outcome, the written and perfected bit to it, then a section that is within it, with all these improvised pieces, displaying what you can achieve within the rules and time given to you, and as with improvisation, there will be glimpses of brilliance which would never occurred if thought through thoroughly, however im sure there will be mistakes within it, which i guess is also the beauty and charm of improvisation. I think im going to ask a range of people to set me these small tasks in the next few days.

BLOCKED OUT

Just found this image in a file on my computer, it is reminiscent of the experiments i was doing for the 'what if' series, with the faces of people that appear in my written work taken off. This is that sort of vibe, with the whole picture except for the edges completely blocked out, i think even though you cant really see what is...

THE FREEDOM OF STRUCTURE

I am currently thinking of things to produce as my final piece for my dissertation and is proving more difficult than I had thought it would be, basically however I think after my discussion on thursday with the group, and looking at the 'no waste' book by pentagram, I have come to a conclusion of having something within quite a structured format, such as a book, I know maybe it is an obvious thing to do, but its obvious because it makes for such a great artifact, and physical thing to read out of. I dont know weather the book will take a normal format or a slightly different format, but i feel setting myself this rule, like the rules that are set out within improvisation all the time, my work will be pushed forward, and i feel i want to do something within the book that is a little different and somehow connects with the user in some form, check back for updates, there will be plenty more...

IMPROVISATION... THE IMPERFECT ART

So just giving a quick explanation to what my dissertation is, in one sentence... it is about improvisation within creative disciplines and asking weather improvised outcomes can communicate an idea better than a pre-determined 'perfect' solution. So basically looking at improvisation within things like music, theatre and...