When talking to my boyfriend about the brief while driving him to Newquay Airport I completely forgot he had been a teacher for 4 years in a Belgium school. I thought I would ask him what things worked well and what didn’t at his school to see whether he could give me any ideas I hadn’t of thought of as he would have more of an insight.
He spoke about ADHD and how his school was very good at having separate rooms for students with ADHD or autism, but I shut down that topic very quickly as I didn’t want to focus on that topic/theme for re-designing a school.
Design studio
Design like a cube – if you turn it can show 3 different colours – green, amber and red that tells people whether they need help or not from other designers so then more creative people are interacting with each other.
I had a tutorial with Martin about my essay to which he commented I needed to add more design into it. I completely agree with his statement as I felt like something was missing from my essay and I couldn’t think of what it was.
I take this as a positive but I would of liked to know whether the writing of my essay looked good or not as I don’t want my essay to be marked down when he didn’t look at it properly.
Who knows…….
I am not good at writing essays. I always know what I want to say and find great information and evidence to back it up but when it comes to forming an essay I get lost in information and can’t put it down.
Going Forward
Adding more design in my essay…….. soooooo. To be honest I understand what he said but i’m overthinking about how to add more design.
Using the project I did for the MACD1001: Process module I sectioned an image of a car about what points I could focus on contributing to the design of a car.
Relating to my essay about design and salience I looked at the car above and noted down the important aspects of design.
Number
Design/Purpose
Colour?
What is it?
1
– Notify your cars presence (ensure you are seen by others)
– Illuminate the roadway
Amber
White
Headlights
Indicator light
2
– Indicate when you are intending to turn or pull over
Amber
Indicators
3
– Alert people when they are braking – notify them to slow down as well
Red
Brake light
Amber indicator: Sharper contrast between the red brake lights and yellow turn signals
Red brake lights: Doesn’t compromise night vision like white light. Red light is easily visible – associated with warning or danger.
I got sent an email from LinkedIn with a article that talks about ADHD among adults, this seems to be an occurring theme that is increasing recently – the amount of people learning about their ADHD.
If ADHD is increasing in the world I wondered whether schools or universities were doing anything about people with ADHD.
While attending a yoga class today I thought about whether schools/universities have a room where you can de stress or have a safe space. For students I feel like this is important.
I am already aware of how there are already designs such as;
Panic rooms in some offices
Rage rooms
One of my friends sent me this, which is what they have at work so their employees can relax when they have a break to take their mind off their tasks.
This is in Belgium– a country good for work-life balance.
I like the idea of having a pod like appearance with a lot of seclusion as at the end of every yoga class we have a roughly 5-10 min complete silence where we lie on on our backs and take the time for reflection and relaxation.
I find yoga to be very therapeutic because for me being in a room where no one else can disturb it makes me feel calmer and allows me to focus on myself by removing myself from the world.
To me that relates to a room. There is no specific design in the room I do yoga that relates to me being calm. The blinds in the room are always down which makes the room feel some sort of hidden.
Regarding the brief I was confused as to know whether the topic had to relate to a school or if we could pick any topic but clarifying it with Bryan I now know that it refers to designing a school.
This module also includes an essay which I am very nervous for as I struggle to get all my words down in a structured way. I blab a lot and overthink about what I want to say which then leads to me getting confused and panicking.
Which is what we want to avoid.
When speaking to Martin in a lecture I responded to a question he had asked which was about driving and I mentioned the fact that outside where I live I rely on the sounds of cars to tell me when I can pull out of my driveway (which is what my intersections brief is about). He said
‘Theres your essay topic’.
I will be proceeding with that essay topic as 1) he gave me the confidence that it is a good choice for an essay topic and 2) doing an essay topic on a unrelated topic will make me scared of writing and then I will never start so having a bit of similarity with my topic really does help me.
While having a phone call with my dad he said a comment that stuck with me.
It’s our fault, we should have picked up on it and sent you to a creative school.
Michael Neil
I thought this comment would be appropriate for this module as it saddened me to think that my dad thought it was his and my mum’s fault that they didn’t realise I was creative or had a talent regarding photography. I believe it’s a failure of schools and they’re to blame.
I remember in sixth form when I got no guidance with choosing a university course, which resulted into me going to university in Bath choosing Food and nutrition, hated it so I quit.
Then started took a gap year and went to University of Worcester and chose Sport Therapy as having a passion for sport I believed that was my career path and I would be good at it which after the first year I wasn’t and hated that so I then transferred to Digital Media which I succeed in and received a First Class Honours Degree.
2018 – Bath University
BA Hons Food and Nutrition
2020 – University of Worcester
BA Hons Sport Therapy
2020 – University of Worcester
BA Hons Digital Media
Because I didn’t know what I was good at or what I would do well in and had potential in (relating to a career) I spent a lot of money (student finance) and time on degree courses that could of been avoided if I knew what direction I should of aimed for.
I believe the point of schools is to prepare you (especially for university) for the future, thats what my school always went on about… EVERYDAYYYY. Yet they don’t help to guide you in the right direction of career.
Teachers should pick up on what you are good at and point you in the direction of that. All I got told at school was I wasn’t good enough and they didn’t believe in me …. and now look at me. I’m doing a masters and I got offered a place in the RCA.
It shows how schools need to change, influencing and inspiring creativity needs to be taken seriously. I remember in school when it wasn’t, everyone who did Art was never taken seriously because back then it was viewed as less of a course and less important than more academic courses. Which thankfully as I have got older that seems to have changed, but I wonder what is going behind the scenes in schools.
My class mates in a lecture agreed with what I say. They struggled to feel important, taken seriously but most importantly supported.
Before finding this I already had the idea of if there was a machine in schools that tells you what you are good at, whether you are academic, creative, etc.
All images are from the movies Divergent, Insurgent and Allegiant.
These images refer to the idea of what I am thinking about. The idea is that there are leads that plugs into you like shown above which then connects to a machine.
D&AD Blood Awards
While scrolling on instagram I came across an ad from D&AD for their future creatives report. I found this to be interesting as it was great timing for the third brief which relates to re-designing a school/university or design studio.
Ways to spark imagination and a reality of what could exist – using photographs (physical examples), quotes, etc.
Brief
Create your own school.
We went around the university to see whether there were any spaces/rooms that we could improve on or want to change.
Role play
My partner/buddy and I went around talking and catching people’s attention. My buddy was the performer/actor and I was the narrator.
There was no rule on how to approach people and gain their interaction. The process my buddy did was to go up to someone and just stand there and no say anything. This was awkward as then I was the one that had to explain what was going on but the process worked very well.
My buddy gave the public who were interacting with our work had no where to go, they couldn’t escape what we were putting in front of them because my buddy put himself in the situation of not allowing it which worked really well. If he hadn’t forced people to react to what they were seeing and being presented with then we would have got no reaction because people were to nervous to respond.
When reviewing what people had drawn or wrote on our pieces of paper I explained that when talking with the students we interacted with all of them commented on the fact that they wish they could add flyers or their work to the notice board.
Fiona Neil Design Research Journal 