visual advocacy: degree project thoughts

In starting to consider where I want to head for my degree project, I have a fairly strong idea for what I want to explore medium-wise, but I’m still very open to ideas about my subject matter. As designers, we often allow our medium to be informed by the content that we’re working with, so I feel like looking at a project this way is almost backwards, but perhaps it poses a new or interesting way of thinking about how to ask a design question for me personally. I really enjoy interactivity in design, something I think is completely achievable in both screen based and print based work. Interactivity is memorable—it involves the audience not only in the design, but in the subject matter as well. It can allow them to become a part of it, manipulate it, and maybe even understand it better. In projects where we’re aiming to activate our audience and create participants as opposed to simply viewers, I think “interactive design” brings exactly what I’m looking for: audience interaction. As many of the projects I’ve enjoyed over the past few semesters have been more centered in this realm of design, I’m definitely interested in pursuing that direction for my senior degree project. And while a lot of these projects have been highly screen based, I don’t feel like it needs to be limited to that necessarily. I’d be interested in seeing how screen-based work can also help to inform some interactive print-based work, and how the tangibility of print-based work can find it’s way onto the screen as well.

There are a couple areas of interest I have as far as actual content goes, and for now I’m trying to keep the brainstorming session as broad and general as I can so as not to eliminate any possibilities. This semester in visual advocacy, I chose to look at education as a topic since it is something I feel strongly about. Though I’m not sure I’m interested in carrying the project I currently have into next semester, it’s definitely made me consider looking at other aspects of education for my degree project. Last year I had also done a motion piece concerning music/art program availability in schools. As someone who was (and continues to be) active in these programs, keeping art programs alive in schools is something I wouldn’t mind continuing to explore. Along the lines of the project I’m working on in visual advocacy now—exploring ways to look at alternative teaching methods is also something that I also find interesting. There are a lot of angles to that problem concerning different learning methods and language barriers, so even though I feel it’s rather broad, it could perhaps become focused enough to work on for a semester.

Education aside (though perhaps, still on the note of educating people), I come from a family with a variety of cultural backgrounds, and culture is something I value closely. On that note, I also have a family that’s spread widely across the globe—so means of communication between people who are sometimes not only miles, but oceans away is something that I find important too. I’ve always been interested in the “pen pal” idea—people learning about people through one another, and not stereotypes, textbooks or Travel Channel shows. To be able to unite people from different backgrounds, or simply families who are so far away from one another through graphic design is a challenge that I think sounds interesting. It’s certainly isn’t the answer to world peace, but I believe that people learning about each other through one another can be a great thing—and is definitely along the lines of my methodology, in which design facilitates an environment where people can interact with design and communicate with each other.