start

It may be that, to many, a graphic designer is someone who tries to provide solutions and answers to relevant problems, however, I feel as though my potential purpose may lie somewhere more on the speculative and imaginative side. For the longest time, stories have been one of my beloved companions and, as I age, those stories have evolved into something that questions the environment around us whether directly or through more implicit means. Around the world, stories have always acted as the greatest medium for teaching, from tales told to kids to warn them away from staying out too late to more serious pieces of literature that tackle modern concerns in our society. With my primary interests being in mediums such as illustration, animation and games, all of which provide plenty of narrative opportunities, I hope to promote this sense of passing on ideas and informing. In this report I discuss ways in which I wove narrative into my work along with broader social issues that I have begun to concern myself with, such as uninhibited expression of oneself and capitalism’s impact on this.

After reading ‘The medium is the massage’ (Marshall McLuhan, 1967), I came to realise how much of the communication hinges on the medium we choose to portray our designs through. For example, a project that explores the effects of music on the mind through an interactive installation could very possibly yield alternative results to simply leaving the audience to engage with music passively by handing them headphones. Not only this, but the medium also shifts how we may perceive a work; presenting an outcome as a game would cast a playful and less serious tone than if the outcome was a publication. While some of the points made may seem obvious, it has helped shine a light on how every action, especially in the creative sphere, is to be taken with much deliberation and purpose as every part of an outcome can be put into scrutiny. Besides the medium acting as the message, McLuhan pointed out another issue with designers that really stuck with me: “students of media are persistently attacked as evaders, idly concentrating on means or processes rather than on ‘substance.’” (McLuhan, 1967, p.10). It challenged the way that I perceive artforms, rather than working with a practice from a place of solely personal interest, to instead consider first the options and pick out what is most relevant to the goal. This is something I implemented in the second Unit 6 project, choosing to work with something entirely new to me, but that ultimately would do a better job at portraying my ideas: designing a website using HTML and CSS, rather than defaulting to other routes more favourable and familiar to me. Additionally to the point regarding lack of focus on ‘substance’, I feel I can admit to previously being more hesitant to tackle projects surrounding social issues, favouring to create a sort of fantastical bubble around my work, at least to the extent that my briefs would permit. This may be the result of my preference for fictional media, however, in recent times, I have come to realise more that, as a designer, our roles do, in part, answer to social issues. The primary focus in many of our assignments is communication with and between others. As I explain more in this report, I touch on some of the topics that I feel need attention and which I’d be eager to explore through design.

screenshot of the homepage of my E&E website

Creating free-roam spaces (similar to the afforemntioned game where getting lost on webpages is an intrinsic mechanic) could make way for an overall healthier environment and promote healthier forms of engagement between online users as they feel less caged. Kat’s video on YouTube where she mentions “rabbit holes” and “a creative playground” resonated with me deeply as well as her interpretation of the Old/ Indie Web being “a free and equal space where people and communities are more important than algorithms and search engine optimisation” (2022), and this I took into my own practice with my work echoing these sentiments both in words and through practice.
In my own work I borrowed parts of this by having many different links to other websites for the user to explore and by allowing them the choice to either contribute or just view. Allowing a player to build their own story within the set narrative of the game itself is a unique way to engage an audience and a technique that I hope to try my hand at again through other mediums, such as games.

Moving forwards, these messages and concepts will stick with me, underlying my work where I choose to center the human voice above all - the value of this further highlighted in the Unit 5 Voices workshop which had me considering more thoroughly who it is that I choose to shine the light on with my work.

For Time & Movement, my group and I explored the theme of both spaces and community through our open studio presentation, setting the space up in a way that forces the audience to watch the same video together as each group’s video would play one after the other rather than in tandem. This also helped include an element of interaction by having the audience walk around the set up to see the next video, in turn encouraging conversation surrounding the outcomes between the viewers and promoting engagement through a unique setup.

The Communities workshop put into perspective more about who I want to create for more specifically and how I can use and take into account the communities I’m a part of for my projects - either by focusing on my own communities or reaching out to others by finding commonalities. In a more broad sense when designing one must always center people first, staying honest and true to yourself and others is the key way to reaching out, permitting the space for people to feel and convey their thoughts and emotions and to see the effort and care put behind the work.

The Archives workshop was quite relevant to my E&E project as it was, in part, made possible through internet records as well as the project itself functioning as a public archive people could add to. I perused archives of graphics made/ used for the old internet, and this helped shape the visuals for my own project to look more authentic. Though originally the project was intended to act as a live audio hosting platform, both this workshop and feedback from others highlighted the value in making the website act as a record of the past, leaving things for people in the future to come across and discover.

My love for story retellings such as those of The Sleeping Beauty or Snow White also heavily sways my bias, which is why I believe I found the Archives workshop itself to be quite entertaining and insightful since it’s an exploration into reusing existing resources. Furthermore, my primary interest laying firmly in story telling led me to try and create a silly narrative using the items found on the ‘Below The Surface’ website. This has led me to consider looking more often to the past to inform my decisions in the present.

Screenshot from the Hypnospace Outlaw game and its promotional image

Photos taken by me of David Altmejd's exhibition at the White Cube on January 2023

Photos taken by me of our T&M open studio

To conclude, I feel I’ve found a stronger overarching link with most of my interests in the design sphere is a medium’s capacity for storytelling, whether it be storytelling in the traditional, literal sense, or a more vague idea of it. All this now with the underlying message of uncaged communication running through my recent and hopefully future endeavours.
In addition, over the course of this unit I feel I have picked up a lot of valuable concepts and knowledge grounded in more socially-centred issues, and as such it has allowed me to develop into a more conscious designer. Naturally, my learning journey doesn’t end here, as is for all creatives, it should continue for life, and through trial and research, carrying what I’ve amassed thus far I will endeavour to continuously improve, weaving compelling narratives and experiences for my audiences.

References:

Becker, N. (2022) Should we retire the concept of appropriation in art?, Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art. Available at: https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/concept-appropriation-in-art-/5467 (Accessed: 25 January 2025).

Below the surface (no date) Below the surface - Archeologische Vondsten Noord/Zuidlijn Amsterdam. Available at: https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en (Accessed: 25 January 2025).

David Altmejd (2022) White Cube. Available at: https://www.whitecube.com/gallery-exhibitions/david-altmejd-2023 (Accessed: 25 January 2025).

Haggart, B. (2024) ‘The Decimation of Media Isn’t Just Driven by Greed — It’s Encoded in the Internet Itself’, Centre for International Governance Innovation, 20 February. Available at: https://www.cigionline.org/articles/the-decimation-of-media-isnt-just-driven-by-greed-its-encoded-in-the-internet-itself/ (Accessed: 23 January 2025).

Hypnospace Outlaw (2024) Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnospace_Outlaw#:~:text=The%20player%20assumes%20the%20role,detective%20work%20and%20puzzle-solving (Accessed: 25 January 2025).

Johnsen, A., Christensen, R. and Moltke, H. (2013) Good Copy Bad Copy, YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByY6j0qzOyM (Accessed: 20 January 2025).

Klarden, K. (2020) Thoughts on: Hypnospace Outlaw. Available at: hypnospace ss: https://klardendum.com/review/thoughts-on-hypnospace-outlaw/ (Accessed: 25 January 2025).

Lydiate, H. (2009) Appropriation art and fair uses, Artquest. Available at: https://artquest.org.uk/artlaw-article/appropriation-art-and-fair-uses/ (Accessed: 22 January 2025).

McLuhan, M., Fiore, Q. and Agel, J. (1967) The Medium is the Massage. (Online) Available at: https://archive.org/details/pdfy-vNiFct6b-L5ucJEa/mode/2up (Accessed 11 November 2024).

Tearle, O. (2024) The meaning and origin of ‘immature poets imitate; mature poets steal’, Interesting Literature. Available at: https://interestingliterature.com/2021/04/eliot-immature-poets-imitate-mature-poets-steal-meaning-analysis/ (Accessed: 26 January 2025).

Tendershoot. (2019) Hypnospace Outlaw, Steam. Available at: https://store.steampowered.com/app/844590/Hypnospace_Outlaw/ (Accessed: 25 January 2025).

You’ve Got Kat (2022) You Should Check Out the Indie Web, YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTSEr0cRJY8&list=PLw5Wt3LjXwDl6Dt20nVx0forZNK9ec5nl (Accessed: 20 January 2025).

The website I created also plays with the idea of using and reusing media, as the majority of visuals and sounds are pre-existing. The overall concept of using bits of the past to portray ideas of the present or perhaps creating a speculative peek into the future is one that shouldn’t be ignored in favour of protecting strict copyright laws. While, naturally, it is important for an artist to have full ownership over their work and to fairly receive credit where it is due, blocking creatives from interacting with each other’s works can at times be counterproductive. On top of, in part, making it so that art cannot circulate as far, it shields certain people from critique, which could have adverse effects on society. The documentary ‘Good Copy Bad Copy’ (Johnsen, Christensen, Moltke, 2007) illustrates this idea perfectly, using music as its main medium through which this issue is portrayed.
For example, the conversation surrounding Creative commons was quite enlightening and only further solidified my own beliefs:

“Encouraging people’s creativity by allowing materials to be widely available leads to better understanding of the past in order to give them the opportunity to say something about the future - while still maintaining a balance for copyright.” (2007)

Other quotes from ‘Good Copy Bad Copy’ that particularly stood out to me in their relevance and which I held in consideration when working on my Unit 6 projects:

“On one hand there’s the artist or distributor not being compensated for their work on the other hand it creates accessibility to information and media to millions of people who may have previously not had the access either due to location reasons or financial ones [etc.]” (2007)

“People being able to use and repurpose other media allows anybody to say things about politics/ culture etc in ways that connect to other people.” (2007)

There was a lot to gain from the Unit 5 workshops.
The Spaces workshop pushed me to consider the importance of curation, as I’m often used to presenting my work in a more simple manner, more focused on the outcome itself than the overall look of the final presentation. This, admittedly, has led to short sightedness in this aspect and the way in which I display my work ends up diminishing the outcome rather than highlighting it, which is the purpose of exhibiting work in the first place. Whenever I think of curation my mind always goes back to David Altmejd’s curation of the gallery space I had visited a couple years back, while subtle there is a sense of a story woven not only through the sculptures he makes but also through the gallery space itself, for example, the holes in the walls with fake supposed small animal droppings right outside them.

Screenshot of image I collaged using the found imagery on the ‘Below The Surface’ website

“A series of subtle interventions throughout the space suggests networks of unseen activity: smeared toothpaste, pencil notations and entry points to a presumed warren.” (White Cube, 2022-2023)

Much of this circles back to the significance of free communication and enabling people to explore resources outside their immediate space in a bid to erradicate echo chambers. In a hyperbolic sense, where the matter at hand is more politically or socially charged, it is choosing the lesser of two evils. Discussions of appropriation and theft come to mind.

Not including appropriation where it concerns disadvantaged communities and malicious intentions, recontextualising and repurposing exising works to portray an alternative view on things is key in keeping an open mind. My reason for bringing this up was due to my own use and understanding of working with other people’s art and how it pertains to the earlier discussed issue of a decommodified internet - in order for people to express themselves freely, to critique, analyse and play with ideas, these concepts hold ground to exist.

“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.” (Eliot, 1920).

For my E&E, Unit 6, project, I coded a website which was meant to act as an archivable radio that anyone can contribute or listen to (pictured on the right). While not super overt in its messaging, barring the introductory paragraph on the home page, it was made to allow people to build their own narrative through music, images and text. The intent behind this project was for it to be a step towards reclaiming the internet and decommodifying it, to create a space that isn’t teeming with predatory advertisements, where an algorithm isn’t the one deciding what a person sees but rather the user makes their own choices, and where the user can find community in like-minded individuals. This all stemmed from Kat’s perspective on the Indie Web:

“it values decommodifying your online presence” (You’ve Got Kat, 2022).

As stated by Blayne Haggart in ‘The Decimation of Media Isn’t Just Driven by Greed — It’s Encoded in the Internet Itself’ (2024), the consequences of a commodified internet:

“We see the same logic play out in cultural policy debates, where an internet ideology assumes that promoting cultural works (say, of minority-language cultures) interferes with the free flow of culture as data.”

In other words, it is crucial that we begin to build towards an internet that is not only free for all but also deplatforms the dominating voices that uphold the capitalist system, which so often pushes the quieter, more honest voices away.