By creating this blog and showing the world what i’m doing. I was forced to think about what I want with my project, and explain to others whats going on in my head.
1.Looking back at my process. For the update post I had to look back at my offline logbook and translate it to English. [if you wonder why my blog is in English, because I’m doing it for and with the internet] I realized that my first goal wasn’t a system (as I now like to call my project) but a co created project with the internet, where I would be the (art)director and the internet the content creators. Somewhere along the way, I decided that I wanted to create an algorithm that would directed the data input from the crowd and turn it into an image (and a title). And that’s also a cool idea but it’s not the idea where I started with.
2.Seeing what I already have done. These last couple of weeks felt a bit slow for the process. I felt a bit down and had the feeling my project was going nowhere. Or at least not the place where I and other people expected it to go. But writing down update and seeing what steps I only made this week, reading books and actually putting something online for the internet to see (my co creators) gave me a good vibe and I’m feeling back on the happy track for my project 🙂
3.Making choices. Putting something out there for everybody to see, means making decisions on how they’re going to see you and your work. What design is my website/blog going to be (yes, there is also a website in the making/under construction), is it going to be in Dutch or English, what do I want the visitors to do and so on. So for the design I chose a mix of all my (personal) design choices I made in the last four years. In the first year of the academy I mostly used magenta (pink) and the font Impact to present my own work. In the second year it stayed mostly that, but I mixed around with all the CMYK colors. At the end of the second year I switched to the Courier font in mostly black and white, and I kept on doing that till somewhere around the end of the third year where I switched to Futura Condensed Medium and started loving the yellow. And for some reason I started putting boxes around titles or a fat line underneath it. So putting all those things together, tada….
So making this blog was a good choice (so far)! Now I hope that I will keep loving it, and will keep writing 😉
So let’s start with a topic “book(s) of the week” where I tell you the book(s) I’ve been reading that week and why. The book can be totally related to my research or not (and in the and they always are 😉 )
First up, the reason for this blog…
I rented this book from the school library having the thought of; it’s a smalls book, fun looking and everybody could need some help showing their work. I’m now on page 66 of the 215 pages. But I’m already loving it, especially because of the research I already have done on examining graduation projects. In most reports they tell how important it is to see the students process. And in the first few chapters of the book Austin tells the same thing. Your and work is not just that, but building that work is evenly important, especially for the artist. I will keep on reading and will tell you more if needed 😉
Than…
I’m not gonna lie about the reason why I choose this book; it is also because it was small and it looked like fun. Nevertheless, this book is awesome. It looks pretty and keeps the fun in graduating. So if you’re a design student, take a look at it, you won’t regret it.
Now one that I borrowed but not going to read.
At first I want to say that for a book only consisting of text/words, the design is really nice. Than the reason I’m not going to read it. On the cover of the book it says “dilemmas in art and education” but art is the main topic (I took a quick read through the pages) and mostly autonomous art. And autonomous art is the type of art that is most definitely not my thing. Yes, it should be part of my research but I’m not going to read a whole book about it. I will find another way to figure out how the school system grades the autonomous artists of our school.
Than the book that I love love love <3
I sadly enough only read the introduction, but there it already grabbed my love for the book.
They describe the world of advertising, just the way that I do, and think about their users/viewers/clients just the way that I do. The design of the book is also close to my style, and the first data designer they tell about is my all time favorite Florence Nightingale. So yes, I’m sold/I am hooked. And as soon as I have the money I will buy this book (or if you need to find a present for me 😉 ). So when I’m done reading expect a long blogpost about this book.
Let’s start with, when the idea of graduation with a graduation system came to me.
16 January 2017
An idea was born.
[For the record the official kick-off for the graduation is in three weeks from now]
Because I was bored I was scrolling through Netflix and stumbled upon the documentary “Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World” by Werner Herzog. The film caught my eye because it was about the internet and its history, two things that I like ;). So I started watching it with a big bag of Doritos chips. During the film the project EteRNA came on as a subject. The project shows really the power of the internet used for good. EteRNA is a project made by The National Science Foundation. The group ran into the problem that they found a molecule that could fix their problem, but that specific molecule was able to be folded in many many ways and they were not quite enough people to try it all out. So they made a game where all the people on the internet could help them fold the monocle. And that gave me the idea to create my graduation project together with the people of the internet. So I would be the director and the internet will give me the content.
31 January 2017
The start of putting my mind into words
Fifty percent of our graduation is/excists of the competency assessments, where we explain in a report who we are as a designer, and that we are competent as a student (fixed by law) to get our diploma. This week I started writing down mine. Each portfolio (read, text document) contains seven competencies; Creative ability, Ability to reflect critically, Ability to grow and change, Organisational ability, Communicative ability, Context awareness and Collaborative ability. In this portfolio it was the first time I had to write down what my graduation project was going to be. So I had to put my idea that I already had for a few weeks on paper. This is how I did it; Inspired by the documentary I thought why wouldn’t I crowdsource my graduation project. First I need to advertise my project so that as many people as possible will see my project and hopefully give me enough data input for me to work with. This is the ultimate way for me to combine my two powers (advertising and data design). For my research I want to look into alumni and school/law criteria in the hope I would find a common theme which I can fit into my crowdsourced project.
1 February 2017
First thoughts
I want people to make their own choices, so they will see how the data is created. In my end result is it important that people can trace back which decisions were made, and how people gathered more information.
08 February 2017
Feedback after first talk whit graduation adviser Hans
He likes the idea.
He asks me if I could graduate tomorrow if I had the answer to the right question.
On which moment do I want to communicate to which people?
What do I expect from the crowd?
Be careful that your question doesn’t become your main subject.
09 February 2017
Interview with Ruben van Dijk
When I first told my idea to my teacher (I sad that I wanted to graduate with a project about graduation), they said that a few years back a student advertising already graduated with a project about graduation and that student was Ruben van Dijk (this is his project)
I decided that day to contact Ruben so I could see what he did and most of all why he did it. Ruben now works at JWT (an advertising agency in Amsterdam), so we decided to meet there. Ruben’s project is quite bold, that’s something that I would never do. So he asked me to show him some of my work. Looking at my work he could see that my graduation project would be more of a way to give people insight than to shock people. This is when I realized how important the competency assessments are. You need to know who you are as a designer/creative, to figure out what works best for you during your graduation project.
13 February 2017
What’s on my mind??
I now think the most important thing of graduating is the “why me?”, why should I make this project, why is this project so me? And the process off it all. I feel that because I’m studying graduation I’m far more aware of each step that I take. If you could show who you are and why you make the choices that you make as a designer I think you are graduated. I think all the people that struggle with graduating, just didn’t figure out who they are and what they wanna tell to the world. I think that after four years of art school, you didn’t learn to be an artist but you learned who you are as an artist. As my school loves to call us “creating pioneers”.
20 February 2017
50% of graduation completed
Today I had my competency assessment, where I have the chance to extra defend my report. So the examiners already read my report and now I had to present it for 10 min and then answer some question for 10 min. Than I had to leave the room and wait for 15 nerve wracking minutes to hear if I made it or not. When I was called back in I couldn’t be more happy with what they told me. They said that I made it with a 100%. They saw how much I had grown the last year and they were happy that an advertising student finally was going to make a real data project (I still kind of wonder today what they meant by that).
23 February 2017
Another win
A few weeks ago I also applied for the young talent spinawards competition, and today we had to present our work. I had competed with my project the Crowd Counter.
After everybody had presented and the judges came to a conclusion they told us that there was one winner and one wildcard winner (meaning you have to earn votes to get to the finals). And jeeej I won the wildcard, but also Oh oh, now I have to win some votes. Between 1st and 15th of March I had to win the votes. Spamming all my Facebook friends and family, I sadly did not win.
A week before the interview I was looking through the school library and found the graduation books from the school. There was only one book that caught my attention and that was the one from the year ‘09/’10, the book had small data visualization next to the student’s name. Which make me think there would have been a system to gather that data. I googled the creators of the book and saw Ruiter Jansen. His portfolio had a lot of data visualization, so I emailed him first hoping that he could tell me more about the data. He replied that he was very busy till the 9th of March and that I had to try the girls (Joany and Esther). So that’s why my first meet-up about the book was with Esther Jong. She now works at Fabrique (Rotterdam), I made an appointment with her over there at the end of the day. Preparing for the interview I took a look at her work and soon figured out that she was as much digital driven as me. That’s why talking about my project, with her really helped. She had the same idea I had, like; that my end-project would change every day and that the end result could be really ugly but that’s ok. She also gave me the book so I wouldn’t have to drag it around from school to house all the time (the school library only let me borrow the book for one day, because they only have one). That book became my data bible, because it was the only whole database of students and their graduation work that I could find (and the other books of course but they were older). Because sadly enough after 2012 the school stopped making the books.
So for research for my graduation project I was reading this book “show your work!” by Austin Kleon, (and like the title says) I thought, yeah! let’s show my work. And so this blog was born.
So who m I? I’m a student on the Willem de Kooning Academie (WDKA) in Rotterdam, I do the study advertising with a minor in data design. And these five months (deadline 17th of june) I will show and tell what I’m doing on this blog 🙂
But five months? You may ask. From now till the 17th of June is three months. That’s correct, I already started back in february. So in the next post I wil give you a quick update of what I have already done.
So with what do I want to graduate with? I want to make a crowdsourced graduation project, meaning; with the help of you guys on the internet I want to make a system that can make a graduation project. I want to collect as much data as possible and mix it in my system to create a graduation project. In order to do that I need to figure out what a gradation is, and what you need to graduate. And of course to figure out a way to build a system out all of that.
Ok that’s is it for now 😉
