This year I feel for the first time that the research and process I have undergone during studio practice has really formed the backbone of how I think as a visual communicator, and illustrator moving beyond University.
At the beginning of the year I depended very heavily on digital work, which itself was a departure for me in comparison to my early work from level 5. I was conscious that I did not want to lose the more analog elements of my work that I have always found engaging and the most fruitful in terms of idea generation. However, I was also conscious to not rely too heavily on that aspect either because it has been my downfall before, especially in level 4, wherein I would end up with lots of roughs and potential for finished work, but no actual complete work to be able to show.
This year has been defined by combining practices that I hadn't really considered before, such as collage, photography and typography into illustration that I have found to be some of the more successful work I have made on the course. I think that my time management can always be better, as the balance of the dissertation and context of practice this year did make it quite hard for me to keep up with the briefs I set myself for this module. Luckily, I was able to make up for this after context of practice finished, and I worked hard to create an extensive body of work that I feel best represents both who I am currently as a creative practitioner, and the improvements I desire to make once leaving university.
The briefs within this module have challenged my ways of thinking more than anything else, which I am pleased about because they came along quite organically. Issues such as race and sexism are always things I have wanted to respond in some way to before, but have never really found the appropriate medium or outlet. The creative freedoms of this module allowed me to finally start to explore these things, specifically in my TIMES UP brief and my Black Panther brief. Although I am not a woman and have never experienced sexual misconduct in the workplace, I found researching the topic and making work in response to it incredibly invigorating. That brief made me realise that just because a cause doesnt personally or directly relate to you, doesnt mean it isnt something you can actively campaign for and support through your work. This feels like a lesson that will be much more valuable moving forward, especially as we advance into the industry world and begin to take clients for different purposes and causes.
Conversely, the Black Panther brief gave me the opportunity to address some issues regarding race, something that has always affected me either directly or indirectly. It was a transformative process for me during this brief in particular as I started to feel proud of my work in a sense that was largely unfamiliar with me up to this point, and I feel my research and conceptualisation really helped build a foundation for this.
My longest running brief, the music based brief, was the one that has largely formed the backbone of my practice up to this point in a more practical, commercial and aesthetic sense. A couple of examples of exposure taught me that this work is marketable, something I was very worried about at the beginning of this year. Moving forward, I want to keep doing these designs as a way to excercise the creative muscle, and make sure that no momentum is lost in my practice when we leave university.
An element I always feel is weak in my own submission is my blog, and I could have utilised it more this year. I found myself working practically so much and trying to understand the development of my practice, my blog became for me a less honest place, as I felt somewhat self conscious of trying to analyse each and every decision I made. A lot of the time this process slows me down so I tried to streamline the way I think and work this year in order to hopefully strengthen my practice for the future.
