Shared Moment

The shared moment with the fashion design students was interesting to se the way that they approached ihi/wehi and the different ways of thinking and process they had employed to come to that point. Such as taking into consideration different aspects of a historical precedent of a garment and critiquing or playing off it as a response in their piece.

Composition/Design Focus

Revising composition/FADP's is definitely good because up until this point we have been just sketching and focusing on putting our conceptual ideas on paper and not necessarily focusing on displaying the information/image in the most effective ways. These elements can enhance the effectiveness of our ideas dramatically and can have a significant effect our the voice of poster so it is good to take these into consideration as we move forward.

De Bono's Thinking Hats

The thinking hats I feel aren't the most useful way of progressing, as I feel as designers we already ask a lot of these questions and think in many different ways when we are designing, but I do feel it's useful maybe to force yourself into thinking in a way you may have ignored or forgotten and make sure you have covered all aspects of the post. i.e. I am not very black hat so it might be useful for me to make sure I have looked at it from a negative perspective.

Text Focus

Focusing on saying your message in different ways, especially to different audiences or in different lengths is yet another way of shaking up what we already have in order come out with the most effective way of communicating to your audience. I found it helpful even though I don't particularly struggle with words but simply trying different solution showed that even though the initial statement I had may have been perfectly fine, there are sometimes better ways of saying it if you try push yourself.

Random Input

I found random input very helpful in terms of showing how making random connections can help shake up ideas when we are stuck. There are some very fruitful ideas that we can use when we are stuck, such as relating politicians to fat cats.

Visual Library/Precidents

Creating a visual library is a useful tool for translating the ideas that we have in our mind maps into visual language to put on our poster. There are some connection to be made ie. politicians to aliens or voters to chains. This is helpful especially for initial ideation or if I get stuck to try different connections.

Observing Ihi and Wehi

Going out and trying to find examples of images, billboards or poster that try to convince you of an opinion was harder than I expected – most images nowadays are trying to sell you something not really an opinion.

It's very interesting paying attention to the reactions and thoughts that our minds have when seeing these image trying to convince us of ideas, something we usually do subconsciously. It highlights the point that not everything happens is obvious and observable.

I also found that although something is trying to convince me of one view, it can also not have the desired effect so it is important to try and understand all the effects your image can have and try to control that.