“As a starting point, we would like you to reflect on your work during GDE711. This will help you identify a subject that challenges your personal interests, identity or experience. Take time to revisit the content you generated for projects in this first module and consider how you were asked to analyse contemporary design practice, locality, noticing the ignored, self-evaluation and your place within the creative industries.
This initial process of reflection will lay the foundations for your four-week, self-initiated project. This week, you should be thinking about outlining a precise aim, objective, critical context, audience and potential outcome.
This module includes a series of case study interviews, conducted with industry practitioners who have experience setting, developing and completing their own self-initiated projects. Allow these exciting conversations to feed into creating your own project.”
Below, I will attach my original idea generating; I want to include the fact that I'm travelling and backpacking as part of my project this time, as travel has become a part of who I am, experiencing culture and the world. I've only just become, I've always envisioned myself as a designer who takes inspiration from the things around me, but it would be nice to put some of that into practice, ultimately. I have started some idea generating based on my surroundings, and below is what I've come up with.
Below are my three strongest ideas, more developed.
This project would focus on Aboriginal art not just as an aesthetic but as a form of language. Aboriginal artists use symbols to create complex storytelling, a fact that is often overlooked outside of Indigenous communities and museums. At the same time, Aboriginal artists are frequently separated from the wider Australian art world, their work framed as “other” or used for tourism rather than valued as a creative practice.
The aim of this project would be to explore Aboriginal art as a type of communication, while critiquing how it is boxed off from the mainstream art world. The audience for this work could include designers interested in symbolism and language, educators, and the general public who might only know Aboriginal art through stereotyped souvenirs.
The outcome could take the form of a zine that treats Aboriginal symbols as a language in their own right. It could also develop into a poster series showing how symbols tell stories or how they have been misused in mainstream culture.
This project would reflect on the ways constant movement has shaped my identity. My family always moved frequently due to my parents’ house-flipping business, and as an adult, I have become accustomed to temporary homes through travelling. Hostels, tents, ferry cabins, capsule pods and train seats all become places of belonging, but never permanently. The result is a feeling of belonging everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
The aim here would be to visualize identity as something fluid and “in between.” My audience could be young travelers, students, or anyone negotiating questions of identity and belonging. The work would also speak to the wider design community as an example of how personal narrative can shape creative outcomes.
The outcome could be a conceptual zine or manual titled something like How to Live Nowhere. This would combine photography, collage, typography and personal reflections, with each spread dedicated to a different kind of temporary home. My research would begin by looking at writing on identity, belonging and nomadism, alongside collecting images of temporary spaces. I would then study case studies of artists and designers who explore movement and displacement. The evaluation stage would reflect on how my own creative outcome connects back to these ideas and to my personal history.