WIP Publication 2022
The cohort publication—MA Graphic Communication Design In Progress—launches in January of each year. It collects together images and text excerpts from second-year students’ research practices and publishes them to a wider audience beyond our own community. The publication also serves as a record of the development of MAGCD across multiple years.
The publication is designed into a basic template that remains consistent each year. Prepare your own contribution to it by providing the following:
An excerpt
Select 400 continuous/contiguous words (not a collection of shorter excerpts) from anywhere in your written submission. Look for some detail in your research paper that shows off the depth of your thinking and also has echoes of the larger themes of your work. (It probably won’t be your introduction or conclusion.) Maybe a section where you place your work in context of others’ work or ideas. Maybe an excerpt from an interview or discussion. Select something with critical ‘flex’.
A ‘hook’
Write a short statement (15 to 30 words maxiumum) that will entice someone to read your excerpt. If you had to explain your work to someone outside the MAGCD community, how would you articulate it? Maybe it would hint at your ‘line of enquiry’ and give some indication of the methods you’ve used to explore it. Here are two examples from previous years:
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Storytelling through diagrams: Using diagramming as a graphic communication tool to generate stories through the analysis of photographs captured in my urban surroundings.
Walking, observing, analysing, making stories.
Data and information are most of the time not clearly seen in a photograph. However, they are there, hidden or connected to it. Consequently, the image is used as the source, the starting point from which new stories and spaces can occur through diagrammatic analysis. A background to build on. This is also why the diagramming method I am developing is not the traditional way of data representation. It is characterized by an illustrative approach in combination with information analysis, metaphor, and storytelling. A mixture of images, diagrammatic illustrations, and text.
Even if some photographs cannot be translated into data, they still have context. This is where the use of a diagram introduces a technical component (a series of parameters). I came across such parameters through my practice and experiments that are worth questioning. My area of research focuses more on qualitative data (quality) and not so much on quantity and numbers. This means that the research involves collecting and analysing non-numerical data, such as images, to understand concepts or experiences. The most common way to analyse something visual is to first translate it into text (Gibbs, 2018). This will help in gaining information or creating new information about something noticed in the street.
However, the question that arises here is what kind of image or information can be diagrammable (able to be diagrammed or represented by a diagram). Here comes the use of the text that acts as a bridge and connects the photograph’s content with the diagram’s visual elements. As an impact, some diagrams can be characterized by their function and some others by their meaning, which introduces another challenge; finding a way of how these two can be combined.
Urban findings (photographs) + Diagrammatic illustrations/analysis → Function & Meaning → Story
Richard Long is a practitioner of land art, deriving inspiration from personal experiences and life in nature. He creates works that trace his physical movement through space; simple creative acts of walking, focusing on place, locality, time, distance, and measurement. (Richard Long, 2021). Following lines in the environment, connecting what you see to form a piece of information, or building new spaces through nature are a few of the ideas that come to my mind. The act of building ‘spaces’ reminds me also of Ricardo Basbaum’s work, with a different approach and method. Ricardo builds discursive and non-discursive spaces through his diagrams, creating dialogues and stories (Basbaum, 2016).
Reference List
Basbaum, R. (2016) Diagrams, 1994 – ongoing. Berlin: Errant Bodies Press.
Gibbs, G.R. (2018) Analyzing qualitative data (Vol. 6). Sage, pp. 3-5.
Richard Long (2021) Available at: http://www.richardlong.org/