MAGCD Symposium 2021/22
The annual MAGCD symposium articulates and questions the contemporary landscape of graphic design from the perspectives offered by of our collective—but highly individual—practices. During the symposium, each of you will give a 7-minute (no more, no less) visual presentation focused on your Unit 2 studio work.
The aim, as always, is to show an open-ended and iterative studio practice that extends the limits of your knowledge and skills. Avoid grand claims and broad generalizations. Lead with the detail and specificity of your experiments. Show how that detail and specificity interact with the wider frames of reference (written and practice-based) of your research.
Structure your presentation in whatever way best suits your work, but keep in mind that simply narrating a sequence of your experiments (‘First I did this, then I did this…’) is likely to result in a dull presentation.
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Symposium slides
This pdf is in low resolution(72dpi) in order to be able to upload it here. The pdf I have submitted in the moodle is in high resolution!
Some slides from the pdf:
Questions arose during the Symposium
- Really interesting work. Do you find there are particular textures, surfaces and structures in the city that you will focus on mapping / deconstructing in future work? For example there are spreads dealing with segregation, defensive architecture that were poking through to me.
- Antreas: you should look at James Bridle’s writing, photographing, and walking tour of London, documenting surveillance infrastructure in 3 parts. It’s called the Nor: https://jamesbridle.com/works/the-nor
- Question for all: i’m interested in the rationale for choosing to ‘fix’ some variables while allowing others to change (through chance, through interpretation, etc.). what for you are the ‘fixed’ (unchangeable) aspects of your process?
- Question/comment: all three practices suggest very open-ended approaches to ‘meaning’, challenging whether visual material always has—or needs to have—’meaning’… open to any further thoughts on this…
PLAN (SLIDES)
INCLUDING BOTH TERMS’ WORK.
- Presenting the main parts of the whole work chronologically (I think it works best with what I am doing, as my practise develops step by step, starting from something small (snippet-arrow), then working towards to what I am doing now (it becomes something bigger).
- Questions that arise in between (this will show the progress and how each new iteration is connected to the previous one).
- Use more images than text. (having a lot of text will be boring in a 7-mins presentation.)
- The text I am using is in a diagrammatic way (using keywords and arrows to show the process, the way of thinking and the decision making).
.. in case you haven’t noticed, my presentation will be in black and white (almost).
+ INCLUDE MY INTENTION!
→ My intention is to create a readable format; convey a story in a different way. Develop my own method of storytelling; telling a story through the analysis of photographs/diagrams.
→ My intention is to make people think and wonder.
I can use a combination of chronological order and a series of questions that occurred through my work, for the structure of my presentation.
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Symposium slides – Experiment
Select five images & five short texts.
To help you think more intentionally about the structure and narrative of your presentation:
From your Unit 2 work, select five images (screengrabs or documentation of projects) as well as five short texts (one-or-two-sentence excerpts or quotes) that together represent the range of your research and exploration. Print each image and each text on its own A4 sheet. Then shuffle and reorder these then sheets to create different possible narrative structures for your presentation using the following guidelines:
1. Kishōtenketsu four-part story structure
Arrange your sheets to create an outline with an introduction, development, twist, and conclusion (see more here).
2. Debate
Arrange your sheets to create a debate or argument between two distinct perspectives or positions.
3. Reverse chronological order
Arrange your sheets in the reverse chronological order of their development or discovery (last to first).
And then:
4. Think about how each of these variations shapes an interpretation of your research, and then come up with a unique narrative structure that responds to—and supports—your specific practice.
What does an arrow communicate?
The arrow can be used as an element of sequence, process, destination, transformation, and storytelling.
The occupation or the origin of the viewer are not the main reasons behind an interpretation. Each viewer connects the elements of the diagram in a different way. Linear and non-linear types of thinking.
arrow + shape, line, (text) = diagram
diagram → interpretation → story
linear & non-linear types of thinking
interpretation = occupation, origin → knowledge, interests, experiences & beliefs.
The reader can unfold it, flip it, rotate it, and follow the various elements in order to form a story. A unique story that is generated out of diagrams without context. These elements are enough for the viewer to compare it with something and imagine an ‘image’.
one sequence of diagrams = many different interpretations/stories.
Behind each interpretation/story, shaped out of the diagrams is a hidden imaginative image.
How can an actual image coexist with a diagram?
Which is their relationship and how one interacts with the other?
Can a diagram replace an image? What stories occur?
A mixture of diagrams and illustrations; diagrammatic Illustrations.
A representation of something, visual reduction, simplified drawings, information conveyance → storytelling.
diagram vs illustration → diagrammatic illustration
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.
The story that occurs is the walk itself. Guided by what I see, based on my intuition, what catches my eye.
s-e-q-u-e-n-c-e
→ letting the environment make the decisions.
certain kind of images in each walk/story.
meaning → appearance/form + meaning → purpose/intention
→ story (metaphor, emotions)
Are all the images diagrammable? What are the parameters?
quantitative data vs qualitative data
Each story has its own meaning/sends a message, but there is not a strict plan in its structure or in the way of reading. The form is following and visualises the content of the photographs, and the use of the layout, typography, line, and scale reinforce this. All these can be constituted as major devices of storytelling; contributing to the structure and cohesion of each story (Rock, 2013). Moreover, the length and the variety of the stories allow going through them at any time of the day. Looking at something, reading a piece of information, thinking a little bit. This is how this project should be treated.