I finished the last tutorial feeling confident that I could carry this through but within a few days, I lost my way again. It is so frustrating that I keep seeing flashes in my minds eye, but nothing clear or true seems to present itself.

The only narrative device that seems want to express itself is one of cause and effect but I can’t help feeling this is not enough. But the more I prevaricate and tread water, the harder resolving this dilemma becomes.

I really enjoyed the film title project last year and I keep getting pulled back to that. But every thread of a idea so far, seems trite, banal and cliché and just not “me”. The story of the design process is the only I seem to have that has any merit but I don’t know how to begin?

Thinking about the last tutorial of semester A. I waited all day to finally show a little more than a pile of pictures which all seem to be leading somewhere, but I don’t know where or what that is ?

Are they triggers that when seen in a certain order, will allow me to express myself in a way that finally feels right ?

The best guess idea I can come up with is that these are all clues and flashes of inspiration that reflect who I am and what I am. I think the comment made by one of the other students (Jake) was very insightful, he said it was like I’m exploring the or trying to show the philosophy of design. I think this is true and I’m looking for the “rules” that govern design, when in actual fact, they don’t as such exist. How do I show my “aesthetic” when I don’t know if I have one?

Ok, so I know that all this is leading somewhere and that I do have the potential within me to produce work of the required standard and that it will be pictorial rather than graphical or textual (well they keep saying play to your strengths).

Fonts don’t inspire me, logos don’t inspire me, layouts don’t inspire me (but at least make sense), but narrative does. If only I knew what the story was I wanted to tell?

The closest idea I can come up with is one that reflects or illustrates the process of design, how inspiration – cause and effect – demonstrates my “skills”. Everyone like the stop motion animation mpeg but I have no confidence to take that forward. I can’t see if the “films” should be an advert for me, hosted on a website. Or is it in fact a website that hosts bits of me in flash/web animation or stills or whatever.

What is even worse is I can see the shortcomings and strengths in the work of other students – more so now than ever but I can’t see the strengths within my own work (in the same way or that is at least how it feels to me).

The strange things that when I see some of the work the other students produce, what they present seems so obvious a solution (to me) that I would have dismissed it and tried something different. If anything I’m over-thinking my ideas, it is because I don’t have that basic artistic technical skill perhaps?

Maybe I express my perspective and experiences via a cynical and more subtle (or what I see as subtle?) approach, which is in fact just a one dimensional joke ?

With this website project I’ve just been stumbling along, hoping to be inspired and to be able to find something in me that causes that spark. Having said all this though I know that the one thing I have got from the graphics class is a more controlled understanding of the edit process (filtering the chaff from the wheat) so to speak. But at the moment its like I have two ends of a piece of string or two pieces of material hat need to be stitched together so you cannot see any knots or joins.

Talking a picture is easy (to me at least) I an visualize clearly how I want the image to look but trying to fill a blank page seems even more daunting than before. Admittedly my confidence is stronger and I can argue or justify or discuss my choices better but I still don’t feel anything graphically shows and any raw skill. I always feel my work falls short and lacks a certain connection or relevance – but I’m aware I often try to express something of me through humor or visual metaphore.

For weeks I have been struggling to understand and illustrate exactly what it is I want to express, I’m now only slightly the wiser. How do I show a process of understanding and learning of an aesthetic that has no clear black and white rules?

I’m now even more painfully aware I don’t have any ‘innate’ design skills. Granted I can frame and construct an image that already exists and/or capture a moment and preserve that perspective I have on any given situation but how do I apply that same approach to design? I don’t know if I ever can. I can see how each of the projects we did last year all lead me to this point, it is a bit of an epiphany – in as much as I feel or see the difference in how I approach a problem (but I guess I’m still stuck in a number of ways).

mmm....

Well I eventually got to show John the rough drawings and he kinda reached the same conclusions I had, namely so far all I'd done is icons. It occurred to me though that this project is just a distillation of all the other projects we have done and that we should have been this project as something to work on over the summer.

All this project is pages of information which in effect is all the projects mashed up together... So, lists = the record covers project, maps = the recipe project, icons = the memory card project, the title sequence project = animation / flash / narrative.

To keep things simple, I'm going to use iweb and see how far I can get with it. Seeing as how I paid for the training sessions in advance, I may as well use them.

No end of "useful" advice available on the net...

and most of what they say seems fairly obvious to me already but this site seems to sum it up quite well.


http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/tutorials/design/design/


1) Proximity

2) Visual Hierarchy

3) Symmetry / Asymmetry

4) Repetition

5) Unity

6) Contrast

7) Dynamics

8) Emphasis


So my draft proposal which I will present tomorrow consists of a front page and the basic hierarchy of the content that will be found within each sub section thereof.

I haven't a scooby about coding..

but what I have got is a nice new mac and access to the one-to-one training sessions that are offered at purchase (basically as many 50 minute sessions as you can book in a year).

So, I had one last Saturday and have begun to get familiar with iweb. Hopefully this should allow me to at least create a basic web page and have an understanding of how to construct the hierarchy of pages to make it navigable.

To a certain extent, this draws on one of last years projects where we had to design memory cards, in as much as we drew icons that would be recognisable. Hopefully this will have been of help when it comes to designing the navigation buttons that allow access to the various areas of content.

Lets start at the very begining...

The web is only 20 years old. I say only 20 but I can remember what life was like before the w.w.w. For example, once upon a time you actually had to pay for pornography.

So how did this amazingly useful thing come into existence?

The World Wide Web was born when Tim Berners-Lee, a researcher at CERN, the high-energy physics laboratory in Geneva, developed HyperText Markup Language. HTML, as it is commonly known, allowed the Internet to expand into the World Wide Web, using specifications he developed such as URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol). A browser, such as Netscape or Microsoft Internet Explorer, follows links and sends a query to a server, allowing a user to view a site.


Here is a copy of his proposal as to how it works:





Below is an interview from 10.23.1999 from Wired magazine by Chris Oakes.



"Tim Berners-Lee has finally spoken. His new book, Weaving the Web, chronicles how the Web really happened and where its creator thinks it should go from here.

In 1989, at the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, Berners-Lee first proposed a "global hypertext project" to be known as the World Wide Web. He wanted researchers like himself to be able to easily and automatically combine their knowledge in a Web of hypertext documents.

Berners-Lee wrote the software that would eventually open the Web browser and provide its underlying protocols: the hypertext markup language, or HTML, and the hypertext transfer protocol, the http:// that precedes the zillions of Web addresses -- Uniform Resource Locators, or URLs -- that are now as ubiquitous as ZIP codes.

Such topics may be as enticing to lay readers as fingernails on a chalkboard. But when Berners-Lee starts talking them up, things get interesting. Such topics are fundamental to his once and future vision for the Web as a body of living intelligence, a place where any piece of information can be linked to any other piece of information. Berners-Lee is still dealing with the fact that that vision is far from realized.

He remains director of the Web's standards-bearer, the World Wide Web Consortium, which he founded shortly after arriving at MIT in 1994. It may have seemed a simple decision to go nonprofit, but his objective was to ensure that the W3C remained universally accessible. As he told Wired News, the job was not as easy as it looked and, even today, it's a challenge.

Wired News: Are you comfortable being referred to as the inventor of the World Wide Web?

Tim Berners-Lee: I don't mind being, in the public context, referred to as the inventor of the World Wide Web. What I like is that image to be separate from private life, because celebrity damages private life.

WN: Is it an appropriate label though? HTTP, HTML, URLs are all your inventions, right? So it seems that the label does apply.

Berners-Lee: Pretty much. I basically wrote the code and the specs and documentation for how the client and server talked to each other.

WN: You had the Internet itself to inspire you of course in some of the protocols that were already there.

Berners-Lee: Oh, I had a whole lot. In fact, a lot of the design decisions were not only using that experience, but also they were, if you like "techno-political" decisions to make HTTP look like NNTP and mail [the Internet's existing standards for Usenet discussion groups and email]. I was trying to leverage as much of the existing technology and existing understanding out there as well. Same thing with HTML -- basing it on SGML, because that was the only common format people had talked about for hypertext at all.

WN: You were essentially adding a separate layer, an additional application on top of this thing that was the Internet, correct?

Berners-Lee: Well, the most important thing that was new was the idea of URI -- or URL [it was UDI back then, universal document identifier]. The idea that any piece of information anywhere should have an identifier, which will not only identify it, but allow you to get hold of it. That idea was the basic clue to the universality of the Web. That was the only thing I insisted upon.

WN: To make sure people understand about that new element, the URI. What was the URI, which became more commonly known as the URL?

Berners-Lee: [They are] these funny things that start http-colon-slash-slash, and then some gobbledygook which is the name of the document. The thing which is sometimes called the Web address, the thing which you find in shortened form painted on trucks and vegetables and all kinds of things now. Basically it identifies some piece of information out there on the Web.

WN: There was a short article in Wired magazine in 1993 about this thing it called "W3." Speaking of this newfangled idea of yours, the article read: "As soon as more and more client software becomes available, Berners-Lee expects more and more information to be woven into the Web." Did you have any sense at the time of the phenomenon you had touched off?

Berners-Lee: By '93, yes. It was never clear that it wouldn't just stop. Any time during that exponential growth, it could have stalled. I think we were never very confident until 1993.

WN: But the indications that you had done something that was catching fire were very clear by that point?

Berners-Lee: They were fairly clear, but even then [it could still have fragmented]. It could still fragment. There could still be a huge battle which leaves a big mess and [fragments the Web] into two pieces whenever a new feature comes along. Everybody who runs a Web site knows we're not assured of compatibility, and we could end up with a split. For example, now the pressure is from the TV, PCs, PDAs. Different sized screens -- should they have different Webs? That was a very important initial assumption: Whatever the device you use for getting your information out, it should be the same information.

WN: In one of your recent interviews you mentioned that you considered, then abandoned, the idea of starting a dot-com company back in 1993. People may not appreciate the role you've played, steering the Web through the World Wide Web Consortium since then. What would have happened if the Web had not had a Tim Berners-Lee, or somebody in your stead, doing the work you've been doing to preserve its essence?

Berners-Lee: What could have happened is that you don't find simply a URL listed somewhere. You'd find a URL plus 'you must use this software' or 'you must get a particular piece of hardware in order to follow this link.' [If that happens], a URL is not enough. It's not enough to make a link to something. You have to say somewhere that you need [a] particular browser, you should probably be running on this sort of operating system, or this sort of hardware.

There was a huge amount of diversion that was happening just at that point -- '93 to '94. Every browser had its own flavor of HTML. So it was very difficult to know what you could put in a Web page and reliably have most of your readership see it. And that was a dire situation, which people at the Consortium worked on pretty hard.

WN: So many ideals were put forth in 1993 and 1994, many of them by Wired magazine: There was the idea that the Web as an interactive medium would bring society together in ways no medium had before. Another idea was that ordinary people could collaborate on new ideas. They could loosen the chains of one-to-many media, and bring about a new kind of electronic democracy.

In today's Internet IPO world, the Web seems to mean entrepreneurs slapping dot-com on the end of anything -- say, pet food -- hoping that venture capitalists will jump on board.

You say in your book that the Web is "not done," and it's the old ideals that dominate your vision for the future. Can we still get to a place where the Web can survive its current gold-rush mentality? What are the chances for your high-minded ideals to succeed?

Berners-Lee: It's not just high-minded ideals, but fun -- being able to play, doing the creativity in the Web, rather than doing it offline and then somehow compiling it into a Web page -- that sort of thing.

I think that it needs a lot more bits that I initially realized. I thought all we need is a decent, really intuitive editor for creating this stuff. But in fact, if you're going to use it collaboratively you have to very good access control too -- access control where you can create groups [of collaborating users].

And we didn't have all of that underneath. We didn't have the cryptography to actually make it secure, defined in standards. You can allow people to talk to each other, but then you have to guarantee that they know who's going to have access to the conversation and all that ... lots of other pieces which were necessary. That's one of the reasons why it didn't happen.

The question is interesting. It leads to the point that people are looking, at the moment, at applications which are built fairly thinly on the Web. The sort of thing where you can write the Perl script in an afternoon and produce a new Web site addressing a new market, or a new business model. And you can clean up, and you can go to the IPO remarkably quickly.

But nobody in that process has added to the ten-year, twenty-year vision of what the Web should fundamentally be and whether it should be changing. I hope that companies -- difficult for startups -- but I hope that large companies will continue to fund the research into the more distant future, and that the government will. And that we don't get this feeling that the Web's done. People keep asking me what I think of it now that it's done. Hence my protest: The Web is not done!

There are a lot of big challenging questions in there. There are a lot of things that are not easy to write in an afternoon. There are things that are going to take a long time."

Can I find myself on the web in four weeks ?

Work up a web presence in four weeks...I've never really seriously considered that I need a web page as I hadn't really intended to return to employment (self or otherwise) as yet but fate decrees otherwise.

A good project to be set though and an interesting change in the teaching style and the dynamic. With Tim and John it was very clear who straight man and who was the joker, with Pete and Jon its more good cop / bad cop and as yet I can't tell which is which ? But at least I know the class won't be dull.


Going back to notes I made in class;

How do I see myself ?

How do I want to be seen ?

Given my lack of techy skills, how do I even design a web page (reaches for web pages for dummies)

What content do I need to provide ?

How important is a logo ?

Should the web page reflect me as an artist (in terms of my creativity) acting purely as a gallery

OR

Should it define me more as a multi-skilled practitioner ?


So...lets split this in 3 main tasks.

Technical.

1) Web domain name
2) Site host
3) What programme / tools to use to create a page ?
4) Who can I ask for assistance from ?


Design, navigation and interaction.

1) Front Page
2) T.B.C.


Content.

1) Photography projects
2) Graphics projects
3) Multimedia (Video/Film/Etc)
4) Contact information


Ok, by next Wednesday I need to present a rough front page layout on paper....keep watching this space.

What have I done...?

If I am honest, over the break I've done bugger all except be ill, take 12 weeks to get well and complete my house sale. Divorce beckons but onwards and upwards says I.

NIL ILLIGITEMI CARBORUNDIUM.

Last one...

I think that doing the film "Doze" has been one of the hardest things I have ever done.

I think I have now spent something like 70 hours storyboarding, filming, cutting and re-cutting the images..and then having to edit the music also.


I do actually like what I have produced though, which isn't something I often say.


Tim also describing it as "...beautiful" must mean I did somethings right at least.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4laX_ZW53AE

Oh this is a great site to find....who new that Saul Bass was so highly regarded ?

Ok, Tim and John did....as well as the whoever set this site up.


http://saulbass.tv/


I wonder how Saul B would do a title sequence ?

Music, then pictures ?

Or see the film or read the script and then go away and story board ?


Note to self (Storyboarding really did help shape the cut.

Tim liked the rough cut, well the images anyway.

I quite liked Wolfsbane as the soundtrack but I guess I now see that the song is driving the pictures, not the other way around.

Ok, so of the images tie up with the song, but is that so bad ?

Infomercial and a film...

Blimey thats difficult.

Thats a number of problems to sort out, namely how do you shoot and edit a film ?

But at least we have six weeks in which to do it.

Whats the biggest tragedy or disaster waiting to happen ?


What's a slow killer.....it seems pretty obvious.

Knife crime seems to be an epidemic waiting to happen.


http://www.leapconfrontingconflict.org.uk/


As for the film...I guess I need to go watch some classics for inspiration.

Even more stuff

So what have I learnt about the last few weeks...Yes, I really can't draw for shit.

Rendering things up on mac makes things look that much slicker and polished, but in terms of design doesn't really make things any better.

I never should have stopped taking Prozac at Christmas, I was much happier before...well I mean not happier...but less frustrated and any problem was just one stage slightly removed and easier to be objective about.

That said though I did learn a few tricks combing Illustrator and Photoshop, all i need know is an up to date copy of CS ... that and a laptop that won't fall over as soon as I try to run them both together.

More Stuff

It's bloody hard to work up an uninspiring idea.

That and I thought it would be easy to carve a foam block...it's not and the stuff goes everywhere.

It looked ok on paper, but once I started it, it all just looks a bit playschool.

I'm scrabbling around trying to make a piss poor idea work, if I'm honest, I'm just polishing a turd.


The Necropolis project is a lot more interesting though...it seemed a simple brief to understand at first but actually has considerable depth.

At what point does a homage or reconstruction of old design become a pastiche' ?

It's really obvious now, far more than it was before that it is so easy to make simple mistakes and create something trite and cliche'd. It's a bit like having to find signposts partially obscured behind trees.

You can see them, you can see where they point but you can't clearly see the details.

Stuff

Ok ...so this box project.


This is ready hard, I just can't make a connection with this.

Is it all about the construction or the whats in the box or what is on the outside ?


The roughs all look like a point of sale device for memory sticks.

That said though I did like the idea of the puzzle - a ball trapped inside a box.

Kind of a metaphor for thinking outside the box.

If i'm honest though, they all look uninspiring and somewhat naive and pretentious.

Hurrah...we are back

Hurrah we are back and what does the wonderful world of Graphics at U.E.L. have in store for us now ?

A container......make a box or a custom piece of packaging.


Necropolis.......raid the past to make the future ?


I still don't get the point of writing this blog ?

It's not like anyone actually reads this stuff.

I'm getting Cabin Fever...the snow doesn't help....shame we didn't get set any projects over the break.

But at least I've had time to go see two brilliant exhibitions....I just wish I'd go off my arse sooner to go see them, It kinda puts alot of what we have discussed about in lectures into perspective.

PURE BEAUTY John Baldassari at Tate Modern.

&

Fifty Years of Painting Ed Ruscha at The Hayward.

Both amazing..glad I went.