Just finished printing poster number 6, which is great to know I’m almost at my target of 10. I’m going to DLP in two months so I will get the rest of the reference material myself, which is good because my international resources have dried up! I’ll check in with them though to see if they have any more. I feel like I’ll keep making the studies as long as I keep getting the photos.
I’ve been thinking recently about the product I’m making with this project and how I foresee it being a homage to the Grammar of the Ornament, with an introduction to the project, an overview of what Imagineering is, and then the studies. With an overview of the style and references used in each attraction, and then culminating in a philosophy of design for visual culture at the end? I say ‘end?’ Because the design ideas in GOTO comes at the start! So we’ll see.
But for this poster book, I was thinking I might need to recreate the studies in colour and print them as full colour plates, like GOTO has done. Hopefully this won’t be too much of an arduous process and something I can do in photoshop. Maybe illustrator if it’s not too time consuming. But this will mean I’ll be able to talk about some of the colour theory that John Hence talks about in his book.
I’ve also been reading a lot across the board, and in Marty Skylars’ books he talks about his ‘Mickey’s 10 commandments’ which he outlines in ‘Dream it! Do It’ but goes into more detail about each one in ‘One Little Spark’ - this one I am only half way through so don’t know exactly how detailed but so far, very useful!
Anyway, I think what I’m looking to achieve is something similar, but for visual culture. I’ll definitely used those commandments as a starting point, and a reference point, but be more specific about the graphic design aspect of it all.
I almost feel like I’m at a point where I could start doing the analysis of the studies. It might be a good idea to do a test run, or a first draft of one and see where that gets me. At the moment it’s all a little ‘blank page’ and I don’t know where to start with it. But if I get a first draft down and show it to Mike maybe I can start building out from that?
What I really want to do before any of that is speak to people. I messaged someone on Reddit who never got back to me, which is a shame, but I do think this is going to be a difficult process. But I’ve got a list of names so I might as well start.
I need to figure out what basic questions I want to ask them. Their background, how to came to be working for, or with WDI? What they worked on? What the process was for building a brand guidelines as such for the attraction / thing they were designing for? What WDI is like to work for? What they idea of the parks was before and afterwards? These are all just off the top of my head now, I’ll add to this list as I go.
I’m just worried I’ll reach out to them and get no one come back, as I feel like this is a key ingredient to my project. I’m sure I could make a good study on my own without them, but I know it would be 1000 times better if I had first hand input From the people that did the work!