This morning was the presentation of our posters we’d made for a group task, that was based around brief of looking back to you proposal and thinking of a different way of addressing that question. This was one of those tasks that was geared toward the full time cohort as they’ve only been working on their projects for a few weeks and so it was important for them to think differently about their project to see how else they could tackle it. But it was a little different for me as I’ve been working / thinking / making my project since July time so I’ve been through a lot of changes already.
The main one being that in my proposal I was trying very hard to prove that the project was worth doing academically. I was tying it to Transmedia Storytelling very strongly, which it still is, but it was almost as if transmedia storytelling was the main focus and the graphic design was secondary to that. Or I was trying to fit that into the project. But after the research and now speaking to people who work in this field, I feel like the way I’m relating to the project has changed and moved towards me having ownership of it and not feeling like I need to convince anyone if it’s importance. The project has weight and the designs have merit so it’s more now about how to present that information and ideas to an audience.
I spoke to Mike last week about these posters being a way in for people to think about theme parks in a different way, or to highlight the work and craft that goes into this type of story telling that people might not instinctually notice or think about when thinking about theme parks.
Some other important things that came out of this tutorial was to start thinking about how other people might view or describe my project. It’s important to be able to talk about it in the third person to first off, give it some weight and purpose, but secondly in order to look at it objectively. One of the things thats very evident to me is that I’m very close to this project and know a lot about it. Well at least a lot more than most people. But I need to think about how I present it to someone who doesn’t know anything about it, or how I describe it to them.
Someone in the group was talking about minimalism as a project, which made me think about my design work professionally. Whenever I’ve attempted to do minimal design for a client, they have always wanted to throw the kitchen sink at the design. To make sure that the message is put across. So no one can misinterpret the idea. But minimalism doesn’t do this and gives the audience a level of credit that they will understand it or be able to figure it out. It made me think about how much credit WDI give their audience. Do they spoon feed some story elements to the guests or do they allow them to discover things on their own account. I’m inclined to think the later, but maybe this isn’t true across the board. Is this a fundamental philosophy of design, of is it one that changes from attraction to attraction, from story to story?
The other take away was about how to present what I’m making. I’m making these posters as individual studies of attractions but is there a theme connecting them, or a way of walking people through them that tells a story? This maybe something that is connected to psycho geography but that isn’t something I’ve had time to research yet. I need to do this next.
Someone in the group said there might be a timeline of attractions from the dates they are ‘set’ or the reference materials are from. This could be one option. But I was thinking that I might need to do more that 10 posters. Maybe 15. I’ve done 6 so far and have a list of 7 more to photograph next week at DLP, giving me 13 in total. So I might need to think of 2 more areas. Currently is have:
Ratatouille Area
Pinocchio restaurant
Big thunder mountain
Phantom manor
Walt’s restaurant
Fantasia Bar in Disneyland Hotel
Cable Car Bakery
The last thing that came up in the afternoon session I felt was interesting was when discussing the idea of ‘anchor points’ which Roland Barthes discussed in his book Camera Lucida. This idea has something to do with combining an image and a word, or an image and a sound to create meaning or a reaction or a memory. This made me think about how a lot of theme park fandom is done in retrospect. People have nostalgia for the parks and thats why they keep going back. The reassurance the park offers is based on how it made them feel last time, and it’s done this by combining images, smells, sounds etc. worth looking into.
Interview
I also carried out my second interview with a past WDI designer today, in Rob Yeo. Who hasn’t actually worked for WDI but has been contracted by them a few times on various projects. Namely attraction posters and the open / exit signs at DLP, which ironically I included in the Dapper Dans poster I made.
This was quite a different interview than the one with Scott and Debra Wren, firstly in that the conversation didn’t flow quite the same as it did with them. I don’t know if this was a British thing, or a zoom thing. Or that I was at uni in a hot room. But it all felt a little stilted.
I’ll have to do a transcript and full breakdown on the interview, but my initial take away was that Rob is very similar to me, in that he’s a big fan of the parks and someone who really enjoys the details like me, and so when WDI came knocking on his door, he was already primed to do the work. When doing the posters and the open signs, he wasn’t given any guidelines or philosophy or story documents, because he knew them already and was ready to go. Which strikes me as a little odd but I guess they didn’t need to quite as much. It makes me wonder how he made the choices he did in terms on type faces and colours, but I guess he just figured them out for himself and they worked. I asked him if he got any pushback from any of the design choices and he said he only did because of budget, not because they didn’t fit the story. Which is very interesting.
He also gave me some book suggestions to look into so I’ll see if I can find cheap versions of those at some point. And said he’ll reach out of a few designers in Europe that have worked across various parks. Maybe not Disney, so I’ll have to come up with questions aimed at non WDI people at some point.