Today was showing my prototype to the group and discussing where the project is going.
The main thing I was showing was first drafts at the book and analysis of the designs to will accompaniment to the posters. I’ve been thinking that this book will have a few stages or chapters that will serve as an introduction to the project, WDI and the theme parks. Then maybe a section about how I’ve gone about this project, then the analysis and then the philosophy of design ideas at the end. As I conclusion, or ‘what I’ve learnt’ type situation.
The main take away from the session was that Mike really liked the draft paper I’d used to print the test screen prints on. He suggested that maybe I use that for the posters so they become almost like a found document or folio that someone has discovered in a dusty draw somewhere. I’m not 1000% sure I agree with that as I like the idea of the posters being posters but maybe that’s something I can incorporate into the book design. Mike put me onto the Newspaper Club that will print small runs of publications on newspaper print so thats something to look into. Or possible I could screen print the pages of the book on that paper and then bind them together. But that would require a look of screens depending on how many pages it ends up being. Will have to do some maths about how many pages I can get on one screen.
I’ve filmed a few videos of the process of my vectorising the designs I’ve collected, so will speed them up as a time lapse style video, that will help with the chapter of the book on how I created this project.
We spoke a little about the use or lack of use, of colour in the project. I’ve spoken with Mike about this before and it really came about organically because I wanted to screen print the posters, but I always thought I would print something in colour. But after the experiments I did with halftone colour printing I realised that wouldn’t be an option so I’ve sticking with black and white. However it does result in a distillation of the designs into their basic forms, taken out of the worlds in which they live, which I always going to full of colour and noise and smells and movement, which is really the heart of what I’m trying to do. To elevate the designs to stand on their own merit and highlight them away from the world in which they are taken for granted.
In terms of take aways from today, we have a synopsis hand in in a couple of weeks, that I need to start thinking about and putting together. And also what are my next steps.
I feel like I’m getting to a point where I’ve red everything I can read in this project about theme park design. I’m going over a lot of things in different books and I don’t want to run out of time to spread the project out to more academic works. So once I’ve finished reading the imagineering book, the couple of books I have left and the field guides I’m collecting, I’ll call it a day with those and start properly looking at semiotics, physio geography, map making and everything else I’ve send I want to look at.
It’s interesting to look back at my proposal timeline and see that I’m doing exactly what I thought I would be, even though I feel like I’ve more away from that proposal a little bit.