COLLABORATION - Katie, Dr Me

Evaluation:

I feel that myself and Katie worked extremely efficiently and effectively on this brief. She was a great individual to work with as she is not afraid to think outside of the box and explore different possibilities. Katie is extremely pro active and therefore we were able to use both of our skills sets to achieve a lot in a short period of time. We were able to bounce ideas off of each other, and works things out visually, using the resources within the university to find out whether or not our ideas were going to be possible to create. 

We both worked on our strengths, splitting the brief into individual tasks so that the outcome was the best that it could be. This also allowed us to work on the brief separately and then come together and evaluate the development and progress. It also gave us the opportunity to work with materials and processes we had never previously considered, including acetate and digital fabric printing. 

I would definitely work with Katie again after this collaborative brief as she is full of ideas and willing to explore different avenues of design. It was also offered us the opportunity to see our work in an exhibition and a space that wasn't just the usual environment. We were proud of what we had achieved. 

Brief:

For the live brief for Dr Me, myself and Katie decided to work together in order to explore some initial concepts that we had came up with. We had a range of initial ideas for the flag brief. We originally decided on creating a pattern, as we both felt that we were strong at pattern design and this would allow us to show off our strengths. After looking at a range of different sources for inspiration, we came up with the concept of creating a flag that had different cut out sections. There would be two layers, the top layer would have the cut out shapes, and the second layer would have the pattern printed onto it. This way, the pattern would come through the cut away areas, creating circles of print. We felt that this was quite an interesting take on a flag design, as it incorporated different layers.

As we started developing our idea, we hit a few hurdles. As there was no real subject given to the flag, we struggled to come up with possible pattern ideas. We looked at geometrics, floral and linear patterns, yet struggled to get our ideas down on paper. We felt that we needed a stronger concept to continue with. 

Following this, we began to bounce new ideas off of each other. It was then decided that we would quite like to explore music, and therefore discussed this to see if we had anything in common in this area. I began talking about what I did over summer, stating that I had been to a festival in Poland called Open'er. Katie then asked me who my favourite artist there was, which was The National. It turned out Katie also loved this band, which led to the new concept of - The National Flag.

Focus on one song was then decided upon, and we ended up choosing Graceless. We went through the song and picked out a lyric that stood out to us.

"I'm trying, but I'm graceless."

Graceless seems to be all about dealing with human relationships in your life that you value, and there are times when certain aspects are beyond our control. You would always hope that you had the grace to deal with these situations with grace and care. Matt Berninger, the lead singer of The National, stated "A Person with grace is somebody who's socially graceful or is a classy person, but sometimes you just feel the opposite of that, and you just feel like a jerk and a loser and a weirdo." We wanted to pick up on this idea of contrast, being bold and conscious. Not being afraid to be graceless.