PGC term reflective summary report

When applying for a MA programme in Art&Design at NTU, we make an initial project proposal. I take it this is to show our point of interest in research and the level of dedication to the subject that we are going to become masters of. In my case, MA Branding and Identity Design, my initial proposal was entitled "Defective Branding - An investigation into the negative effects of branding". It was fairly clear in my head at that early stage and I was looking forward to making a really evil brand and having fun with finding how to do it. The idea was to find a way of raising public awareness towards a socially responsible, ethical and non-consumerist lifestyle.

Three months and a lot of contextual reviewing and confusion later, I have decided that an evil brand would not be doing anyone any good, as the world is already packed with such brands. Let us be socially responsible for once, let us do something good for the greater benefit. Branding is a very dangerous kind of tool. The kind that needs to be handled by adults or with adult supervision. It has to be used responsibly. So, I've decided to find a way to use Branding and Brand Communication Design to promote a better lifestyle, one that is socially responsible, ethical and non-consumerist. Like an adult should. On reflection, it doesn't sound very different from the start, which is quite reassuring. But it was only a few days before handing in my Learning Agreement, that I have been able to phrase the correct question and justify my research in academic context.



Here are outlined the assignments and events/series of events that had a major impact to how I got there:

Needs Must Project: From babble to Babel: adjusting to the NTU MA environment.

Design Process Project: Scope: skills awareness and critical communication.

Project Proposal Presentation: "Resistance is futile": five questions and the return to babble.

Group tutorials: "What am I talking about?": realization of utter confusion and finding the way to communication.

Backwards Brief Project: Case Study of most recent Marilyn Manson album packaging: the importance of case studying.

Mind maps: "Orders of chaos without math and fractals": the way to comprehension from the verge of insanity.

Self directed unofficial assignment: Method and methodology exercise: riddle solving between cultures, contexts and language codes.

Literature review: "It is a big world out there": the vast scope of the subject

Waverley theater lecture series: "It is a big world in here, too": instructions for way-finding and reports on found ways.

Graphic design group seminar series: "We're in this together": familiarization with alienation.

Learning agreement: "Where everything falls into place": 'the real McCoy's' of brain fitness.

This report: "Intellectual exercise": better understanding of what it has taken to get this far and what has been achieved.

I must also note the importance of a couple of subject-specific seminars that occurred in November, the Graphic Design one by Andy Ellison and the Illustration one by Neal Cresswell. These helped me to gain control of certain thought processes that were going on in my head and I wasn't even aware of.

The visit to the Imperial War Museum in Manchester on the 29th of October, had also a major impact to my reasoning. The world looks very distorted from that tower. Please note that the 28th of October is a sort of national holiday in Greece, when the nation celebrates not the humiliating end of World War II, but the nation's proud entry into it...

Now I feel that I have to make a little account of my progress on a parallel but slightly different level.

I hear that it is quite normal to get confused and feel lost at some stage through the MA. Relying on this information kept me going through the low drops of self-confidence, that came to me quite early. I have complete trust to the MA programme's processes, but I still think it very valuable to acknowledge this confusion.

The main cause of my confusion has had to do with a concept of science fiction that I found early on to be very relevant to what I was investigating. Science fiction books and films are usually very informed and informative about the issues they're dealing with. Their authors and directors present alternative realities that are strikingly possible, and to achieve that, they present amazing case studies on subjects as real as the news. I believe that combining some 'real' bits of science fiction with academic literature on sociology and brand communication design, can have similar results as when combining some other 'real' bits of science fiction with science and engineering. In other words I have in mind to apply a common technological progress method to branding. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to communicate this efficiently to make for academic research, so far, and I'm really sorry for the lack of vocabulary and language skills that would permit me to proceed. However, my progress so far is evidence to myself that I can achieve it in time, once the necessary skills have been acquired. It is clear to me that this MA is the most important skill in itself. I need to master research into branding and brand communication design in relation to social responsibility / ethical / non-consumerist values, otherwise, to put it simply, I risk going insane sooner than later...

It might be of some worth here, to share with peers and assessors the personal reflection, that I'm coming from a background where the use of words like ethics and branding is massively immoral. Like with the words science fiction, in this order, they are describing something out of place in a pretty bad sense. Such words signify mass control and mind manipulation, both of which are enemies to freedom. The sound of these words make almost everyone I know grin and shudder. Putting them together is a bi-lingual blasphemy, back where I'm coming from. Branding is not yet even translated in common Greek (Have I told you that I'm coming from Greece? It's on Mars.) 'Ethics' comes with a big question mark and horrible selfish politics attached to it. Pollution and racism are still the norm, the most beautiful landscapes are violated by brutal land exploiters and their crude concrete constructions, employment is jammed up and everyone wants to look bourgeois... And anyway, I have had to build myself a career in that environment, and never compromise my disagreement towards the fore-mentioned norm. Maintaining ethos and composure while every day happiness and peace of mind was getting further away, has been taking its toll. For such reasons, words like hotel and luxury have been making my stomach upset. I am very happy to be leaping further out of that environment by the hour, while understanding it better with my current research. As I'm trying to reposition and re-contextualize myself, I am undergoing some very deep changes and my mental processes are somewhat slowed down due to reconstruction. I do apologize for sounding confused sometimes but yes, in a way I am right to be confused. And I'm dealing with it. And I believe I am making significant progress. Ethics and culture are very very wide contexts. And so are branding, identity and design.

OK. Back to the term report.

The main turn of events was in mid-November, when I was fortunate to have a conversation with Simon Perkins, about rhizomes, networking, folksonomy and design functioning, within hours from another conversation with Steve O'Brien, about typology of symbols and about my initial mind-map. I decided to mind-map my way out of the confusion at that point.

Sequentially, the fourth mind-map was the clearest I could come up with, amidst my frustration and confusion. This was presented to Stuart Hodges on the third group tutorial with him. And it worked! Sort of. It was still pretty hectic, but sufficient enough for his trained eye to see what I was struggling to say. Stuart presented to me the Designers' Accord (2008) and I was happier than a baby that had just said its first word, and enormously puzzled at the same time by my failing to have found this piece of information earlier on my own.

And there we had it, Stuart helped phrase the big question, and everything fell into place with incredible speed and precision, straight away. Still, the Learning Agreement is no easy task, as it requires such fluency skills in English that even most English people don't have. But the group meeting with my tutorial group fellow students, on discussing our learning agreements, helped me a lot.

Sadly, I've reached the end of this stage with very little visual research done, but this is compensated with the amount of literature information I have gathered instead, that can be used towards a less confused second stage.

Here are the most influential books I have managed to read within this term (some of them in full and some only partly):

Barthes R. (1993). Mythologies. London: Vintage.
Braun T. (2004). The philosophy of branding - Great philosophers think brands. London and Philadelphia: Kogan Page
Crow D. (2003). Visible Signs, An introduction to semiotics. South Africa: AVA Publishing
Gray, C. and Mallins, J. (2004), Visualizing Research: a guide to the Research process in art and design, Hants: Ashgate
Klein N. (2000). No Logo. London: Flamingo, Harper Collins Business.
Olins W (2003). On Brand. London: Thames and Hudson.
Ries, A. and Ries, L. (1998), The 22 immutable laws of branding. London: Profile Books
Thomson G. (2008). Mesmerization - The spells that control us - Why we are losing our minds to global culture. London: Thames and Hudson
Urry J. (2003). Global Complexity. Polity Press and Blackwell Publishing
Visocky O'Grady, J and Visocky O'Grady, K. (2006), A Designer's Research Manual, Mass: Rockport
Wheeler A. (2003). Designing Brand Identity; a Complete Guide to Creating, Building and Maintaining Strong Brands. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons Inc.

And the following are the URL's of the most influential on-line articles I have come across:

the Designers Accord:
http://www.designersaccord.org/mission/
Jan Michl:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2360/eng.firstthingsfirst.html
Dr Robert Beckford:
http://www.open2.net/historyandthearts/history/bloodlines_page.html

An extensive list of URL's, articles and on-line books I have reviewed, can be found in my learning journal along with excerpts and summaries. A great lot of information has come from or via Wikipedia. But the best of it came from the supervisors. Thank you's.

So far, I have been finding it a struggle to use NOW and library e-search. I have in mind to improve on it.

I'm finding this on-line reflective journal blog very constructive. Writing mine and reading those of the rest of the MA Graphics group is a great asset to personal development. I wish the supervisors were able to take part in this with their own blogs but I guess it is rather impossible. However, there is Simon Perkins's folksonomy.org that is a very informative application with articles on subjects that are of major interest to our studies and I'm recommending it to peers.

One thing I have found very discouraging, and I need to mention in this report, is the questions matter. At the end of most lectures, seminars and presentations, I must have broken the local record of questions asking. It has been very natural to me, as it is my method for evaluating the information I receive and, ultimately, comprehending it. On the other hand, I haven't been asked many questions at all, which is ultimately my method of evaluating the information I present. This played a major role to the drop of my self confidence and, eventually, to my confusion. I started feeling like an imbecile very early. I know it's kind of funny, but being one of the 'maturer' students in the programme and my group, I soon felt sort of isolated. I can't really blame anyone for this, and it wasn't entirely unexpected, but I'm finding this issue a difficulty that has to be stated here.

As a sort of confession, I have been neglecting the language improvement workshops with Walter Nowlan, regretfully. As I have also been doing with the Solidworks 3D modeling workshops. But priority was given to literature review and contextualization of my subject and it seems like I, personally, couldn't have done otherwise.

Last but not least, I need to mention the Postgraduate Career Opportunities that NTU is running. I did get a successful interview but implications did not permit further progress. And then I got a second chance, the results of which are still pending. It is great to link with the real world. Also worth mentioning is NTU's own gym, O2 max, that isn't the greatest gym I have seen, but physical exercise is important to mental wellness and I have been taking advantage of it every once in a while. It helps with the research process almost as much as the primary and secondary research methods.