L4 ITAP Lecture: Visual vocabulary

Five principles of this lecture 

• Legibility
• Researching the content
• Researching the practice
• Tone of voice
• Visual hierarchy

Today I am going to focus on the importance of research and how our understanding of the subject at hand can help further develop our ideas and lead us to our final delivery. When receiving our brief  there are 3 key stages that we go through before delivering the final product. They are:

• RESEARCH
• DEVELOPMENT
• PRODUCTION

Staying on the topic of research however, there are two key principles; Researching the practice, which may include graphic communication, illustration, photography etc AND Researching the content, which takes into consideration the subject/topic and the target audience.

Ways of researching and learning: Gathering data and researching the content, reflecting on the research, thinking and coming to a conclusion from the research and planning the next stage.

Everyone has a different way of researching data, it all starts off by listing the key points of information that we wish to look into. So in terms of researching a city, you would look for, names people use, landmarks, key routes, confusions, maps. All the data you collect helps to increase the credibility of your research.

Researching the content. 

How do we find out about researching content for our brief ?

Researching the content consists of a cycle that involves DOING some research, REFLECTING on the research, THINKING and concluding from the research and PLANNING the next research. This is based off of Kolb’s Learning Cycle (Theory) which involves a similar cycle consisting of CONCRETE EXPERIENCE, REFLECTIVE OBSERVATION, ABSTRACT CONCEPTUALISATION, and ACTIVE EXPERIMENTATION.

It is said that a different types of designers prefer one part of this cycle, thus you have DESIGNER A, who is a ‘doing’ person, DESIGNER B, a reflective person, DESIGNER C, a thinker and DESIGNER D, a planner.

So what do we do when we research ?

Take map design for example, the researcher has to collate all forms of data. You have to think about, key routes, landmarks, local slang for the area, the style of the  map and the way you wish to communicate the information. You have to constantly think about the information you wish to include, how it has been gathered, what format you wish to use and how big it is. Every factor that you can possible think of needs to be studied and applied to your work.

Critical commentary on researching content

Find examples of the visual communications for which content research has been necessary and explain how and why.

Researching the practice. 

How do you find out about your chosen practice ?

To figure this out we have to get into the minds of a visual communicator and start to understand how they think. How do they decide what style/colour/typeface/media to use ? You have think about what has already been designed, why it was designed and how they did it. Most importantly, think about who inspires you, who’s style do you admire and why ?

Look out for visual data that could help improve your research, Listen, it gives you a sense of your surroundings and helps to add your own opinion to your research. Read, it expands your knowledge and gives you a better understanding of the area you are working in. Read magazines about the local city ! Gather as much data as you possibly can. Watch, observing with your own two eyes is one of the most important parts of your research, what you see is what you understand. Approach everything with an open mind. Experiment, based off what you have learnt it is important to put everything into practice. Experiment with the data that you have collected and show that you have an understanding of the subject. Explore, this opens up an infinite number of possibilities  in terms of what you can achieve. Exploring is how you progress from one stage to the next.