Today we had the brief launch with David and Craig which was in the afternoon but in the morning we were all told to get in groups towards the end of the Birmingham trip and was set a task to find and focus on one special secret area in Birmingham and record this with any medium you want. As a group, we decided to walk to Baskerville House which was right next to the Birmingham library. We all wanted to focus on Baskerville House because as graphic designer we all focus on typography and Baskerville font is a historical type face we all use. We thought this was a special for us graphic designer and wanted to record and documents things around. We all walked and recording things such as photographs, some rough sketches and I recorded voice notes to grasp the essence of the place in that moment. We then also had the idea of focusing on the floor, as Carl told us Birmingham’s old buildings, factories used red and blue brick. On the floor as well all walk in the city, there are construction everywhere things being built and floor can really show an insight of the place. We took several photographs of the floor and pathways in different locations as we were walking around in the city. You can see which location is old and has heritage then the newly built pathways. We presented this idea this morning and Craig really liked the idea. I think this project is new to many of us and it is very broad in the context this mini task helped us to grasp what we need to do and made me realise there’s so much that we miss out on day to day life. The main concept in psychogeography I think is realising the small things that we all ignore and focusing on your surroundings even with this mini task we had so many outcomes and ideas. The trip was useful start to get us in the right mind set and gave me a lot of inspiration.
The brief seems very straight forward, we were told we can do anything we want that can either focus on Birmingham, Cardiff or can be an other place, street that draws our attention. We can either record and reply to the project in photographs, sketches, printing, sound anything we want which is appropriate to our project and idea. I think to start the project I want to do research on psychogeography to understand the concept, the purpose behind and develop my knowledge so I can think about ideas as the next step. I also want to research on visuals, designs of artists for inspiration and in the branding project Davids feedback was to focus more on visual research to explain why I like the certain design, what it communicates to me. I already went through the keynote lecture and founds few interesting designs and psychogeographers that also caught my attention.
Busra Yildiz 