Hope you remember where we left last time, coz i don't.
Anyways, fast forward a couple of years and I am in Australia- University of Wollongong. After researching similar programs worldwide, I enrolled in a Master's program in Multimedia Design at the UOW. Wollongong is a beautiful seaside town near Sydney and the Uni was one of its historic landmarks. I had the opportunity to make good friends, read amazing books, watch great films, and learn from brilliant mentors during my time there.
My first design session was with Grant Elmers (Head of Design, UOW). The sessions had two parts: a theory section in the lecture theatre, which resembled a giant amphitheater, and a practical component conducted in the design lab by Mr. Elmers himself. During our first session, he handed us a book and asked us to recreate one design from it. A bit overconfident, from my previous design experiences, I jumped right in and created an original design instead. Mr. Elmers walked by and said, "I know that you're all brilliant designers, but you didn't do what I asked you to do, so my problem still walks." That was my first lesson in understanding a brief and its goal. He aimed to assess our proficiency with a particular design tool, and what I did didn't help his goal. Later we had a very good rapport and I was able to learn a lot of Combinography from him.
One of his assignments was to walk down Kiera Street, collect as many artifacts as possible, and design a collage poster for the street. We all had so much fun in combining analog and digital tools to create a massive poster that was eventually displayed on campus.
One thing that surprised me during that time was the default aesthetic sense that other students had. Random colors that they picked to go with a typeface had so much character and it always worked!. I started understanding the negative influence of the supergraphics of our country had on my aesthetic senses. Recently, I visited a science museum for children in Bangalore. The exhibits were excellent—truly engaging. All the contraptions, gadgets, and machines were interactive and fun. However, the overall aesthetic of the place was disappointing. I'm referring to the colors, finishing, alignment, graphics, typography, and imagery—everything was subpar. While children are exposed to interesting science, they're also, unfortunately, learning poor design aesthetics as a side effect.
Okay, Back to Australia. Another Design Mentor I loved was Mr. Brogun Bunt. I was amazed by the way he taught us. How he broke complex content into simpler modules that we could easily swallow- Awesome!
One interesting (slightly clever ;)) story that I sort of brag about is about my Final Major Project. We had to submit and present our final project in front of a jury panel. So we are sitting watching these amazing projects done by other students when my name is announced. I go in and type in the URL of my project. The whole thing is projected on 3 screens, mind you! The jury started checking the url- a website that featured a collection of my works. AND honestly, the works that they saw there were really really BAD! The jury and faculty were surprised to see this collection of digital feces. The jury tried their best- going to all the links, clicking on the reset button, filtering content, and even trying the rating option — all in the hope of finding some good works. They gave up after a while and then started asking some questions for namesake while grading me with an F. And that was my cue. I went on to reveal that , my actual project is the website they used to check the images and that, those images were not my designs (they were coming from google). They were happily surprised and spoke a lot about the efficiency of the site. We walked out with an A+. I was using a hitcockian-technique to deviate the attention from the real “culprit”.
to be continued
Comments