On creativity, disappointments and staying true to yourself

No, that heading is not a title for a self-help book. I just wanted to write about my experience as a first year design student and all the wonderful things I learnt this year. As you may have noticed I've basically abandoned this blog because I have had no spare time during semesters. 

Studying design is surprisingly demanding and time consuming and asks so much of you emotionally (meltdowns, being on the verge of crying during a panel criticism), mentally (continuous, rigorous thinking), physically (lack of sleep) and creatively.

I just finished my final assessment for this year and my work which I've obsessed over for weeks was ceremoniously ripped apart by a panel of architects, designers and artists. They exposed everything that was wrong with the project. They were all correct. I couldn't argue against anything they said.

There was also so much exquisite work produced by other students I was just embarrassed to present even in the same room with them.

Coming home I got to thinking about why my work failed miserably and then looking at all my models and drawings it eventually hit me. The work had absolutely no reflection of who I was a designer. It didn't encapsulate my beliefs or had any of my metaphorical fingerprints on it. It was so devoid of personality I can just yawn from its banality.

My best work was the very first project and comparing the two it was obvious how I went from designing for myself to designing for someone who I thought was myself. I think I looked over my shoulders a bit too much during this semester and subconsciously absorbed too much of other people's work to the point that it diluted my own and I lost my own personality and beliefs as a designer. In short, I wanted to be something I was not and consequently, I went through a design process that did not work for my skill sets.

People always tell you to stay true to yourself and that's the way to produce incredible work but I never realised how easy it was to lose yourself along the way.

So everybody say it with me. STCIK TO YOUR GUNS.

Mapping the city

In one of my design classes we treat the city as a studio and as part of our mapping project we had to embark on a derive. A derive is a journey through the city which involves actively observing urban spaces in a new way - igniting curiosity, noticing previously unnoticed information and heightening the consciousness of one's surroundings.

Then we begin to map the city beyond the geographic and topographic lines and start to map the city based on emotion, psychology, economics, politics, history, philosophy, architecture and concept.

My theme for this project is transformation - exploring this notion of an unfinished city, a city of cycles and flows: decay/construction, architecture/human, space/time, movement/idleness.

All photos were captured and edited by me during one of my derives.

Excuses, excuses

No blogging for more than a month. Apologies. The evil university fiend has struck once again wielding assessment after assessment.

This is photographic proof that I've actually been doing work these past few weeks and haven't been lazy (not that much, anyway). Interior and spatial design is a surprisingly challenging degree. Drawings, model making and mapping are incredibly time consuming tasks. On top of this, I basically suck at any practical work. But no worries, I'll learn somehow.

In other news...I can't express into words how perfect The Hunger Games movie was. I saw it at a midnight screening and it was such an experience. Jennifer Lawrence is perfect as Katniss, I'm so in love with her. Josh Hutcherson is the best looking baker I've seen. Whats-his-face is bleh as Gale, probably because I'm Team Peeta anyway (yes, I'm going there). 

Time to re-read the books!

Hopefully I can get more 200 movies and 50 books posts up. I haven't read much except for uni readings and I've been indulging in TV shows instead of movies. 

Art-wise, I recently saw the Picasso exhibition which I went to on the very last day, on the very last hour of the exhibition. Yes, I'm one of those people who do things in the last minute just for the adrenaline rush.

The exhibition really exposed how very little I know about Picasso's work. I didn't even what on earth Cubism was until that day. Shame. 

Out of all the works, La Celestina emerged as my favourite. Purely for its eerie feel and how it's kind of Diane Arbus with a touch of evil gypsy woman from Sam Raimi's Drag Me To Hell.