joanaoliveira

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“the simple things: like echoes of an afterthought, these little moments, little shifts, they grow into one another, and in growing they change each other, and as they change they become something new again – always having taken on and taken forward each other’s characteristics, like a shadow of a memory, and adding and learning and contributing, binding with consistency the loose possibilities that will contribute to evolution.
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it’s about moving, seeking out, involving, becoming, not a journey along a line to a fixed point when it will all happen, when it will all be clear, but a journey within a circle that explores and maps the possibilities that arise along the way. we are here, we are not yet there, or there: this is what it is. where are we going? from this moment to the next: from the centre to the perimeter and around, and back to where we came from, and then out again – finding, bringing back, showing, finding…
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the process stays alive; it makes us human. thinking, acting, thinking again, accepting or refusing. we know it already. we have always known it, but we needed to apply our thoughts to our methods. we are all people, the thought is the process. the act is the process. we are people, not definitions, or even things. this is us, and we are in this world, and we are in this world together.”

[in_KARG, Alex et al. (2000) Process; A Tomato Project. London: thames & hudson.]

Feedback Sheet / Major Project Proposal
‘A very well-written and constructed proposal. Good design summary of a range of sketchbooks and primary and secondary research. Excellent use of secondary research material. Good aims and objectives, though the methodology appears quite strongly self-reflective without a clear sense of an objective set of rules or guides as a context for comparison and evaluation – it would be good to see a clearer relationship between different ways of working and the kinds of outcomes reached, in the case of both academic and professional work.’ R/T/V/S

I’m aware that the methodology is strongly self-reflective, but this is a personal and private boundary to be broken for the public, this is a self-reflective journey that – I hope – will help the audience when it’s exposed in the end. To fully have access to a creative process, I thought, I should use myself to achieve results – my own work and everyday activities that all together will turn out to be what I’ve called design process. I don’t know exactly how to compare and evaluate all the data that I am collecting and producing at the moment, neither how to present it when the time comes to that. I suppose the outcome will be very visual, full of notations and doodling, perhaps a collection of books that combine secondary research (as the back-up to strengthen my arguments) with my primary one.

The major idea that I am trying to prove (my argument) is that the process, the journey to an end, the path to get somewhere creatively is more important, interesting and more useful to others (as an educative and inspirational tool) than the outcome itself (the final object that becomes alive).

Although, I am using sketchbooks to capture this, to document it, my intentions go far beyond the sketch itself – this is not an illustrator’s sketchbook with mostly drawings – this is what it’s even more difficult to reach out for (I believe), this is a way of working of a designer and a student, simultaneously. This is one possible way to go through our profession, just as it started (the breakthrough, the transformation or the crossing over from one to the other: academic to professional).

I know everything is not ready yet, or clear and concise, but I hope I can get there somehow, as soon as possible…

Thank you for reading,
Joana.