Following on from the 100 photos.. we had to write a list of ideas and concepts which we could focus on to move on from the photos. After a bit of confusion, mine ended up being order and chaos... (although I concentrated more on the chaos side!)
We then had a couple of days to research more.. having a minimum of 10 primary and 10 secondary pieces of research.
After clearing the desks and neatening up our work, we
moved from desk to desk to write comments and ideas on other people's work. From them, we chose 4 main ones and stuck them on the wall.. as you can see!! -v
Finally, we narrowed it down to one each, and a small number of people grouped up the sentences according to the subject. I was put with.. Boysie Sands, Charlotte Hitchens and Craig Fawell... quite obviously, the best people!
Once in our groups, we were set yet another research task to carry out; 'What If?' Based on our common interests, research and knowledge, we had to establish a 'problem' that affected some sector of the general public in Leeds.
Going back to the sentences each one of us had...
-What happens if you break restrictions? (Boysie)
-Vandalism is destruction (Craig)
-Hedonism looka like too much effort (Charlotte)
-Chaos and order go hand in hand (Me)
We chose to focus on diets. We thought diets can get rather chaotic at times. So, we went to the shop and bought two bags of dairy milk buttons! Each bag containing 513 calories. We went round asking random people their age, to give us a rough guess as to how many calories they consume daily, and to have a guess as to how many calories the two bags on buttons had.
The information we got after asking 30 people, was that some didn't know what a calorie was, and hardly anyone guessed the right amount of calories in the buttons!
After long hours of pondering, we finally came up with a 'problem'.
'People don't know their daily calorie intake.'
We decided we needed to create a questionnaire for further proof of our problem. Again, we randomly handed them out, and waited for all to be returned!
Looking at the results brought us bad news. The final question was: 'How many calories do you consume a day?' :( Even though some people may have guessed or copied from someone else.. most people put 2000. This, annoyingly, was more or less right. So, our problem was no longer a problem anymore!!
Another question was, 'Do you go to the gym?' Out of the 30 we asked, about 2 people put 'yes'. So, we gathered, although people knew how many calories they consume, they don't do anything about it to loose them. We decided this would be our problem. The questionnaires nicely proved it, even before we knew the actual problem! Handy!!!
We managed to get quite a lot of research; primary, secondary, qualitative and quantitative. Although we didn't have any A1 design sheets/mood boards, we had full-up A4 folders!! Compensates nicely instead of the massive sheets!
For an entire day, we sat in the canteen, doodling and discussing ideas. We drew loooooads, and came up with some awesome ideas!! This was what we produced on illustrator as a final resolution....
(It wouldn't upload an illustrator file so I had to save it as a JPEG in photoshop. For some reason it's turned out blue- it's not meant to be!!!! But you get the general gist of it?)
Basically, it's aimed at students who don't work off the extra calories they consume. So, our idea was, to make clothes which represent various sports, i.e. shorts (for jogging) etc.. and they only fit the thin person. The larger man can't fit into the clothes until he looses the weight. So, he has to stand around in his pants. :)
I think the whole idea was for the clothes and the men to be perferated. Also, to have little tags around them, so the clothes can be fixed on.
These are the clothes and props we made to fit the thinner man. Again, the colours seen here aren't correct.
Overall, I enjoyed this research task. I found it quite challenging though. I really thought it'd be simple and relatively easy. I've always been fond of the research part of a brief. I guess I was only skimming the edges though!! Doing this, has made me realise just how in depth you must be when researching something you know little about.
Although our group did a fair amount of research, I believe we could have gone that extra mile. We only did two ''questionnaires', so quite possibly, if we had done more, maybe we would have come to another problem?
Also, I think managing our time would have benifitted us. Although we managed to come up with a good final resolution, we were a little rushed for time in the end. We could have produced more props and clothes.
