Workshop & Lectures
Design through Storytelling
Jyni Ong
Jyni’s Workshop, Design as Storytelling, focused on storytelling through communication design. Within the process module, we are expected to create an artefact that represents what we want to change in our creative process. The workshop brings insight into how to make a storytelling design and ways to understand ourselves at a deeper level of understanding.
During the workshop, we were introduced to different artistic ways that designers used for various purposes, showing how the designer’s perspective impacts the design. For example, big cultural moments and political expression, and the communication medium change how the audience understands the purpose that is being communicated.
Jyni first asked us to find a piece of writing or message that relates to us, and we will come up with a prototype for this 3-day workshop. The message I chose is a school friend of mine sending a photo 8 years ago of our friend group, with the text message “How good is it to be young”. I hope to make a design that focuses on the nostalgic feeling and memories from my secondary school years.
I came up with the idea of using comics and photo collages to convey the message that our memories are as real as we remember them as it is. The idea of using comic and manga-style represents the childhood and culture I grew up in, and the idea of using photo collages represents the idea that memories are reality that happened as what we remember as it is.
Through this workshop, I realize that I never put any “personal touch” and emotions into my work. The style and format are often boring and standardized in a way where everything looks similar. This workshop gave me insight into, how might I involve more emotion in my work, which I refined into “How might I use scent as a catalyst for human stories and ideas”.
Sam Winston
Sam Winston’s workshop came at a later stage of the process project, but the workshop opened up different insights into how senses interact with the audience. During this time, I was considering different ideas and concepts for my project, and the workshop made me realize how much impact audience experience has on communicating ideas and messages.
In the workshop, we were primed to an atmosphere of being aware of our existence, and the environment around us, and our perspective on the world shifts by how we echo with where we are. We then put on a blindfold and draw on a piece of paper. Sam asked questions about how long a minute, a second, a breath is. The experience changed how I perceive darkness from the absence of light to the absence of vision.
This workshop made me reflect on how I can utilize the properties of scent in an art piece, allowing people to use scent as a catalyst for stories and ideas. Asking questions and priming the audience through images and illustrations, can get people in touch with their creative minds and memories through scent.