Establishing a Research Question
I first created a mindmap of all the elements of design I am personally interested in, and tried to branch off topics from each of those elements. I found this useful because it helped me put everything into perspective and I was able to get all of my ideas down onto a single piece of paper. I then tried to slim down how many choices I had in order to make an easier choice.
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My main choices after limiting the mindmap down were:
How did Design influence the Facism movement?
How has design influenced revolutions of the past?
How has advertising changed society's view on gaming?
Is social media a benefit or detriment to society?
What constitutes 'high fashion'?
Why do different socio-economic status' define the form of advertising?
How has design changed the gaming industry?
Was modernism a precursor for a totalarianism?
Out of these questions, I had to decide which would be the more researched topic and the topic I could write a concise but effective essay about. I thought about which topic I would enjoy writing about the most and the topic I could find the most previously documented information on.
I found this brief difficult to manage time-wise because the length of the brief was difficult to gauge and it felt like I had more time than I actually did. I had to create a plan of when I would complete different pieces of the brief and when in order to make sure I met the deadline, and I think I did this successfully. The written work I found the most difficult in the brief because I had never written an essay that was of similar length to this one, and I had never had to reference properly in my work. I think this has taught me to critically analyse my sources and think twice before using a source that is academically unfit. I did my essay on consumerism which was a new subject for me, and I learnt a lot about branding through the essay research itself. I think the research for the essay will benefit my work in the future because I have learnt many different concepts behind marketing and how to successfully brand a product to become successful. The practical side of the work was more straightforward in my opinion because I had already researched in-depth about consumerism so I had many different ideas in my head for my practical work already. The lectures that we had for the first three months of the year also benefited me because of the wealth of knowledge shared in each lecture. The lectures covered a wide variety of subjects and even included guest speakers. I hope we have lectures next year because I'd like to continue to learn from as many people's experiences as possible. Overall, I enjoyed the academic side of graphic design and I hope to get more in-depth with academia in Level 05.
