Today Ben came in again, and spoke to us about our projects. 

I wanted to show Ben the research methods I used for my Madison specimen, which can be seen below: 



He informed me that he wanted to see a methodology that can be applied to ANY brief, not one that only works with one. 

I had five minutes to rethink of a methodology that could work for my way of working, but I found it difficult to come up with something. 

I spoke to Ben on my own, and below are a few things he mentioned:

- Think of your own way of working. Researching in a 'Google Search' method will result in uninteresting information. 

-Idea: Recording the dialogue of a conversation, and recording it on soundcloud. This dialogue could then lead to a final product. 

Ben said he'll be coming in again around the 20th of Jan, so I intend on working on some ideas for then. 

Today Ben Freeman came in from Ditto Press. 

He talked to us about his work, explaining his design influence from the  DIY rave scene of the 90's and album covers. Interestingly, he used to work for VICE and travelled the world writing articles and taking photos. 

Some Notes:

- Graphic Design is a tool for journalism. Ben sees design as a tool for your influences. 

- Structured research methods, consider your methodologies. 

- Find your way to an answer. 

- Interviewing people / taking photographs. 

                                                                                                                                               

Task

As a group, we first thought of some overall topics for all of us to look into: 

We were then told we were working as a group in the lesson, but had to develop our methodologies separately. 

My current methodology - I feel that whenever I have to research something, 90% of the time I would go straight to Google, which obviously isn't always the best option, but the laziest and easiest. 

                                                                                                                                                                     

What I Want to Learn / Crit with Ben 

After evaluating my own methodology, I realised I wanted to try something completely different. I found Ben's presentation really inspiring, especially when he told us that he used to take photographs and interviews for Vice. 

This inspired me to take a journalistic approach. I want to actually get out into the world and speak to people about interesting topics on a local scale, not just facts that could be copied and pasted from the internet. 

I plan to come up with a few ideas for projects that involve much more interesting methodologies, with an unpredictable outcome.