First Inspirations.

Starting a new brief is always daunting but I have found that the first thing I always do is create a brainstorm. It helps me to sieve through my brain and fish out ideas that I didnt have at first and so far I have a few different areas that I am interested in.

Based on the theme of Order and Chaos, I have thought of some more thinking points:

• Ordering chaos
• Creating chaos
• Order within chaos
• Making order chaotic

Based on the idea of ordering chaos I immediately thought of the artist Andy Goldsworthy, who takes random natural objects and orders them into a sculpture. The chaos and mess that is around him is suddenly aesthetically pleasing, and becomes a piece of art. I am also inspired by the fact that he doesn't edit his materials, but works with nature as a whole no matter what it looks like.





















I would like to take inspiration from the way he works and bring it into my own practice. For example, one way that I could do this by creating a chaotic piece of work and cutting it up to order it.

This week I also looked into what objects in nature inspire me, and I started looking at the Pinecone, because I have had one sat on my desk for months. I found it on Formby beach and I knew that I loved it but didnt know what to do with it, and now it seems to fit in perfectly. When I started to draw and observe the object, I began to understand even more how beautiful and symmetrical it was!

I therefore did some research into this and found out about Fibonacci's Sequence, which are numbers that occur in nature. They often appear as a swirl and can be seen everywhere; in leaf arrangements, scales of a pineapple and the brackets of a pinecone.

I am really interested by the mathematical side of nature, and the symmetry involved in it. I think I will also experiment with media during the christmas break, to investigate order and chaos more thoroughly. I aim to have research and drawings from this, as well as the nature part of the brief, and I intend to then try to mix the two together using various methods when I have a body of visual research to work with.

Unit Briefing - Locating.

This week we are starting our new brief, and for the first time I will be creating my own brief, which I am looking forward as I will get to choose my subject area. However, I am also scared of not being pushed enough, or having preconcieved ideas about my brief.

I know that I want to specialise in print, and as I want to work in Surface Design when I graduate, for this project I would like to continue down this pathway, and enable myself to create a portfolio of work catered towards the same market as companies such as Paperchase, Tigeprint and Harlequin.

I have always loved looking at the natural environment, and as I haven't had the chance to do this much since starting uni, I feel like now is the time to focus on this subject area. After learning how to push myself and try new tecniques, I am keen to see how I can apply this to the subject matter I love working with, nature.

Within the brief of nature, the concept of 'Order and Chaos' automatically fitted in perfectly, as nature is such an ordered yet chaotic medium, and the more you investigate it, the more apparent it is. For example, tree rings and honey combe are two examples that are incredibly ordered.

During this breif there is the chance to do a live brief along side our main brief. At the moment I am considering entering the Tigerprint competition but I am aprehensive as the brief for that is Typography which I have never done before. I am also drawn to the Humpties Brief and the Bradford Textiles Society brief, so I might enter these based on the work I am doing in the brief I am writing myself.

A large part of this project is also about trying to make contacts, network and find a placement. I have already emailed a lot of companies, but so far nothing has come back that is achievable (for example, they are based in locations that I cant stay in, or are for year long placements). I am therefore going to try and push myself to undated my CV, create a Linkedin profile, and network more to gain contacts with the outside world. I feel that completing a live brief will also enable me to gain a greater understanding of the world past university.