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What is my impact as a media designer? What does this all mean? |
Sound &
Vision
Analysis
Can designers really use design methodologies to create music? Is the sound to image translation a valid means of creating design? Can any type of music be placed to a visual and seem like it fits?
Using design methodologies to create music seems to be the most fruitful endeavor of the studies I conducted. This is true because methodologies can always change and evolve. Ultimately, I would have a myriad of ways to get musicians to generate music. If my process continues to develop, each project would inform the next, as it did in this investigation.
I don’t view all my projects as successes, but I feel that each project was a necessary part of the process. The Visual Show was a rewarding project that allowed me to take my work to a level I had not anticipated. The Sound to Image translations left me frustrated and annoyed, but without them, I would not have conducted the Visual Prompt.
As a body of work, Sound & Vision has cemented my interest as a designer. A designer is not limited to being an album cover maker. For someone who used to be called a graphic designer, media design has positioned me to have a more meaningful practice and to think about my career in a different light.
Discovery and Insights:
As the projects were completed, I began to notice similarities throughout. The third iteration of the Blind Marker project resulted in drawings that looked very similar to the Sound to Image translations. When the two sets of images are placed side by side, the formal qualities show translations by man and machine might look the same, serendipitously. Another insight occurred during the Visual Prompt project. I purposely asked musicians with different backgrounds to interpret the same visual. I assumed the songs would all sound very different and unique to the genre of music in which they were made. However, the six songs all shared a similar sound. Nosaj Thing generally makes songs heavy in bass and complicated chord progressions; Buildings Breeding has a sound typical of California indie pop music. Ultimately the songs all shared a similar texture and moodiness. This can only be attributed to the process and directions given to them before they wrote their pieces.
The future direction of this project will manifest itself in my practice; a small design studio in collaboration with Julia Tsao. Together, we work under the name Fair Enough. Our goal is to collaborate with musicians and artists to create research-based design projects. We will start this endeavor though working with musicians. We hope to expand into working with artists, galleries, fashion and more.
Footnotes
Super Studio
Our year long design research course, Super Studio, laid the foundation for this study and my practice. Generating content using different methodologies was the basis for this work. What strategies work? Which don't? As a graphic designer, I would not have utilized any of these techniques, but after being exposed to design research methodologies, I found my own way to apply them in my research.
Sound & Vision
I often wondered what Bowie was thinking of when he wrote "Sound and Vision." The lyrics of the song are simplistic and minimal. Yet, the lyrics don't do the talking in this song. Somehow, the message comes out through the music. I chose to title my thesis project Sound and Vision for this reason. And yes, I do often wonder about sound and vision.
Fair Enough
The title came about when I was making a series of letterpressed posters based on Smiths' lyrics. In the song "I Started Something I Couldn't Finish" Morrissey states : 18 monhts hard labor seems....Fair Enough. This stood out to me. I always kept this saying in the back of my head, so it seemed perfect to use as the name for my studio.