I.T.A.P week four: 26.10.2010

I’ve discovered through this lecture that working with images and drawings the process becomes very different to when working with text and words; visual work is a much simpler way of putting across complex ideas compared to the same idea put down in text – by making ideas much more understandable we can go back to the idea at any point and continue to work with it.

Just like drawing by hand, visual language relies quite heavily on play and the creative right side of the brain – when establishing your visual language playing with an idea is the best way of expanding it and finding new possibilities that may otherwise be hidden or unnoticed, in a similar sense, getting into the habit of using visual language engages the right brain and means that it creates a new way of thinking that can produce new possibilities and ways of creating ideas.

Accidents are often a result of working visually rather than textually, but they’re not a bad thing – many ideas start off in one direction, but the same thing can often develop into part of something else, or it could inspire a more improved version or even a brand new, better idea.

Although visual language is playful and creative – it must be coherent otherwise it won’t be as effective as it could be; in order to build a successful visual language it’s important to consider what your communication goal is and who the audience is that you are providing for – an easy way to cover all this ground is mind mapping; not only does it take your thoughts out of your head so that more can develop, but by adding drawings or simply using colour and texture on the writing it becomes engaging and effective.

Being reflective and critical in the RVJ is just as important as using it to keep track of your ideas and inspiration, without notes and annotations marking what you like and what you don’t like, an RVJ is just a book filled with sketches and doodles that don’t mean anything – visual and textual language work incredibly well together if put together properly; pages and pages of notes and explanations are going to get boring eventually, so by combining important notes that provide details and specifics with attention grabbing drawings and illustrations that elaborate on your ideas, an RVJ can become a fully reflective, critical and engaging work space.

While working in my own RVJ, my experience with the reflective creative process has been an unsteady one; I find it difficult to include reflective annotations in my work as it progresses as it is something I have never really had to deal with before.
However, in some aspects of my RVJ the small notes I have been making are often particularly useful for refreshing my memory.

I plan to make the effort to work more with annotations and evaluation within my RVJ, along with visual and textual language in order to have a more complete and constructive RVJ.