In the morning today we had a presentation of our Commue Group activities. We showed our video to the tutor and our classmates, they have quite interested in the activities we have during the Commue. At the same time I also enjoyed the creative events held by the other group. Some of them went outside and did something linked to art and design. I remember that at first I didn't even know what was Commue for and I couldn't understand what was the connection between it and the project or Unit 7 by the way. But after experiencing the three days together I thought it made sense to me. Commue Group activities was a good chance to practice your skill of communication with your partners. It also challenged our abilities for teamwork. Additionally we need to know how to find recourses from the others which means designing without online materials. That was the point and purpose of the Commue I think.
In the afternoon I started to write the brief for the first project in Unit 7. According to the topics of the projects we had before and the anything we found during the Commue, we mixed our ideas and developed the first brief. At the beginning there was no idea in my mind because I didn't know what I could do in this project without a clear topic. But the tutor has given me some inspirational ideas when he discussed the content of project with me. During the Commue I realized that the eyes were the most important organ of input and output information of our body. But on the other side, The same thing will have different understanding by different eyes. So I decided to explore the eyes and the reflection of the eyes. I named this project In Your Eyes. After finishing the brief I told my concept to the tutor. He thought my idea can be presented by pure visual communication. And he has given me two designer's name that I can do the research. Both of them have the same characteristic which is combining photography with simple drawing. I thought that is what I can do in this project.

Today's target was about the experiments for the project 1. Yesterday I confirmed my topic and I will keep exploring at least three ideas of this project.
The first idea I came up with was about a basic understanding of eyes. I want to design a series of poster with eyes which could persuade people to do something. I did research about the WWF (World Wild Fund), they have lots of inspirational ideas of poster design. They always use the vivid images to attract people's attention. So I want to design a poster for WWF which can tell people the importance of water saving. I want to use one of the eyes to represent our planet with much clean water and the other one will be looked like a dead planet. The last one will be a cried eye because the water was being wasted.
The inspiration of the second idea came from our Commue group activities. During the 2 days I found that many westerners have lots of misunderstanding of eastern countries according the chat with my partner Gen. When we talked about the history, geography and culture of eastern countries her basic knowledge told me she was quite lacking. From that situation I realized that many foreigners from western country are not very familiar with the eastern. That will be not benefit the communication between east and west. I think it's necessary to disseminate the basic knowledge like eastern history, geography and culture to the western youth so that we can know more about each other. As a student in graphic design I would like to use graphic design to let them learn from it. According to the rules of my proposal, I think it might be good to use exaggerated images to present those information. That will test my drawing skills perhaps.

The third idea is playing with photographs and illustrations. I summarized that the inspirations normally from the designer's different thinking of the same thing with other people. so I want to design a series of picture that can inspire the designers. For example, when we see the light bulb the normal guys will think it just a light bulb but the designer will think it might be an idea from someone's head. For my third idea I need to get some material from outside probably. But I guess the last one will be the most interesting one.

I am going to take some pictures for my project work today. I went to Archway campus in oder to collect some pictures of some normal objects around our living environment. I tried to change my thinking of them in order to inspire the imagination in my mind. For example, when I saw the ironing board I brainstormed to find an object which has a similar shape but totally different use. After that I came up with the surfboard. I started to imagine that a person standing on the surfboard. The view came before my eyes suddenly. That was what I want I thought. I keep collecting some photos until 3pm.  Some of these photos are shown under this text box.

Unfortunately I was ill on Wednesday so I missed the group tutorial today. I would like to keep doing my work at home. Yesterday I went out and took several pictures for some random objects. I hoped I can use drawing to give them new concepts or let them inspire other people.