Zoë Sadokierski : PhD research – typo/graphic devices in fiction

This blog is done, visit me elsewhere

2011-08-04T13:26:00.000+10:00

Now that the PhD is put to bed, I've stopped writing on this blog. Please visit my portfolio site at: www.zoefolio.blogspot.com

Thesis available to download

2010-04-26T09:36:00.002+10:00

My thesis is now available to download as a (rather large) PDF here. Feedback would be great, but no grammar or spelling mistakes please. I've had my attention drawn to several, and I no longer care! Best of luck to those still in the process – life is unimaginably better on the other side.

What does a thesis look like?

2009-09-18T16:32:00.002+10:00

A few people have asked me whether my thesis has 'pictures' in it. Above are two double page spreads to show how I've used images. The top spread shows how they are used as 'quotations' – these are scanned in pages from Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Other images are from my process work – this bottom spread is from the appendix in which I describe the 'Sundays'

The end is here

2009-09-01T10:46:00.002+10:00

I have three copies of the final thesis sitting next to me, and am just waiting for the person whose desk I have to drop them on to arrive. Thank you to all who gave me feedback and encouragement through this blog – it has been an invaluable tool for my research, and I can't recommend using a blog in this way highly enough.As sanity slowly seeps back in and I realise what I have just accomplished

Thesis brain

2009-08-12T15:37:00.006+10:00

I bumped into my friend Tobias who described feeling, in the final stage of his thesis last year, like one part of his brain got bigger to finish the thing, and so the other part had to get smaller. Yes. What he said.

ABSTRACT

2009-08-10T15:03:00.002+10:00

The final draft of the abstract for the thesis – as always, feedback is welcome:This thesis examines hybrid novels – novels in which graphic devices such as photographs, drawings, diagrams and experimental typography are integrated into the written text. Within hybrid novels, writing and graphics combine to create a text that is neither purely written, nor purely visual.

analysis – critique

2009-08-03T16:23:00.002+10:00

It's been two months since my last post, in which time I've been working like a dog to get the thesis finished. I'm aiming to submit on the 31st of August, and using the logic a friend once used to travel to India – if I tell everyone I'm doing it, I'll have to follow through because repeatedly explaining why I'm not there is more hassle than just doing it (thanks, Drew).One fairly major

On Reading Graphic Novels (differently)

2009-06-02T11:33:00.002+10:00

I stumbled across this blog post by Rick Kleffel this morning, I don't have time to comment on it properly, but it's a great essay on the differences between reading conventional and graphic novels, and the author's hesitation to move from the familiarity of text boxes to the relative chaos of comic format:But damn it, it's the words and pictures that threw me at first, even when I

Push and Pull

2009-06-01T15:49:00.003+10:00

One of the nicer breaks from writing of late was making a giraffe collage on the wall at Locksmith Gallery, on the opening night of Push And Pull Redfern: Remaking Allan Kaprow. If you're in Sydney, this and the following Thursday, Friday and Saturday, the gallery is open and ready for you to push and pull stuff around.

Rief Larsen's lost images

2009-05-12T16:49:00.005+10:00

Rief Larsen's new release, The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, includes drawings, diagrams and graphs, attributed to the narrator and protagonist (T.S. Spivet, a twelve-year-old genius cartographer) and produced by Larsen. I haven't got my hands on a copy yet, so I can't comment on the success of the integration, but of great interest is that on Amazon.com, Larsen discusses his motivation for

Research Blurb

2009-02-05T15:02:00.003+11:00

This is not a graphic novel: looking at hybrid novels with the 'curious eye' of the design practitioner-researcher.Zoe Sadokierski is a designer whose PhD thesis investigates a shift in literary practice –writers including graphic elements like photographs, drawings and experimental typography on the pages of their novels. This approach to writing produces hybrid novels, in which the narrative is

Blog as research

2009-01-28T16:30:00.003+11:00

I've returned from my overseas break and am very slowly getting my head back into writing mode.As part of the thesis, I'd like to write up the value of using a blog as a research tool. I would love to have some comments about how this blog has been (or not been) a useful resource for researchers and/or practitioners. If you could either leave me a post here, or email me directly I would greatly

The great escape

2008-10-13T15:03:00.002+11:00

This blog will be quiet for a little while - I deposited 30,000 words on Kate's desk last Friday (most of it's even in sentences) and I'm taking a three month vacation from anything to do with the PhD. The plan is to return in mid-January, put my head down and finish writing it up. In the mean time, I'll be freezing my way through a European winter. I will occasionally update here.

Interview

2008-10-08T14:52:00.004+11:00

Here's the link to an interview I did a while ago over email - I was surprisingly articulate (and characteristically belligerent). Again, I still don't quite understand how I can write an articulate email but not type an articulate paragraph in a word document:http://savvy.com/savvy_style/life_in_pictures

Tips from Dunleavy

2008-08-22T13:58:00.003+10:00

"Authoring and thinking go together. You will very rarely work out what you think first, and then just write it down. Normally the act of committing words to screen (or pen and paper) will make an important contribution to your working out what it is that you do think. In other words, the act of writing may often be constitutive of your thinking. Left to ourselves we can all of us keep

State of Play

2008-08-20T11:00:00.006+10:00

So the writing was going well, and I was giving myself smug pats on the back for having produced about 45,000 words (which I knew needed heavy editing, but stuff was being committed to paper). Then I stopped, took a step back and realised my argument didn't work. In fact, I was making about four arguments, and slipping in and out of all of them in different chapters. My chapter outline looked so

the value of practitioner-researchers

2008-08-06T12:16:00.001+10:00

Reviewing Jobling and Crowley's Graphic Design: Reproduction & Representation Since 1800 (1996), Victor Margolin ends with this criticism:They are too ready to sacrifice design at the altar of an all-consuming capitalism, unlike Twyman, Meggs, and Hollis, who, as practitioners, convey in their writings a passion for graphic communication that is missing here. There is no reason why we can’t have

Media, mode, materiality

2008-06-26T15:10:00.006+10:00

I think I had a go at this before, but I'm going to do it again. One of the issues working across disciplines is defining terms. As mentioned previously, my main problem is the word 'image': to a novelist, an image is created in the mind of the reader; to a designer, an image is an original artwork or reproduction of that artwork (where artwork could mean photograph, drawing, digital image, etc).

PhD epiphanies

2008-06-25T14:28:00.004+10:00

Post-it of the week

2008-05-28T10:06:00.003+10:00

Designers' nightmares

2008-05-23T12:14:00.004+10:00

Comments like this make me deeply unhappy:"Today, thanks to computers and design packages, design awareness is very high. Even the novice computer user becomes proficient in designing documents within a few days, if not weeks. Usually, templates are available for brochures, reports, books, etc. All you need to do is fill in the contents

Timo's blog

2008-05-22T18:38:00.002+10:00

As if to rub in how self-absorbed I've become in my own research, I only realised TODAY that Timo, my fellow PhD candidate and partner in Postgrad Room high-jinx (which mostly involves laughing at ourselves, each other and stuff on You Tube) has a blog he's been running for 18 months or so. Well worth a nose around.

Post-it of the week

2008-05-22T18:24:00.007+10:00

Spelling it out isn't coming so easily (I've never been a good speller, ask my Mum) but the saying no thing is surprisingly liberating.

Pistols! Treason! Murder! (gimmicks)

2008-05-15T09:47:00.004+10:00

I recently met Jon Walker – a research fellow in history at Sydney University – whose unconventional biography Pistols! Treason! Murder! The rise and fall of a master spy was published in Feb 2007 by Melbourne University Press. The book is described as a biography of both person and place: Gerolamo Vano, one of the original spy masters, and 17th Century Venice as a city of espionage. Of

Exploiting Borrowed Emotion

2008-05-09T15:26:00.007+10:00

...was an idea I picked up from one reviewer's description of the still from Casablanca at the end of The Raw Shark Texts. I've come across it again in a review of Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Too much in the middle of what I'm doing to store it anywhere else but here:In a blurb to this book, Salman Rushdie writes: ‘Perhaps the highest praise I can give is to say it

Post-it of the week

2008-05-01T23:33:00.006+10:00

Vonnegut's doodles...

2008-04-29T19:30:00.002+10:00

An essay by Peter Reed on Kurt Vonnegut's website (http://www.vonnegut.com/artist.asp ... reprinted from Volume 10, Issue No. 1 of the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, 1999 Florida Altantic University) says of the felt-tip pen drawings that appear scattered throughout several of Vonnegut's novels:“the drawings earn their place in the novel, and must be seen as integral to

Thanks, Wikipedia

2008-04-29T15:48:00.010+10:00

About a year ago I made a bet with another researcher that I could reference Wikipedia a couple of times (legitimately) in my thesis. It was a joke at the time, based on the look of horror when I told someone that I understood Phenomenology because I'd read the Wiki entry on it (also meant to be a joke, although not entirely false).Anyway, turns out I can win the bet. Online searching has become

Just in case I forget...

2008-04-11T16:54:00.002+10:00

Using the typo/graphic novel as a case study, how could Visual Communications Design inform the field of visual studies, and what can it learn about itself in the process?

Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

2008-04-08T09:56:00.004+10:00

Naomi pointed me to this passage in Doris Lessing's novel (my emphasis):"During the last weeks of craziness and timelessness I've had these moments of 'knowing' one after the other, yet there is no way of putting this sort of knowledge into words. Yet these moments have been so powerful, like the rapid illuminations of a dream that remain with one waking, that what I have learned will be part of

visual communication or design?

2008-03-27T13:24:00.004+11:00

I've started writing (it's much more difficult than I anticipated, but that's probably not surprising to anyone but me) and I think I need to start blogging again to store some of the issues as they arise.Today's quandary is whether I use the term 'designer' or 'visual communicator'. Clearly, consistency is key. Initially, I thought it wouldn't matter as long as I am explicit in the

Cutting off a limb

2008-03-17T15:10:00.004+11:00

After a productive meeting with Kate and Naomi at the end of last week (my supervisors - I find combined meetings are really useful at planning stages), I finally have a chapter plan and (relatively ambitious) time line. Until now, I had the research divided into two parts:Theory – descriptive/analytical: history of illustrated fiction, describing the phenomenon with a typology of devices and

Sundays - upcoming exhibition at UTS

2008-02-13T10:40:00.003+11:00

click on image for larger viewSundays is an exhibition of three books, accompanied by annotated process work, that forms part of a practice-led PhD through the School of Design, University of Technology, Sydney.Zoë Sadokierski’s research examines a developing literary phenomenon: the integration of typo/graphic elements in prose fiction (novels with pictures in them). This is of interest to

Essay in Heat

2008-01-16T16:54:00.000+11:00

I have an essay (developed from the Word and Image in Contemporary Fiction lecture ... scroll down) in Issue 15 of literary magazine Heat, published by Giramondo Publishing:http://www.giramondopublishing.com/heat/

New Readers

2007-10-29T09:27:00.001+11:00

"Not everything in print is to be read in a traditional way; there are new modes of reading which correspond to new modes of writing." Emile Benveniste"It is my belief that, long before the constituencies of the graphic novel have finished arguing among themselves, the stragegies that have been devised for long-range pictoral reading will contribute significantly to an emerging new literature of

Material writing

2007-10-05T08:59:00.000+10:00

The Material Poem, an anthology of poetic artworks curated by UTS Masters student James Stuart, is available online: www.nongeneric.netHis introduction describes these poems as the products of writers "engaged with writing as a material rather than purely literary practice." Many of the poems are accompanied by author's notes explaining their motivations. Although I'm not looking at poetry (you'd

Action Research and design

2007-09-26T12:09:00.001+10:00

I've been to a couple of talks on action research lately, and Bob Dick's 2001 (find source) description of what action research is could be a description of the design process in general:A commonly known description of the action research cycle is that of Kemmis and McTaggart (1998) – plan, act, observe, reflect; then, in the light of this, plan for the next cycle ... [action research] tends to

To come back to:

2007-09-10T12:13:00.000+10:00

Are gimmicks and visual rhetoric the same thing?if you define rhetoric as persuasion, false, showy, artificial... "Rhetoric, that powerful instrument of error and deceit" John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding.I'm just starting to read around rhetoric (and its application to design research) - seems to be (appropriately) a huge range of arguments around the value of rhetoric as a field

Abstract for Postgrad Research Conference

2007-08-10T10:43:00.000+10:00

Following is the abstract for a 20 minute presentation at the UTS Postgrad Research Conference, August 17 2007. Program available: http://www.gradschool.uts.edu.au/ProgramwithChairs.pdfMy research examines the integration of typo/graphic devices in prose-fiction (novels with pictures in them). Although not new, this is an insufficiently articulated phenomenon. It is of interest to Visual

Content Analysis - methodology

2007-07-27T14:16:00.000+10:00

I have an article from 'Marilyn Domas White and Emily E. March on Content Analysis as a flexible research method that has been used in library and information science studies, does anyone know of cases where content analysis has been used as a design research method? It seems to be an appropriate way of describing what I have called my 'contextual review' - ie the activities I've used to analyse

New review site

2007-07-19T13:19:00.001+10:00

From this blog, I was contacted by a postgrad student in London who's researching the same general area as me. We've been emailing and decided to start a blog to specifically review books with typo/graphic devices (or interventions, to borrow a great phrase from him). We've started posting, and would love some feedback: http://graphicinterventions.blogspot.com/

film v novel

2007-07-09T15:16:00.000+10:00

"But most readers are also moviegoers, even if the converse does not apply. The interesting thing is that the same person who goes to see the film The Brown Bunny, and groans as the insects pile up on Vince Gallo's windshield, will curl up at home with Everything Is Illuminated and chuckle approvingly at finding the phrase "we are writing" printed 191 times in a row... In short, two aesthetics

The limits of images

2007-07-09T11:37:00.000+10:00

Marie-Laure Ryan claims: "the narrative limitation of pure pictures stems from their inability to makes propositions. As Sol Worth has argued, visual media lack the code, the grammar, and the syntactic rules necessary to articulate specific meanings. A propositional act consists of picking a referent from a certain background and of attributing to it a property also selected from a horizon of

What comes out at 3.47am (post-it note to self: drink less coffee)

2007-07-06T15:22:00.001+10:00

It started as a rash around the bottom of my monitor. Mostly references I didn't have time to check and questions for later consideration: As it spread to the upper edges, motivational tips began to appear: It began to creep from screen to pin-board to wall, then not just in books but all over them, and a few even sprouted in surprising places like the back of my phone and in pockets I never used

Gimmickry and publishing

2007-07-05T15:11:00.000+10:00

To argue why the typo/graphic devices are more than (mere) gimmicks, I need to define what a gimmick is. Merriam-Webster online: "a: an important feature that is not immediately apparent b: an ingenious and usually new scheme or angle c: a trick or device used to attract business or attention gimmick>" (see my post: "this is not a threat" for another definition that is more negative in tone)So

Postmodern fiction

2007-07-05T13:12:00.000+10:00

Postmodern fiction in America often extends the novel beyond its conventional generic boundaries. Such writing, David Harvey explains, is "necessarily fragmented, a 'palimpsest' of past forms super-imposed upon each other, and a 'collage' of current uses, many of which may be ephemeral" (66). American postmodern writers, according to Nicholas Zurbrugg, create a literary montage that "interweaves

The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Brian Selznick

2007-07-02T15:55:00.001+10:00

I'll start by pointing out that I haven't read this book yet but it's next on my ever growing list. However, the way the book is being talked about is fascinating, I've put together some quotes and comments from reviews and an interview with Brian Selznick on the New York Times Book podcast (does anyone know how to reference a podcast?) Have a look at the website here you can watch an animated

Steven Hall and interactive reading

2007-06-25T13:55:00.000+10:00

Steven Hall, author of The Raw Shark Texts, spoke at the Sydney Writers' Festival. Transcript from ABC Radio National available here.Hall comes from an arts background (an interview on ABC's Bookshow described him as a 'text based artist', meaning – I assume – he experimented with layout and typographic illustration) which he points out gives him a slightly different perspective than critics who

What am I doing (again)?

2007-06-22T14:53:00.000+10:00

Warning: I think this starts relatively coherently, then descends into confusing garble. Any comments/direction would be appreciated.The phenomenon/area of studyA couple of years ago, I began to notice an increasing number of novels integrating visual elements into the written narrative (novels with pictures in them). I don't mean children's books, graphic novels/comics, or gift books. I mean

Progress Report, June 07

2007-06-18T12:17:00.000+10:00

Tracking my confidence levels over the first three semesters of my research. It's a bit like being 16 again – one minute I think I know everything and the next minute I think everything's a catastrophe and no one understands me. Sorry, Mum, you thought this had passed....

Literary theory applied to design?

2007-06-15T13:56:00.001+10:00

Language and images are inextricably linked – they are both modes of expression through which we understand, represent and articulate the world. Yet our understanding of language is far more developed (documented, studied, refined?) than our understanding of images. W.J.T. Mitchell's article 'What is an image?' (New Literary History, vol. 15, no. 34 1984) offers aSo it makes sense to take the

narrative vs. rhetoric

2007-06-04T09:53:00.000+10:00

I've had a post-it note on my screen saying 'narrative device vs rhetorical device?' since January. I think I understand the difference now...Fiction: non-factual narrative – stories drawn from the imagination rather than fact.Narrative: From Latin narrare, meaning to 'recount'. Sequence of events. A story (or part of).Rhetoric: From the Greek rhetor or 'orator'. The persuasive way one relates an

Sydney Writer's Festival - some reflections

2007-05-30T16:49:00.000+10:00

Took my Mum to the Janet Turner Hospital lunch today. She was talking about her most recent novel Orpheus Lost, a modern take on the Orpheus and Euridice myth. While writing, she listened to two operas composed around the myth, Gluck's and another (maybe Peri, I'm not familiar with it). I've been looking at writers who write 'out of' images, but how many write 'out of' music? Is this more or

Illustrating Alice

2007-05-29T13:39:00.001+10:00

'What is the use of a book', thought Alice, 'without pictures and conversation?' Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis CarrollVia an academically unverifiable Google search, I discovered British copyright expired on Carroll's classic in 1907, allowing any publisher to release a new edition. Perhaps this explains why it is such a commonly illustrated book (see, for example, the list of hundreds

Why not semiotics?

2007-05-25T12:50:00.000+10:00

The process of reading an image is wholistic, not linear - the component parts only makes sense in relation to the whole (hermeneutic?) So how can you conduct a semiotic analysis (breaking it into a 'grammar' of compositional parts) to an image? How do you analyse a found image, something that hasn't been consciously composed for the context you put it in, using a semiotic model?Further to why

Rhetoric

2007-05-25T11:22:00.000+10:00

The notion of rhetoric keeps raising it's head.Rhetoric is the art of finding and employing the most effective means of persuasion on any subject, considered independently of intellectual mastery of that subject. Booth, The Rhetorical Stance.Considered in relation to Safran Foer's assertion: “Most of what I do in my books I do exactly because I can’t explain in any other way.” (Gerber & Triggs

Revised attempt at writing a methodology: 2

2007-05-25T10:35:00.001+10:00

* I just need someone to make this for me.

Text, paratextual, intertextual (of a book)

2007-05-15T15:22:00.000+10:00

Text: To define the two terms below, I need to establish that when I say 'text' I am only referring to the written content of a book (words), and not the entire book as an artefact (content and form).Para-textual: Elements outside the text, 'packaging': jacket (book cover), blurb, prelim pages (imprint page, title page, dedication, etc), folios, running heads/feet. Chapter head illustrations?

Revised attempt at writing a methodology

2007-05-15T15:17:00.000+10:00

Presenting research – the difference between research and practice

2007-05-04T13:10:00.000+10:00

A criticism of my doctoral assessment was that I came across as defensive and perhaps overly confident – at the perceived risk of not listening to feedback and being wedded to my own conclusions before testing them properly. I think this criticism is due to two factors: firstly, nervousness and secondly, the difference between presenting in professional settings and presenting research.Firstly,

Conference: The Language of Images

2007-04-19T11:35:00.000+10:00

It's been a few weeks since I was in Connecticut at the Language of Images conference: www.english.ccsu.edu/petit/ so now seems as good a time as any to post reflections. The most important idea I took from the conference is that I need to clarify that my area of interest is around written texts incorporating images in a literal sense – I'm discussing novels with actual images rather than

A picture, requested by luima

2007-04-18T18:42:00.000+10:00

Luima pointed out that there haven't been many images on my blog for a while. So here is a drawing I did after someone described my research exercises as "autistic" – when I reported this to my flatmate she pointed out that she had also described me as autistic the week before because my wardrobe consists almost entirely of red or stripy clothes. I drew the shirts I own that are stripy from

The problem with design

2007-04-17T14:57:00.000+10:00

It occurred to me that the main criticism about integrating graphic elements in fiction (graphic elements are gimmicky, style over substance, ornamentation for the sake of it) is parallel to criticism of graphic design in general. It is a prejudice of word over image. I defend the merit of these novels with the same defensive conviction with which I defend my profession.Images have the potential

Post Doctoral Assessment shift

2007-03-21T18:36:00.000+11:00

After an intense but helpful doctoral assessment, I need to restructure/reconsider the scope and approach to this research. It is clear that my question is not an adequate (valid?) research question at this stage and that I've started to take a direction I believe I'm expected to take, rather than the one I want to take. It's difficult to listen to so many varied opinions and not want to take on

The role of reflection

2007-03-01T15:56:00.000+11:00

Putting together an essay for Heat magazine, I felt it was important to include images of the novels I was discussing. I thought the most logical way of doing this was to insert the images below the title of the book, but before the descriptive text. It was pointed out to me by Sally McLaughlin that the conventional protocol for academic papers is to insert the image somewhere in the text after

Woman's World and A Humument, reviews

2007-02-17T14:33:00.000+11:00

Two reviews cut from a paper I'm writing, posted here so I don't lose them...Women’s World, Graham Rawle and A Humament, Tom PhillipsA different approach to typographic experimentation is Graham Rawle’s Woman’s World. Stylistically and technically reminiscent of the typographic collage experiments of 20th Century avant-garde movements such as Dada and Futurism, Rawle’s 437-page novel was created

BBC4 Radio Interview

2007-02-16T17:05:00.000+11:00

I was interviewed by the Open Book show on BBC Radio 4 recently, talking about typographic experimentation in contemporary fiction. The interview is available to listen to online, it's the February 11 2007 show and the interview is about 13 or 14 minutes in:http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/openbook/

Literary terms for graphic elements

2007-02-08T12:14:00.000+11:00

An issue identified early in my research was that reviews of books with integrated graphic elements never really discuss how these elements are being used (if they even mentioned them at all). There are of course exceptions, in particular reviews in design publications like Eye magazine or Print, but for the most part I found two types of description: 'gimmicky' or 'whimsical'. A very rough

Redirecting my research - Jan 2007

2007-01-29T12:34:00.000+11:00

Design theorist Rick Poyner lists 3 reasons he believes a new school of writers producing 'visual prose' has not emerged (in print), despite much hype about this being an emerging territory in the past decade:"First, because most writers have no desire to give up any aspect of their autonomy and no interest in extending the designer’s role. Second, because most designers don’t possess the degree

Seminar presentation: Word&Image in Contemporary Fiction

2006-11-01T11:57:00.000+11:00

Following is the presentation I gave at UTS through the Centre for New Writing on October 18, 2006. It's ridiculously long, so feel free to skip to the pictures. All images of published work are for the purpose of review, copyright remains with the publisher. All text is copyright of the author, Zoë Sadokierski, except where referenced otherwise.Today, I’m talking about part of my ongoing

upcoming public lecture > October 18, 2006

2006-09-22T10:09:00.000+10:00

A free seminar through the Centre for New Writing,University of Technology, Sydney18 October, 1-2 pmUTS Building 2,Level 7, Room 2.70651 Broadway, BroadwaySydneyWORD & IMAGE in CONTEMPORARY FICTIONThe use of graphic elements – photographs, illustrations, diagrams, experimental typography – in contemporary fiction has increased significantly over the past couple of years. This phenomenon is

this is not a threat

2006-08-25T14:53:00.000+10:00

Preparing for a public talk (through the Centre for New Writing at UTS: http://www.hss.uts.edu.au/oth/newwriting/index.html) around what Visual Communications can offer new writing, I'm anticipating some resistance from a 'words' audience. Unless writers are interested in experimenting with form, suggesting the addition of images to literary fiction is generally perceived as gimmickry.[gim•mick n

a question

2006-08-22T17:32:00.000+10:00

After talking with John Dale, Associate Professor of the Writing and Cultural Studies department at UTS, I've had a small epiphany. I've been so concerned about focusing on the 'design perspective' that some incredibly obvious questions have been eluding me:what are the potentials for graphic elements to effect new writing?what can visual communications contribute to new writing?Until now, I've

multi-modal

2006-08-22T15:05:00.000+10:00

Every time I use the term 'multi-modal' people flinch. Perhaps it's worth replacing.

Personal Refelctions: In Form Symposium

2006-08-21T10:43:00.000+10:00

In Form (http://www.dab.uts.edu.au/inform/) was a symposium on practice-led research held at the Powerhouse Museum on Saturday, August 19 2006, as part of Sydney Design Week. I gave a short presentation on my research (see previous post). Preparing for this presentation – which was the first time I had publically discussed my research – was a fantastic opportunity for me to structure an early

Presentation for In Form Symposium 19/8/

2006-08-21T08:53:00.000+10:00

I began a full time doctorate through the School of Design, University of Technology, Sydney, in March this year. This is a presentation of the early stages of my research design.For me, returning to full-time study from practice was problematic; do you have to sacrifice designing to be a design theorist? I wasn’t prepared to give up my practice entirely to pursue research. So discovering

Progress Report May 06

2006-08-16T12:32:00.000+10:00

My goals for this semester were to read around the topic of ‘experimental visual literature’ and to develop a brief, based on a contextual review of existing forms, for a practice-led Visual Communications project. I found my research moved around a common territory but constantly shifted perspective. Through the process of examining consistently recurring ideas, I revised my focus significantly:

Why this blog exists

2006-08-15T09:50:00.000+10:00

"In writing a problem down or airing it in conversation we let its essential aspects emerge. And by knowing its character, we remove, if not the problem itself, then its secondary, aggravating characteristics: confusion, displacement, surprise." Alain de Botton, The Consolations of PhilosophyI don’t find it difficult to write. I sit down, either with pen or keyboard, and it just comes out. It may