My Final Rationale:
This year I want to develop my illustration skills by focusing on using paper cutting as a method and typography, fairy tales, myths and legends as subjects. I feel I also need to develop these skills, as they are essential for the area of design and illustration I would like to go into after I finish my degree. I think focusing on specific areas will help my illustrations have relevance, meaning and credibility. I would like to explore different products and contexts to put my designs to use in real environments and this also appeals to my desire to explore a variety of materials, techniques and processes. I would like to create illustrations with a meaning so they are not just something pretty to look at, so when illustrating, I would like to have a narrative or specific topic to focus my skills on, such as fairy tales. I would also like to produce more booklets and small publications that use illustrations and typography to communicate informative facts and ideas based around my interests. Overall I feel my illustration and drawing skills need to be improved and developed, which drawing on a regular basis would improve, as this will help inform my style, skills and help me to develop other areas such as layout, colour management and illustration methods and techniques.
My final Statement of Intent:
I would like to be illustrating more on a regular basis, as this will help me explore subjects of interest, which will develop my idea generating skills and the ways I illustrate. I will explore materials and methods of illustration such as paper cut and hand drawn. In relation to typography and my interest and skills in this area, I will illustrate existing fonts, typefaces and characters from the alphabet, while developing my skill to draw typography freehand. I will also research other people who create similar things to what I would like to produce. The briefs I have chosen are all heavily based on illustration, whether that is pure illustrated imagery or type as image. I would like to explore methods of production and I would like to focus on illustrating my interests onto every day objects in the home such as mugs, lamps, plates etc as I would like my work to have a practical use, while being meaningful. I would also like to gain a few work experience placements with some illustrators or crafting designers to understand their design process and how I can enhance mine to the degree of professionalism it takes to set up my own studio or work freelance.