The following is the newest and hopefully last version of the thesis abstract....
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Forming Process
Design Through Layered Visual Systems and Multiple Collection Methods
"Do not hide the structure, celebrate it in the form."
"Approach design from multiple points of view."
"Never erase your construction lines."
These adages, so important in my architectural training, reverberate with intricate practicality in my work as a graphic designer, both as a way of building my design and as a means of developing a design process which explores multiple ways of organizing content through visual systems. Forming Process is defined by three conditions, celebrating the visual systems which organize the design, the archiving of content from multiple ways of collecting, and creating work by which the process of design is implicit in the design solution. There is beauty and function in the marks that are made during the design process. I believe by celebrating the process in the form, that more interesting and informed design solutions can be discovered.
I begin by developing visual systems which organize the objects I design. I often layer many systems such as grids, printing structures, and typographic systems in order to provide a structure that will initiate an uncertain result. These systems are then infused with elements of an archive, gathered from multiple methods of collection. Photography, writing, and surveying, often through chance operation, allow the layered visual systems to produce a serendipitous form. Trusting the systems which structure my work allow for the process of developing the form to be revealed in the design solution. Designing in this way allows the poetic nature hidden within the predictable dimensions of the study to arise, and yields work which oscillates on a spectrum across information and form.
