Ive moved

I am now blogging from wordpress. Its better than here.....honest. It seems more complicated but its not

http://lorrismyth.wordpress.com/

How do we use our design thinking skills in everyday life?

 We have been told on many occasions that our value as designers comes from the way we think. Our brains seem wired quite differently to non-creatively trained people. It would probably be fair to say that we learn in different ways too.

When I write I consciously think of the structure of what I write, some people struggle more than others with this. As a proof reader my task was how to convey the concept of analysis to a creative thinker who struggles with structure.

To make things clearer I needed to convey that there is a general pattern (a visual term) to the structure of writing. When I thought of pattern, as a textile designer I think of what that pattern looks like and how to make it clear. I devised a colour coding sytem to show what  point>evidence>analysis looks like.

eg Make a point
    show some evidence through describing the painting or inserting written evidence from source  
    Question how that evidence illustrates the point you are making in this parragraph and how does it   support the argument of the essay as a whole 

If the essay stripes don't show the same pattern then you know that you have become mixed up. If the analysis stripe is a bit thin then your essay is thin on analysis.

The words analysis suddenly becomes less scary and confusing. You just refer back to what the pink bit means for you to do 

Hooray for Twitter!

Yesterday we had a wee visit from from Studio Unbound to teach us about the importance of social media for networking as part of the design industry.

I was pretty skeptical about using Twitter for a long time. I thought it would be used like the status update page on Facebook. Whilst that is all good fun, I didn't really understand what good that was to me as a designer. Sarah Drummond was so convincing that Twitter had changed her life I thought I should give it a proper go. I already have a blog and feeling the benefits from reflecting on my work through writing so I guess I'm partly on my way to becoming

Yesterday I actually began to use Twitter despite having an account for some time. After the lecture it seems that quite a few people had the same idea. After following studio unbound I could then connect with people in my course, using them as a common contact.

Next I got really adventurous and begun following people I didn't know but saw that they were posting up some useful links. Thanks @mikepress for your links last night! They helped me on my way to structuring my dissertation that bit more clearly.

Hooray for Twitter! I am now a convert. Thanks Studio Unbound

@lorrismyth

Self Motivated Brief

I am now in the home stretch of 3rd year. I feel this year I have worked pretty hard, despite a blip at the start of term that put my work a few weeks behind. The past two weeks I have really attempted to shake myself up and start looking as how to pull together all my work from this semester.

It was pointed out to me recently that I don't really look to other artists and designers for inspiration. To some it may sound an obvious way to start a project but I seem to have missed it out more or less.



I have began a series of sketchbooks that will collect together artists and designers that catch my eye. So far it has been really helpful. I am begining to see patterns with the type of mark making, technique and collour pallet that I feel drawn to.

Above: David Davis- etching & Sean Morrisy -screen print

Your cutlery has been assimilated....

I was so enthused by my bread making activities from the night before, that I sneaked in another one before going down to college. I really like the size and shape of the rolls. They don't have quite so much hardware, which allowed me to incorporate some drawing. On the large loaf I didn't feel there was any need to draw on the surface, as there was so much already happening..





A second thread in this project stems from my very first idea that I threw around. Instead of making little creature like robots made out of cuttlery I have settled on making an abstract sculpture but with a twist of technology in the surface.

Whenever I usually use superglue I end up with no feeling in my fingertips but this time.......I used latex gloves! What a genius I am haha.

As I have been making these strange things it has felt as if I have been truly expressing my personality through making. I am definately a bit random and odd at times but I really do make a lot of sense when you get to know me. Kind of like my little sculptures. In much of my flat design work I feel this is lacking at the moment but I'm working on it.



In future I would definetely like to work more with making 3D objects, however I'm not really into the technicalities of weave and knit. I prefer to make things up as I go along and find my own way of doing things. If anyone has some suggestions I would be happy to hear them?

As a printer, it has been suggested that I could use these 3D objects as part of my development and drawing. From this point in my research I can see a few different ways I could take this into a flat design. However if I had sat with my sketchbook and thought about how to take this concept into print,  firstly I would not have enjoyed it as much and secondly I don't think I would have produced something as interesting . I do enjoy drawing but I don't really  like sketchbooks! I predict more frequent trips to the recycling centre in the future and less expensive sketchbooks.

I was embracing randomness so my soundtrack to the day was Frank Zappa

Bready Steady Go!

I don't know why more people don't make their own bread! Today I've found it to be great fun and really rewarding. I would think that this is the attraction to many crafts. By not using a breadmaker and doing all the work myself,  I feel I have a much deeper understanding of how bread can be created from such simple ingredients.

I was amazed by the change in texture throughout the process. My dough was actually a little to wet initially but as I added the flour it began to come together. After leaving the dough to rest for one hour it changed quite a lot. Without putting a finger on it the dough had doubled in size and become silky and moist. This change is the result of the yeast and gluten reacting to the heat generated during kneading I think.

If anyone is interested in making their own bread follow this link to the recipe I followed. Believe me it is completely idiot proof.


I thought it would be torture having the smell of freshly baked bread wafting through the house because neither of us can eat wheat! However, luckily the tinge of melted plastic spoiled the experience. Otherwise I think I would have been very tempted to tuck into my creation.


I was able to pick up various computer components at the recycling centre for only £2. I was surprised by the huge quantities of parts waiting to be shipped out for re-manufacturing.

Techy Toast!

My work is inspired by the craft of baking, more specifically bread making . From my research I have found a variety of ways that I could use the material.




I'm really loving doing something a bit weird again. Quite a few of the people I have spoken to in the studio also seem excited about the prospect of breaking away from the design process we are used to. More than one have said that it reminds them of being back in first year again, where we didn't worry so much about what we were doing and just had silly creative fun. I hope that those of us who feel like that take
that feeling on into other projects. If were not having fun we may as well undertaken a puerly academic degree.

Luckily Karen had a soldering iron that she hadn't used since college in the DIY cupboard. I blew off the cobwebs and put it to good use creating this 'techy toast'. I took inspiration from pictures I found on the internet of Jesus's face in toast and others where people had drawn illustrations of cats into the toast. I am really pleased with variety of marks possible using this technique.

I have taken this sign, found at the unused entrance of the Matthew Building as the starting point for my investigation into craft.

What is interesting to me is that the sign has not been updated to the new usage plan for the building. We no longer have a Food & Accommodation Management Course. I had no idea untill I saw this image that we ever had such a course. Would it be fair to say that at the time this sign was present the college views cooking as just as a creative and artistic endevour as courses on offer today. It would be interesting to find out when and why this change took place.

I then tried to picture what is now in place of the Resturant and Student Association. I realised that both social areas have now been replaced by IT suites.

This point was very interesting to me because not only because it seems a shame to have lost these spaces but it said something to me about the way in which our creative processes are being altered by technology.

From what I have read and heard the future will see humans ever more dependent on the technology that will be increasingly embeded in everyday objects such as textiles.

Interventions space

Our next project, Interventions, is to be part of an exhibition within the colleges Past, Present, Future Practice research programme.

Our brief is to create an 'intervention' within the disused foyer area of the 1975 Matthew building.

The space is one of the brightest and warmest areas of the building making it a real shame that the entrance has not been used for some time.

Some of my observations of the space today have included:

The signage.

The levels and thier corresponding labels have not changed for perhaps a 15-20 years. It seems as if all of the buildings social areas- a cafe and a resturant have been converted into IT suites. During lunch hours are we just as likely to go and check our Facebook thesedays as to sit with friends and chat face to face. Why does the college no longer value social places as an important extention or escape from the studio environment. What effect has this had on the communication between students from different departments.

I wonder what this entrance would have been like when the building first opened?

The dead plants

One of the most striking aspects of the space is the quality of light and warmth. I overheard more than one peson saying that it was lovely and warm but not in the horrible way like our studio. The space seems a perfect habitat for the growth of plants if only they had been watered regularly. Could this space be used as an indoor garden area for students? Could we grow vegetables in the window boxes. Could I create a plant like form to grow from these pots that would need no care. The plants for me summed up the feeling that the space is neglected and forgotton.


The more time I spent in the foyer the more I actually liked it. Now, I am no fan of 1970s architechture and I am ashamed that a college with one of the best architecture and interior programmes in the county are housed in such a disfunctional space.

Despite this, it appears that with the loss of the Mathew Building entrance may have coincided with the loss of something else in the art school. From family and tutors we hear of when the art school was a very separate unit from the university, proud to be radical and different. Our art school has been swallowed into the rest of the university, into DUSA. From what I gather, art school was a much more fun and exciting place to be. Or is this just nostalgia??

Some more textiles

I've enjoyed working in photo collage for the past while. I felt that using photoshop allowed me to retain the tonal qualities of the light sources that I photographed.

I'm looking forward to seeing how the colours translate onto fabric. Its a bit frustrating that the fabric printer gives totally different results at times from what you see on the screen. However with the sample relating to this piece it actually improved it!

Time to Grow

This week has been all about gardening!

This week myself and a few friends went along to the first main meeting of the West End Transition Town. We were told that despite there being a few transition towns out there, Dundee is the first urban area to take on the challenge. What I'm really looking forward to about this group is working with people of all ages. Like many other people my age, I have very little interaction with other age groups in my community outwith my own family. From the initial meet and greet session it looks like there are a lot of skills and knowledge in our group that I'm excited to learn from. I have chosen to become part of the food group as this is the area of my own life style that I have put most thought into in terms of becoming more sustainable.

So far Karen and I have reduced our meat consumption by a 2 or 3 days a week and most of the meat we do eat we try to buy from our local butcher on the Hilltown. Find of the week has been that the chicken breasts you get from there are total monsters and much cheaper than the water pumped rubbish from Tesco.

We have taken to buying all of our fruit and vegetables from Frasers (facebook) Fruit and Veg store on the Perth road and trying to eat more seasonally.

Last summer our own garden transformed from weedy mess to urban farming miracle. I say miracle because it lies in shadow of our tenement block for the majority of the day. This year has begun with a mini greenhouse, a fenced off area to stop the neighbours dog from peeing on all our food and the beginnings of our salad garden from seedling.