3/1/2022 - 25/2/2022 / Week 1 - Week 7
Intercultural Design / Bachelor of Design in Creative Media
Week 1
Netnography is ethnography on the internet. Ethnography itself in some ways mean culture; from the perspective of social relations. To gather information, we can attempt one of the following methods below.
Three methods of data collection were explained to us; archive, elicited, and field notes. Archive is to collect data from an external source without any direct research or experience. Elicited is a method of data collecting where we combine our personal and other people's (whether it be friends or online resources) data together. Field notes come from hands-on experience, which is our own observation and reflective notes. Data itself can be found anywhere and by chance or coincidence.
More popular these days is getting data from a search engine. It's effective as results come immediately and almost always have the answer you're looking for. However, online resources don't guarantee authenticity or factual data, and we are recommended to take the extra step of finding out the writer's backstory to decide if the data is true or false.
Week 2
For the second week in this module we were taught how to research a culture properly, starting form the internal and external properties. The surface of a culture consists of behaviors, customs and traditions performed by the members of the culture. Deeper into researching a culture we figure out the core intention of the overall culture and how it started, whatever it was that isn't as easy to observe is considered an internal part of a culture.
INSTRUCTIONS
Part 1: Proposal
The very first week we were divided into groups to decide on what culture we would like to base out project off of. After getting together and discussing, we collaborated and laid out all of our ideas on a Miro board.
The initial ideas we had were cultures of internet, consumerism, beauty, tea, crunch, and skateboarding. Internet culture or cyber culture is focused on how the world wide web impacted our daily lives, same goes for consumerist culture. Tea culture and skateboarding are topics that are more narrow, focusing on an object that has cultures built around them. Beauty standards and crunch culture is more broad in terms of how it is impacting lives. The idea in focusing on beauty culture is to normalize a more inclusive version that doesn't bring down certain natural body shapes and facial features.
After a group discussion, we decided to continue with tea culture. As the topic was too broad, we narrowed it down to two; cultural tea utensils and traditional matcha making.
Since two is one too many, we combined both ideas and resulted with "Japanese Tea Culture" which, after feedback, is now focused on the ceremonies, hence titled "The Art of Japanese tea Ceremonies". We proceeded to discuss our preliminary ideas for the final project. Everyone contributed an idea, and we came up with five main ones. Below are the five ideas with the respective person who came up with the idea.
Cup Sleeves | Lulu Luisa
Main purpose is to further convenience our lives especially in
carrying drinks without the holders; with the design added it could
start interest in some people to further find out about Japanese tea
history.
Tea Tags Concept | Shamiella
Attract people of all ages to choose drinking tea more/making it a trend. Attractive packaging would garner interest in the product. With that, we can convince people to interact more with the product and find out the stories behind it.
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| Fig 1.4 Tea Tag Concept (21/1/2022) |
Chawan Pottery | Adlina
To show appreciation of Japanese Tea Culture and how it brought attention to the Wabi Sabi style of design through pottery. It is also to remind people of tea’s history and the purpose of Chawan creations that continue to live on till this day.
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| Fig 1.5 Chawan Pottery Concept (21/1/2022) |
DIY Matcha Kit with Tea Mats | Shamiella and Alif
This Matcha kit includes all the accessories needed to make Matcha and even perform the meditative Zen practice of the Japanese Tea ceremony. This is to encourage the spirit of togetherness as did the traditional Japanese tea ceremony.
Bottle Packaging | Naura
To redesign the way people consume tea would open up a new experience and tradition among others. This idea in particular would let the younger generation connect more with tea and its glory and be able to share the art and customs to future in a new light.
Final Proposal
Part 2: Data Collection
| Fig. 2.1 Cover of Wabi-Sabi: For Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers (7/2/2022) |
Final Data Collection Slides
Amended Slides
Part 3: Final Project
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| Fig. 3.1 3D Cup Render - Alif (24/2/2022) |
Final Designs
Packaging
| Fig. 3.2 Die Cut Close-Up of Packaging (24/2/2022) |
First thing to present is the packaging, as said in the presentation slides, our first impression. The lining styles are inspired from Japanese traditional art, using thick lines to emphasize the waves in the clouds. We came up with our brand name, Chanoyu and added our messages to audiences on the sides; values, integration, harmony, and minimalistic.
Chawan Pottery
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| Fig. 3.4 Flawed Perfection (24/2/2022) |
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| Fig. 3.5 The Fisherman - Adlina (24/2/2022) |
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| Fig. 3.6 Promotional Poster Mockup (25/2/2022) |
Final Presentation
Feedbacks
General Feedback
The general feedback received from class is to narrow down our research category and most importantly figure out how the theme purpose ties in with what we are planning to make. Some ideas like packaging is lacking not because its functions, but also because it lacks purpose and seems like it's just being made for the sake of being made.
Specific Feedback
The "Japanese History" part is too broad and we need to narrow it down to properly. He explained us how it's too broad by explaining further when and where tea cultures really started and how it has more than what we currently know.
Feedback from Mr Vinod: Demonstrates an understanding of research methods, resourceful and has a wide scope, yet focused. The presentation is clearly researched but the presentation is not cited. Evidence of brainstorming / idea exploration is implicit in the thinking and presentation and thus good. Effective written communication, clearly stating and justifying the selected theme, concept & approach of the research, but not supported by the relevant citations
Mr. Vinod had said to us that we should figure something out that could be more functional for society, so we amended the slides and continued our discussion for task 3.
Reflection
The group I have been divided into were extremely cooperative and I'm having fun while working together. My most favorite part is to explain why we choose the specific preliminary ideas and coming up with modifications for it, like the cup sleeves as an example and how we added more to it as we went on. With the guide from Mr Vinod, we were able to finish up our proposal rather quickly.
From the first part of the project alone I was able to start noticing anything around me and wondering what counts as a culture and what doesn't. It feels like a good exercise to figure out where we're currently standing and what culture is affected by traditional belief versus other reasons such as a culture forming from the pattern of how people live- an example is consumerist culture- and how largely it actually impacts us.
After paying closer attention to many things Ive also figured out that planning out ideas require more than just thinking of it then placing it down on pen and paper or other digital methods, planning for ideas require better research both visually and theoretically. In written form, we could find explanations to what a design means to a specific culture and visually we are able to find out the correct references to avoid our final result ending up as cultural appropriation.
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