Brain Storming

As part of out second assignment at uni we were asked to brain storm 'The Tipping Point'. Our group did a general brain storm and then focus in on peoples individual ideas.


Since the issues and themes in the book are all linked together, the brain storm looks a bit of a mess. We started with Epidemics, then The Law of the Few, then Crime and the Stickiness Factor.

To relate the topics to the real world we took the topics that everyone had expanded more on and discussed them to try and come up with solutions for the real life problems we had found.

When I did my mind map in assignment one, I focused on the chapter 'The Stickiness Factor'. We were talking about advertising and I thought of the new advert about Global Warming. It shows a man telling his daughter a bed time story about climate change. We are told that we decide whether the story has a happy ending. I didn't think this was a very 'sticky' advert, so I have decided to look at ways that we can make saving the environment fashionable or 'sticky'.

At the moment people seem to be buying cheap clothes, wearing them once and throwing them away. This is obviously not good for the environment. My idea is to make clothes that are completely bio-degradable and so cheap that they can be thrown away or somehow destroyed after one wear. Right now clothes that are that cheap are extremely damaging to the environment and clothes that are bio-degradable don't seem to be very available and can be quite expensive.


We were told that 'blue sky' thinking is allowed... so even though I'm thinking that some kind of material that can be worn once and then somehow destroyed safely and in an environmentally friendly way is probably not possible right now, it might be one day!

Design Studys 'Good design, bad design'

I swear my brain is going crazy today, too much to think about from our design studies lecture and from our seminars.

'To make a classroom a perpetual forum for political and social issues... is wrong: and to see aesthetics as sociology is grossly misleading. A student whose mind is cluttered with matters that have nothing directly to do with design, whose goal is to learn doing and making, who is learning how to use a computer at the same time that he or she is learning design basics, and who is overwhelmed with social problems and political issues is a bewildered student. This is not what he or she bargained for nor, indeed, paid for.'
-Paul Rand

I've been coming out of the design studies lectures feeling nervous and stressed out about getting out of my own bubble and getting involved in real-life design, when all I really expected to learn was how to design and make textiles. However, I have also felt inspired and excited, the negative feelings come purely from fear of leaving my comfort zone.

Therefore, I think this quote is completely out of touch. If nothing we do changes, relates to or fits into the world around us and is purely intended for museums or just to look nice, then nothing we do means anything. Plus, as a friend has just pointed out to me, 'a student who knows nothing of politics or the workings of the world is truly an uninspired student.'

Anyway, I enjoyed the lecture. It might have completely confused me about being creative etc but it was interesting and I am trying to understand it! I loved Johanna Basford's Twitter project, I tried to tweet her about it when I heard about it but I'm not sure it worked. I totally don't get twitter yet (only been on there for 8 months after all). Such a cool idea!

Before this lecture, 'visual literacy' to me meant understanding colour, images and the effect they have. Now I haven't a clue what it means. I'm going to have to read those notes ten times before I grasp what it is I reckon.

Also, my three things were: train passenger, guilt and scarf... and my story was then that a train passenger was feeling guilty for stealing another passengers scarf (?!), which lead me to crime on trains, which lead me to preventing crime on trains. Hm.

The seminar after the lecture was about the tipping point. And using themes from the tipping point as examples for designing for real life. One thing we spoke about was how to use design to prevent crime. Everyone started mentioning ID cards, random fingerprinting, cameras with eye recognition etc... none of which I agree with. I think it's a horrible thought that people are watching you and waiting for you to do something wrong.

So then I was asked to think of a way to target criminals while keeping privacy for innocent people. I still haven't come up with anything.. even though 'blue sky' thinking is allowed. I'll have a think about it and I suppose something might come from a group brain storm...

DPT week

Just finished our DPT week at uni. I was completely dreading it because I really didn't like the DPT workshop last year, but it's actually been ok. I would actually love to get some of these printed up on to material for my culture project. These are my final three pieces, they're not my favourite of the lot but they had to be varied...



I'm pretty glad that weeks over I have to say, me and computers don't get along very well! Now for a reading week...

Mind Mapping 'The Tipping Point'

For Design studies we were asked to make a general mind map about the book 'The Tipping Point' by Malcolm Gladwell. After the lecture and the seminar that followed it I looked at what we had discussed and developed a mind map. The main themes I used were 'The Law of the Few', 'The Stickiness Factor', 'Epidemics' and 'The Power of Context'.


I really enjoyed the book and found the part (in the chapter 'The Law of the Few') about different types of people in society very interesting, particularly Gladwells examples of 'Connectors'.

The idea of Crime as an epidemic and The Broken Window Theory also really interests me, though we hear about Crime waves I had never thought of it being contagious and I didn't know much about how graffiti was stopped etc.


Though I am sick of hearing about Hush Puppies, I liked how the section showed how things spread, fashion, crime etc.
I thought the 'Stickiness Factor' chapter was probably the best part of the book. I didn't realise how much time and testing went into children's television.

Since I found 'The Stickiness Factor' the most interesting, I went into it in more detail for the second part of our assignment. There was so much information about children's television and the testing that goes into it. I found the example of the 2 year old, Emily, who had more advanced conversations with herself than with her parents especially interesting.


I think I maybe went into a bit too much detail but the mind maps include names of authors and researchers, which was the third part of our assignment so I hope they are okay!

Sarah Stewart