Research & Lectures

This week I began looking into how other designers and creatives collaborate within their field. Collaboration is something I unfortunately don’t have a lot of experience with, but I would certainly like to develop this further and open opportunities for me to begin working with others on future projects. I believe that through collaboration, be that during the creative process or just the concept development, is an extremely useful tool we as designers can use to ensure we are covering multiple perspectives. You can also use the collaboration process to learn new skills and adapt different ways of working that may benefit you in the future. People helping people has such a natural energy to it, this energy can keep the buzz of a project alive from start to finish, it may even open up opportunities to begin developing other future projects within the process.

 

Morag Myerscough

Morag has been someone I’ve looked up to for a while now, seeing how she manages to place elements of fun and joy into spaces is really uplifting. As a lot of her own is only short term, it’s allowed for some really interesting pieces to arise, which possibility fed into her future longer term projects. The fun she has within her project is shown in the outcomes she produces, keeping the lighthearted and energetic.

When she speaks about her process of decorating the Sheffield Children’s Hospital, the consideration she had for the nurses as well as the children was really nice. She recognised that they too will have to live with this and there wasn’t much point creating a design that would upset the staff who care for the children. It had to have a positive impact to all those involved. Not only did she collaborate with the staff but she effectively collaborated with the space. There were many barriers she had to overcome to make sure the design would work within the environment it was to be put in, for example the materials used, the colours and the placement of everything. Rather than letting her environment work with her designs, she let her designs work for the environment.

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John Williams & Steven Spielberg

Collaborative unison 

 

Being one of the most well known and successful collaborations within the film industry, Jonh Williams & Steven Spielburg have managed to put their joint efforts onto a pedestal. Their efficiency working together shows within their outcomes but also in the way that they speak about each other and their process. I’ve always seen working with someone you get on well with as a risk, the lack of boundaries have been known for provoking arguments within the workplace regarding status, hierarchy and sometimes just laziness. It can be harder to take work seriously when working with a friend. However, it was really uplifting to find a pairing that have clearly made it work for them, and although they weren’t necessarily friends to begin with, they’ve certainly become close over the many years working with each other.

The level of respect they have for one another is a really good indicator on how they manage to make it work as well as they do. Having a mutual respect is the solid grounding for any kind of collaboration, it allows you to develop a trust in each others work, allowing for your project to be able to be a little bit more experimental and risky. For example, the risk they took on the simplicity of the Jaws title theme certainly paid off.

I wanted my editorial to reflect the laid back nature of how these two work together, to do this I decided to keep it light-hearted, using an adaption of the original Jaws film poster.

I’ve seen quite of few of these over the years, and although there are many, I still don’t see the effect wearing off. The simplicity of the image matches the title theme it was given, making for the perfect ‘template’ for you to add in whichever characters you see fit.

 

Looking back on it, I feel like I have tried to make all my words fit into one place, I could possibly try to make this a two page spread, either choosing to spread of my words of the two pages or by having the text and the imagery as two separate entities. Saying that though, I am quite happy with the concept and I think I managed to capture the team ethos of Spielberg and Williams by having them swim beside  each other.