- What did you learn?
From this assignment, I not only learned a lot about my topic “bark”, I also learned a lot about looking at an arbitrary topic critically. I was given the chance to be creative with a broad topic, and decide what exactly I wanted to tell the audience. Another thing I learned is that visual metaphors can be very powerful, sometimes more powerful than words or speech. It can grab an audience much more quickly than other mediums. It is also important to grab the audience’s attention so that they are more willing to look at the details of your work and ponder more deeply on it.
- What feedback did you receive? Any reflections on critique itself?
Some feedback I received was to be more risk-taking with my work. While my guide was easily assessable and understood, I could have add more interesting ways of critiquing my topic by pushing the boundaries of the form itself. I agree with the feedback, as I also felt the piece was lacking in something after I had submitted it.
- What might you do differently in terms of process or content?
In reference to the previous question, something I would do differently is to push the boundaries of the form. Some ideas I had, but was unable to fully realize or implement was to add some handwritten notes to the information packet, to make the guide feel more chaotic and unfinished. I would’ve also increased the length of the “side effects” section to add more emphasis to how dramatic pharmaceutical companies can be.
- What was inspiring? What parts?
When I was first brainstorming about my topic, I was pretty lost and did not know which direction to take. Initially, I was going to create an infographic chart about how bark is made, but I was not very excited about implementing that. When I decided to take the direction of the medicinal use of bark, I thought of a prescription bottle I had lying around the house. When I imagined the prescription bottle, then I was able to envision how I wanted my final project to look. Envision the prescription bottle really helped inspire the rest of my idea.
- Revisit the assignment prompts: how did your project relate to the original prompts, in terms of critical lens, audience, tone, etc…
The project ended up relating a lot to the original prompts. It was a physical, usable item which had a clear visual message. I wanted the project to be assessable to a general audience, which I think it successfully achieved since the prescription bottle is easily recognizable. It’s intention was to educate the audience about cinnamon, and its tone is meant to be more satirical.
- How did you balance research and experimentation? Which is easier for you? How can you focus more on the areas that you shy away from
I think experimentation was easier than research for me. I found that after I did light research about my topic, I already had a vision for the final project, and I needed to do research to back up to support it. Most of my research happened while I was writing the information packet, because I wanted to get accurate information about cinnamon.