She’s Deadline Un/Oriented
Project updates, first day of class bumbles, and a Stephen King quote.
On the first day of class, with subzero temps and illness on campus, I had the wrong start time and also forgot to take attendance. I did, however, manage to show the memes I had carefully selected as part of the course introduction. The semester has been off to a great start ;)
Jessica Barness
As I noted in my might-be-sustainable spring semester plan last month (link above), I’ve got a handful of projects in the works. Earlier this week, my research partner and I piloted a workshop with my grad students involving the People’s Graphic Design Archive — and, of course, this raised more questions than we could answer. This is what happens when class evolves into a community with curiosity.
There’s a conference presentation coming up in March and a public lecture in April. The first is centered on making collages as an approach to researching design history, and the second is about fictionalizing historic design debates. My plans for these two projects have already been thrown off course.
Especially in these dark, chilly winter days, I go where my attention takes me. I got obsessed with fictionalizing design debates and actually got a lot done ahead of schedule.
This tells me two things: 1) the scope of this study is manageable, and 2) I enjoy the method and topic. But, I had to put this study on pause with a sticky note telling me to ignore all of it until March…
Putting a study on pause is something I learned from the book Write No Matter What by Joli Jensen and maybe this is helpful for you, too. Setting aside work like this (with plans to reopen again in the near future), means writing up a candid summary and including links to any major files or websites. The idea is to capture your state of mind so that a project can easily start again later — and not get lost in the jungle of notes and digital clutter, which ALWAYS happens to me.
… because in March, for the other presentation, I need to make collages. On a deadline. With research data. I’ve frozen up.
There are so many things competing for my attention.
Designers are taught to be deadline-oriented (“meet the client’s demands needs!”) and many creative professionals have that as a personality trait, too. I assign projects with progress benchmarks and final deadlines. The actual ability to be creative on a deadline is rarely questioned — it’s just what we do. And, society wants us to stick to deadlines.
Though I’m a slow writer, I can pound out academic or non-fiction writing to meet deadlines when needed. Making creative visual work? Well, that concerns another part of my brain. I’d rather enjoy getting lost in these collages-as-research, pulling bits from my stack of material to come up with quirky (maybe even provocative) juxtapositions and play with position and flow and not think about a deadline.
This deadline un/oriented state of mind makes me more inclined to acknowledge my students’ experiences, too. Does creating work under a deadline foster good project management skills, or does it hinder what we’re really capable of doing? Perhaps my desire for slow creativity is just a way to dress up good old procrastination…
A few other unrelated things from January:
Orbital by Samantha Harvey. There’s a beautiful design to the writing of this book, which captures one day in the lives of six astronauts circling Earth.
Kale pesto. It’s a delicious winter alternative when grocery store basil looks like *$@#
Made me laugh. As recounted by Neil Gaiman: “People think that I must be a very strange person. This is not correct. I have the heart of a small boy. It is in a glass jar on my desk.” - Stephen King.
