After a long hiatus I have returned, still in the throes of reading, reviewing, absorbing, and synthesizing. It's been quite a process and so I've continued onwards through this new spring semester.
The big news is a means in which to distill the information I got. The flow of ideas into a well-written paper was proving to be quite difficult for me, and it seemed that while my outline was kind of clear to me, it wasn't making much sense especially to those that are more graphically-inclined. It finally dawned on me to do a visual outline, complete with pictures, arrows etc. See it here:
Based on a Chris Ware comic, I basically tried to boil down my many topics into two parallel discussions. Using an Ellen Lupton quote as guidance, I visually interpreted the topics of "design in society" and "every designer is a citizen (and vice-versa)." This method really allowed me to explore how circular and interconnected all my ideas are, as well as show other folks just what exactly was swimming around in my head. As Rita said, it's a great leap forward.
Now, the next huge step is to to synthesize all of my notes. Rita and I devised a plan of action for that as well, and I'll detail that process in the next post. Thanks for sticking around and reading!
