This interview process was very rewarding and refreshing. However, It was a bit of a struggle for me considering that I feel like I am still spinning in circles for my thesis topic. In the back of my mind I was just hoping that I am really asking the right questions that will employ sound information to get me on track with my topic. I had the opportunity to conduct three interviews and am actually still waiting to interview one of the three. One was through email and one via phone. It was a bit of a challenge setting up the schedules considering that I am a full-time employee and student and my interviewees also have full time jobs. Time management was definitely put to the test. I had the opportunity to reach out to three individuals for the interviews that consisted of: Professor Rebecca Hemstad of Savannah College of Art and Design, Professor Sam Minor of Ball State University, and soon to interview the marketing director/graphic designer Stephen Brewster from Life Point Church. Each individual provided valuable and very informative information that contributed to my topic of interest toward my thesis goals.

My initial interview begin with Professor Rebecca Hemstad. I emailed her the request and a list of questions so she could prepare for the interview. During the interview process there were some questions that she felt like she could not answer due to her experiences with certain organizations. My next interview was with Professor Sam Minor. He was able to provide a lot of great feedback in areas of graphic design in the church. Finally I am still hoping to have the opportunity to interviewed Stephen Brewster who has years of experience working in the church. I believe Brewster will be able to deliver hands on responses that reflected directly in his experience in Faith based organizations.

Being open minded was another great aspect of the interview process. I say this because although, I prepared questions, I didn’t necessarily want to just be married to only those questions. The interviewees responses allow for times that generated new questions and thoughts.

Overall this was very new to me. Again, I was hoping I asked all the right questions but this was definitely a positive learning experience and I will continue this process as I move forward with my thesis topic. Reaching out to people and just having the opportunity to verbally communicate ideas, questions and answers generates new potential that will definitely contribute to my thesis process.

Researching difficult to find articles can be a challenging process. Especially when one is so depended on technology or internet to find resources. As a graduate student at SCAD we received the challenge of discovering research articles that date back to 1911 from Henri Matisse. The topic is on early exhibition of Modernist art in New York City, 1911.

As I prepared to search for different articles and reviews for this topic, I did begin my search via internet just to get an idea of what is out there. I did come across a few articles but nothing that dates back to that era. Next I searched through Bracken Library at Ball State University. I was still a little familiar with there online database system as a past undergrad student. I later spoke with Ryan who was the librarian on staff at Ball State University for assistance. Later I decided to contact SCAD and utilize the resources afforded to the students. I met with Mike who was able to assist me with the process of navigating through the JSTOR to gain access to the research resources available. The process through SCAD require me to log into my MyScad account and click on the Library tab. From there I was directed to the page that has the option to click on Article & Image Databases. This options times me a drop down menu to search by data titles. Next, I click on the alphabetic “J” option to take me to the JSTOR. Once I clicked on the JSTOR options I was able to do an advance search to type in the title and exact dates of the era of articles I needed. As a result I was able to collect articles and information based on the Henri Matisse topics.

During my exploration of a thesis topic, it has come down to treating my topic like a case study. Therefore, I researched different methods on how to write a case study and came across an interesting article.

A case study is a puzzle that has to be solved. The first thing to remember about writing a case study is that the case should have a problem for the readers to solve. The case should have enough information in it that readers can understand what the problem is and, after thinking about it and analyzing the information, the readers should be able to come up with a proposed solution. Writing an interesting case study is a bit like writing a detective story. You want to keep your readers very interested in the situation.

A good case is more than just a description. It is information arranged in such a way that the reader is put in the same position as the case writer was at the beginning when he or she was faced with a new situation and asked to figure out what was going on. A description, on the other hand, arranges all the information, comes to conclusions, tells the reader everything, and the reader really doesn’t have to work very hard.

When you write a case, here are some hints on how to do it so that your readers will be challenged, will “experience” the same things you did when you started your investigation, and will have enough information to come to some answers.

There are three basic steps in case writing: research, analysis, and the actual writing. You start with research, but even when you reach the writing stage you may find you need to go back and research even more information.

The Research Phase:

1. Library and Internet research. Find out what has been written before, and read the important articles about your case site. When you do this, you may find there is an existing problem that needs solving, or you may find that you have to come up an interesting idea that might or might not work at your case site. For example, your case study might be on a national park where there have been so many visitors that the park’s eco-system is in danger. Then the case problem would be to figure out how to solve this so the park is protected, but tourists can still come. Or, you might find that your selected site doesn’t have many tourists, and one reason is that there are no facilities. Then the case problem might be how to attract the right kind of businesses to come and build a restaurant or even a hotel — all without ruining the park.

Or your case study might be on historic sites that would interest tourists –IF the tourists knew where the sites were or how to get to them. Or maybe your case study is about how to interest people in coming to your country so they can trace their family’s historic roots (origins).

Once you have decided on the situation or issue you would like to cover in your case study (and you might have several issues, not just one), then you need to go to the site and talk to experts.

2. Interview people who know the place or the situation. Find knowledgeable people to interview — they may be at the site itself or they work in a government office or company that deals with the historic preservation. In addition to people who work in the site, talk to visitors.

When you are interviewing people, , ask them questions that will help you understand their opinions, questions like the following:
“What is your impression of the site (maybe it’s an old fort, or a burial site, or an excavation of historic interest)?”

“How do you feel about the situation?”
“What can you tell me about how the site (or the situation) developed?” “What do you think should be different, if anything?

You also need to ask questions that will give you facts that might not be available from an article, questions like:
“Would you tell me what happens here in a typical day?”
“What kind of statistics do you keep? May I have a copy?

“How many businesses are involved here?”

When you ask a question that doesn’t let someone answer with a “yes” or a “no” you usually get more information. What you are trying to do is get the person to tell you whatever it is that he or she knows and thinks — even though you don’t always know just what that is going to be before you ask the question. Then you can add these facts to your case. Remember, your readers can’t go to your site, so you have to “bring it to them.”

The Analysis Phase:

1. Put all the information in one place. Now you have collected a lot of information from people, from articles and books. You can’t include it all. So, you need to think about how to sort through it, take out the excess, and arrange it so that the situation at the case site will be understandable to your readers. Before you can do this, you have to put all the information together where you can see it and analyze what is going on.
2. Assign sections of material to different people. Each person or group should try to figure out what is really important, what is happening, and what a case reader would need to know in order to understand the situation. It may be useful, for example, to put all the information about visitors on one chart, or on a chart that shows visitors to two different sites throughout a year.

3. Try to formulate the case problem in a few sentences. When you do this, you may find that you need more information. Once you are satisfied with the way you have defined the problem you want your readers to think about, break the problem down into all its parts. Each one represents a piece of the puzzle that needs to be understood before the problem can be solved. Then spend some time discussing these with the others in your group.

For example, suppose:

1. Your heritage site doesn’t have many visitors, but many people say
   they would like to visit if it had services
2. There is unemployment in the village around the site,
3. The town is big enough to be able to accommodate many more
   visitors, and
4. The surrounding environment (animals, trees and plants) need to be
   protected from too many visitors
5. Thetownisfaraway,buttherearenoplacestoeatorsleeparound
   there
6. The government owns the location, but the government does not
   want to own and operate either a restaurant or a hotel

Ask yourselves: “How much information do people who will read your case

study need to have in order to be able to discuss items a through f?

One answer to “a.” is that they need to know data about past numbers of visitors, and they need to know what evidence exists that more people want to visit but are discouraged from going there. Your evidence will come from the articles and statistics you have gathered, and from the interviews you have completed.

Once you have broken down the problem into pieces, you can analyze the information you now have and see if you can think about possible answers to each of the pieces. If you have enough information, then you can think about how to write the case study itself.

Thesis Topic: Direction and Revisions

Title: Case Study: “The Church Visual Communication Strategies” An Eye on the Future of Innovative Collaboration.

Overview: This attempt for my thesis is based off of personal experience. I’ve worked as a professional for over 10 years now and the current 7 years have involved working for a church. I would like to perform a case study based on the holistic environment of a church and areas that will generate more effective results in visually communicating to the organization’s audience.

Topic: Churches of the 21st Century are confronted with a rigorous responsibility. Churches are positioning themselves in communities to provide positive moral efforts and hope to a generation churches call ‘lost’ or in consequence of horrific impacts toward their lives. In one aspect the church reach people is through the practice of visual communications. However, from personal experience I have seen how visual communications in the church suffer from an immeasurable deal of malpractice. This cause may be due to the fear of change, budget or resources. However, this thesis will unfold strategies that will generate a more affective approach to the discipline of visual communications in the church through innovative collaboration.

Preliminary Research Plans:

•My goal is to interview design departments from various churches to record their strategies in visual communications.

•Record pros and cons in the visual communications departments in churches

•Research budget concerns

•Research available resources to churches

•Research organizations reasons for fear of change

•Researching collaboration strategies

•How to connect people already existing within the congregation of the organization.

These are all a few rough thoughts.

Rhetorical Précis

Brown, Tim. “Change by Design” How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Inspiration. Harper Collins. 2009

Interpretation 

Tim Brown, author of “Change by Design” (2009), explains how ‘design thinking’ allows for organizations to gain successful and more innovative solutions for the end results of a design project. This is done through collaboration. He discusses that in the reality of this concept, there is no one specific recipe that will allow rewarding outcomes but there are useful starting points to help guide one through the creative process. These landmarks may include but are not limited to the acts of; ‘inspiration’, the problem or opportunity that motivates the search for solutions; ‘ideation’, the process of generating, developing, and testing ideas; and ‘implementation’, the road that leads from the project room to the market. Projects may revisit these concepts more than once which makes room for new creative direction that should not go undiscovered.

Brown supports this idea by providing examples of different corporations such as IDEO and Mattel who have embrace the practice of ‘design thinking’ and provided working deliverables for their audience. Brown also exposes how the affects of professionals from different background disciplines working together with a design mentality, will allow for many new opportunities for innovation to take place.  Senior VP, Ivy Ross of design for girls’ products at Mattel realized that it was difficult for various disciplines across the company to communicate and collaborate. To address this, Brown mentions that she created Platypus. This was a 12 week program experiment which allowed for participants in the organization where invited to relocate their office space with the objective of generating new and out-of-the-box product ideas. This experiment received it’s name because of the term platypus being defined as an uncommon mix of different species. This process allowed for the participants to explore new directions for girl’s play and came up with a series of innovative product concepts. By the end of the experiment they were ready to pitch their successful ideas to management.

Collaboration efforts allows for one to connect with the target audience in a more affective way. Keeping the value in the forefront that it is all about the people. John C. Maxwell mentions that connecting is never bout the design team. It’s about the person with whom the team is communicating. Connecting will require the team to focus from inward to outward. This is usually missed when the team becomes more focused on themselves which does occur often if not focused. [1]

Browns purpose to make his viewers aware of the changes occurring in the 21 Century design industry. It is no longer the routine of a designer just chained to a desk in a studio shut away from the team in an organization. We are in a time where the designer needs to be just as comfortable to hold weight in a boardroom with other executives or professionals. On another note, he explains that the idea of ‘design thinking’ is not just a concept that should be embraced by designers alone. Brown mentions that the skills of ‘design thinking’ needs to be dispersed throughout organizations and into the areas of executives and those responsible for strategic planning. When a team of talented, optimistic, and collaborative design thinkers come together, Brown asserts that a chemical change occurs that can lead to unpredictable actions and reactions. Collaboration through a practitioner does not come to a situation with fixed, predefined problem statements, but undertakes investigation and engages in dialogue through which appropriates emerging metaphors.[2] This effort will allow for the organization as a whole to position themselves to experience successful results.

Brown establishes himself to present his idea of ‘design thinking’ to an audience of educated individuals and corporations that thrive for creative and innovative solutions that will appeal to their audience. Brown is challenging companies to incorporate design into their organizational DNA. However, he is also challenging designers to continue the transformation of design practice itself. He mentions that the ever so changing industry is calling for a new design practice. This demand creates a need for collaboration in such a way that amplifies , rather than subdues the creative powers of an individual. It is a practice that is focused but in turn, flexible and responsive to unexpected opportunities.  Brown tells his audience that the next generation of designers will need to begin to look at every problem from adult illiteracy to global warming as a design problem.

Additional Resources

Maxwell C. John. “Everyone Communicates, Few Connect”. Thomas Nelson. Page 29. 2010.

Wild, Lorraine. “Looking Closer Four: Critical Writings on Graphic Design.” That Was Then, and This is Now; But What is Next? Page 140. Allworth Press. 2002

Discussion Questions

1. How could a freelance designer embrace the concept of ‘design thinking’ for successful exploration of open opportunities.

2. How may one facilitate a collaboration session to assure focus of the meetings.

3. What happens if the idea of joining a diverse number of professionals from different disciplines to generate creative concepts do not work? Do you eventually start over with a new team of individuals or continue with the same group but revisit the situation.

The world around us of design is changing drastically. For designers ourselves, we are being pushed to no ideas of our practice by not sitting behind the desk but also performing in the boardrooms. It seems that the focus of graphic design has always been and individual behind a desk creating a logo, brochure, poster, etc. The role of the graphic designer is now expanding in ways to interact and view everything from adult illiteracy to global warming — as a design problem. Today, graphic designers are working with professionals from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. Psychologist, Lawyers, Doctors, Architects are all joining the team of collaboration and beginning to think like designers. These practices open the door for designers to become more innovative and fresh on their projects. As designers challenge themselves to take risk and explore, allows for a more successful approach and are more than likely to become more deeply engaged. In turn, designers will become more motivated and more widely productive.

I work for Calvary Christian Center as the art director and only graphic designer. We have a pretty large church but our staff is very limited as far numbers of employees. My goal in my environment is to try to establish more of these principles of collaboration. Being that we are very scarce in employment, it has been to my advantage to seek out individuals to brainstorm with and create innovative ways to communicate our message to our audience. Even on our staff we have pastors that may have business, communication or marketing degrees which also generates a lot of diversity in our collaborative efforts.  It is also interesting to pull in members of the congregation that attend services and events regular to record their input to the conversation. As we continue to push forward with this method I believe it will allow for our organization to produce materials that will be more effective to our congregation and how they are informed.

I have to say that as I begin to further think about the process of writing a thesis, I was under the assumption that I needed to be an inventor. I was so focused on trying to be truly original in the topic of choice. Where some of this may be true, I begin to shift my focus a bit on just staying in line on the subject matters that I am very passionate about. Clark mentions that sometimes we wait for a strike of lightening for a great idea when in turn it is really just a process of going after that idea as it begins to formulate over time.

If I really take a look at the things I am passionate about in the area of graphic design, it is the church (my faith) and teaching. With that being said if I had to choose one area that I am the most passionate about, it would be my Faith. Digging into spiritual aspects can be very contriversal. I have asked my self on multiple occasions about, what is it that needs to be communicated? Why would people care? Who will care?

My goal is to research and explore how churches or non-profit organizations can benefit from the discipline of graphic design. I’m not really sure in which direction to take this where there are man facets in graphic design. Below I have bullet points of a few circumstances:

• How Churches can benefit from a strong methodology system in creating print  collateral.

• How Ministries can communicate more effectively through print media.

• The Innovative Church: Reaching people through ‘design thinking’.

• Budget Smudget: Understanding the importance in value in visual  communications for       your organization & ways to do it with a budget.

These are a few ideas that have formulated and I understand that some are still a little broad. For the most part the church has the ability to really position itself in a community to bring hope, inspiration and help those whom are in need. There are many ministries that are progressive and doing well while there are several that are small and may not have the necessary resources to produce efficient marketing materials. I would like to have the opportunity to developed information that informs strategic examples of how ministries can still ‘think big’ even though they may be working on a limited budget.

When it comes to print collateral and how it is being used for ministries to reach there audience it is important to embrace sound methodologies to produce working design solutions. From time to time you often here reasons of ministries not having the funds to hire a professional. In-turn, this may often result in noneffective materials being produced making it a challenge to really reach people through visual communications.

thesisbrainstorming

Graphic design in my mind is creative visual solutions to solve communication problems. These communications are tools to display a message to an audience through print, screen, and other exploratory forms of mediums supported by typography and images. While this may be true, I have explored throughout my experiences that graphic design can also be much more. In this course unit we learn from Phillip Meggs that design can be described as an “essence”. Meggs mentions that essence is to give order to information, form to ideas and expression and feeling to artifacts that document human experience.  As a result to this I believe graphic design is also an experience and
an emotion.

Although graphic design is solutions through type and image it is also an experience that is supported through design thinking.  I have learned from Tim Brown that design thinkers observe how people behave, how the context of their experience affects their reaction to products and services.  When I think about the experience on a highway, it is rare that I, myself think about graphic design. Despite that, the highways are a form of a design system that is developed to improve the human traveling experience. They allow us to travel faster and it is a service providing commuters with direction to their destinations. All in support of a form of graphic design.

Brown also mentions that designers take into account the emotional meaning of things as well as their functional performance. As consumers we are confronted with all sorts of advertisement forms presented in several types of media such as: print, screen, radio, etc. When we are introduced to these forms of advertisement we react in some shape or form. I am pretty big on gaming. I can remember when I was first introduced to the Xbox 360 ads. Today, there are many game consoles to choose from but for whatever reason the Xbox is what stood out to me the most. The branding for the Xbox and design caused me to react differently towards the other game consoles out there. Graphic design plays key in the end result of a product. A great method and design will result in a successful product.

I will have to be honest to say that when I first took an interest in graphic design, I thought it was all about type and images coming together to communicate a message. While this is true, we can also see that graphic design uses an experience and emotion to cause an audience to respond in some shape or form. With this in mind, we can see that graphic design also involves the emotional or humanistic side of things. Graphic design is creative process that allow the executor to merge art with technology to help provide functional solutions that we experience in our lives on a daily basis. Whether if it is commuting or being moved to purchase a hot item on the market.Graphic design is everywhere.

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