Writing a project proposal

Project Proposal MA Design, pathway Editorial Design #1

Although my education and practise as an art director for advertising has led me to love the creative process and the organization of relevant information for a mass audience, I would like to study editorial design in a more philosophical and historical way paying closer attention to the writings of media philosophers such as Jean Baudrillard en Marshall Mc Luhan as well as learning more about Edward Tufte and different processes of categorizing information. I would like to apply this knowledge to future design projects, may they take the form of two dimensional of three dimensional forms of communications.

I would like to step beyond the boundaries of print and look at how society interacts with information and design on a human level and am interested in exploring editorial design as a public happening such as using the outdoors as a possible canvas for the dissemination of information such as poetry printed into the sidewalks or films projected for the public in large open arenas.

The project that I would like to include in my proposal is a photographic book on people eating. I would like to look at the history and philosophy behind the foods we used to consume through history and presently consume through studying the semiotics of food and eating.

Food and food preparation is a passion of mine and I have been thinking of doing a book like this for some time now. In North America there has been a pull for people to go back to the kitchen and to the family spurred by a post 9-11 world. There has been an emergence of food culture such as the television Network, FOOD, which is devoted to food programming and cooking shows. This trend in North America in particular is an odd one as most people living off of the continent see North Americans as junk/fast food addicts. I would like to explore this topic as a visual and written essay presented as a book.

In applying for my masters in Editorial Design, I am fully prepared and anxious to start projects which will bring me and others to a deeper understanding of the dissemination of information. I am excited at the prospect of being able to learn more and share ideas with other creative people in my field and hope that I will realize my goal of attending the programme.



Project Proposal MA Design, pathway Editorial Design #2

It is clear that globalization has a cultural impact on individuals as well as on their communities, replacing thousands-year-old cultures with 'modern' cultures that present themselves through mass media dominating the fields of progress and art.

Because of this, local traditions and ways of expression of minority cultures are no actively part of contemporary social context. This leads to ond-way communication, because the minorities do not dispose of an effective answer or a diffusion system that could provide them with the answer or other means of propagation. And so they are left behind in a state of oblivion and resignation, turning them into passive consumers.

I believe that the current cultural relations, the foundation and options, urgently require new interfaces of communication and design, aimed at the preservation and integration.

The Master in Editorial Design will enable me to develop new ideas about transfer of information, which I can use to propose editorial projects that will advance participation in which 'passive' cultures will be included, as start for socio-cultural integration. To be able to conduct my studies in a cosmopolitan country, where problems of integration have partly been resolved though communications strategies, will all the more enhance the resulting implications and global concepts, as will the interaction with people with different nationalities and ideas on design.

The subject of my research will be to analyze the various interpretations of culture, folklore, creative diversity, conceptual coherence and ways of diffusion, in order to determine a methodology for the two projects I want to realize.
The first project proposes to heighten and advance the creative activity of minority cultures by making intelligent use of the tools of editorial design.
The second consists of developing communication systems between the different cultural strata to give an impulse to an integration based on mutual respect for origins and differences. It is my ambition to further the visible participation of minority culture in the current, political and economical systems.

To this aim I would hope to create proposals for editorial design such as magazines, websites, publications, general publicity etc. that can help to give voice to passive/minority cultures, manifesting their culture as being valuable and creative, both artistically as in everyday life.
Also I would like to reflect on the role of design in the issue of sustainability based on the way information is used to help find solutions for daily ecological, productive and cultural necessities. I believe that Sustainability of cultures lies in the appropriate handling of their economical, social and cultural wealth. WE, designers, carry the responsibility of giving and objective interpretation of a culture in order for its meaning to be passed on.