studio practice: OUGD405 | STUDIO BRIEF 2 | DESIGN PROCESS

For this brief we must research and produce a body of work that investigates the term/concept/value/number 100 by collecting, recording, documenting and categorising. This can be on any of our personal interests, opinions or obsessions. The research must then be presented in a time scale of two minutes.

Once the theme has been identified, we must then collect 20 images, facts, stats, words and opinions relevant to it.

When I first got this brief, I realised that I don't collect a lot of stuff. As a child I collected a lot of toys, especially beanie babies and plush toys, some of which I still have somewhere. This was one of my ideas, but I didn't feel keen enough on the idea even though it would have been a good choice for the brief.

None of my parents collect anything old or interesting, except my dad who has a small selection of old vinyls. However, I didn't feel like these were personal enough to me or something I could sit and research.

Eventually, after looking around my room I spotted my books about serial killers and realised that this would be something I could research. I decided on instead of a collection of objects, a collection of information would be cool to do. Even though the subject of serial killers is a bit of a tender or strange subject for some, I personally find them intriguing. I didn't want to glorify these people, rather just display a range of information that I knew would be interesting.

I took some research such as potential killers to include from this book I own:

I started by skimming through a book, and noting some of the most famous killers that I could include. Since we're supposed to have 20 images and 20 facts, I thought it would work to have 20 different serial killers with a fact associated with each of them. For statistics, I thought a general approach would work better for that.

I began by collecting my images:

I edited them black and white, messed with the contrast and exposure and also added a grain to make them look older.

For opinions, I thought I would ask 3 questions to generate a lot of different answers, and also cover different areas:

• What do you think is the most influential factor regarding serial killers and their acts? (eg. argument of Nature or Nurture) What makes a person want to murder someone?

• When you hear the word serial killer, who/what comes into your mind? why?

• Are you interested in serial killers? if so, why?

As for words, I decided on 20 words that you could describe a killer with e.g sick, scary, interesting.

For my statistics I used a pdf I found online for a lot of them, it was a study done by Mike Aamodt at Radford university. It contained lots and lots of facts and figures that I had to select carefully and edit down.

I produced 26 'slides' displaying my information, and used my photography in the background. I chose red for obvious reasons; blood.

The font I used was retrosans as it reminded me of the letters used in a mug shot, so I thought it would be suitable. It is also very readable and bold.