About

Updated on 17th October 2010.

Who am I?

I’m Jaz. I graduated two years ago (BA(hons) Design for Interactive Media – First Class Honours) and have been working full time as a web designer ever since. I have a background in fine art and occasionally do professional photo shoots as part of my work.

3wise have kindly allowed me day release to undertake a Masters in Graphic Design.

Out in the real world, I’m a Placebo obsessed, vegetarian, lazy-neatfreak. I live with my boyfriend, who is a Flash developer. I go to lots of gigs, love to read and play pointless computer games.

About my MA

I’m doing my MA at the University of Portsmouth and it’s exactly a year long (September to September), whilst continuing to work with 3wise, four days a week.

Instead of choosing a primarily “interactive” focused Masters, I chose Graphic Design. I felt this could cover many subjects, including interactive design. I wanted the freedom to explore other media if I choose to. Put simply, I want to enrich and expand on the things I learned in my BA and in my professional work.

I chose this particular course because it had everything I wanted – an in depth look into design with heavy focus on research and critical thinking. I hope to be able to use my job to bring an outlook on how things work in industry into my coursework and feed back to my job with some new ideas and some different way of doing things.

I’m enjoying being back amongst my peers, fellow designers, as being the only designer at my job hasn’t left me much room for discussion on the subject.

Why are you using a blog?

For one of my projects on the BA, the professional assisting with the unit suggested we keep blogs and hand those in for our research. It allowed for conversation, it allowed for feedback from people you wouldn’t normally reach. It also encouraged a deeper look into what you were researching than scribbling afterthoughts in a sketchbook might. It’s also available from anywhere (there’s internet). I quite enjoyed keeping the blog, and kept it for a while afterwards as well.

In one of our seminars, we were shown someone’s MA research – four massive bound books, all scanned in and beautifully printed. It had everything in there, and I mean everything. We were told – and I was aware – that that’s not really necessary. That said, it did get me thinking. How was I going to present my research? As a web designer, it seemed a bit of an obvious thing to do, but I’ve gone with it anyway. Sometimes the first idea is the best one.

With a blog, posts can be as long or as short as you want. Can contain anything you want. Have feedback if you want. I do intend to print it at the end and present it in a yet-to-be-decided way, but I will still have my research, and there’s always the opportunity for it to continue.

Oh and as for using a sketchbook – it will be used for sketching, visualising etc. Not gluing in lots of printouts (yay for saving trees).

Side Note: The tone on the blog is quite informal. This is how I think, and is how I used to annotate my BA sketchbooks. Personally I don’t think it’s important to constantly be writing at sky-high level. I’m thinking here and yes I will babble on in my own special way.

The End.

Feel free to look around, comment, whatever. I may not agree with you, but feedback is always appreciated!