Author: morgankoblog

Did your mother ever tell you your eyes were too big for your stomach after ordering a meal you simply could not finish? Or that you bit off more than you could chew trying to finish it? Well, mine certainly did. And not much has changed. I have this perpetual tendency to approach projects from the most out of left field direction. I like to take the scenic route when getting to a destination, which is the root of my struggle.

This project means more to me than just getting a letter in the gradebook, it’s an opportunity for me to manifest something that has been boiling inside of me since November. I appreciate the breadth of this project and want to make it as beautiful as possible; yet, that just may be what is causing me to run into ruts. I am trying to bite off more than I could chew. I hypothesize too many ideas at once and get wrapped up in the ideation of production. The problems I have encountered in my production phase have primarily been a result of trying to get too complicated with things, belaboring my creative aspirations, coming up with too many ideas and losing track of a common theme, and ultimately trying to perfect the story in my head before actually putting it on paper.

CONTENT

I knew I wanted to break up my story into three different chapters: 1. Novelty, 2. Mundanity, and 3. Beauty. That being said, incorporating multimedia elements to break up the narrative was a necessity, for reasons of logic, structure, function, creativity, clarity, engagement, and aesthetic. This was where I brainstormed my first whirlwind of ideas on how exactly I wanted to implement this. I explored a variety content online to try and find further inspiration in my production process. But, I still need to consider the fact that my story is pertaining to a particular audience: Furman. I think that is where I have fallen short in terms of my content, both written and multimedia. I need to do a better job tailoring the artifacts I am choosing to use to appeal or resonate with my future readers. More than anything, I want this to be a story that people WANT to read. That being said, I did learn the value of asking for help where the suit fits. I am by no means a graphic designer. I’m a creative thinker with strategic hands. SO, I decided to use my network and find outlets of support. I shared my ideas for how to break up the three sections of my story with a few graphically skilled friends around the block and asked for assistance. They were thrilled to help! You never know just how much you can improve by using your network as an asset until you open your mouth. My biggest assets in my life have been people, so why not use them to help create assets for my story??

CHAPTERS

To set the scene, I will begin my story with a quote from the one and only Einstein:

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.

Albert Einstein

Then, each chapter will have a paralaxing entry with an animated image serving as their introduction or visual header if you will. Each chapter has its own methodical theme with a hidden representation of the word itself. The visuals will be followed by a clear definition of the word to make it clear that the story is transitioning to new depths.

In terms of the other chapters, I have shots for Novelty but have yet to cement a powerful idea for bueauty. Both will include practically identical layouts: using an image in the footage for the first letter, followed by a visual and auditory typewriter effect of the letters spelling the whole word. I am working with friends to get those polished.

COLOR

I began to toy with color schemes.  At first, I instinctively thought to carry over the same warm aesthetic of the personal blog I made whilst abroad, which is the source of some of the anecdotal discoveries I include in my story, plus the blog will be linked somewhere within the narrative. I thought this would maintain a motif and I liked the warmth that it provided to an otherwise cold, curt topic. I want to add a sense of endearment to my story, and I figured I could do this through the power of my multimedia elements. However, other ideas were battling for room in the creative side of my brain and I began to feel fogged with too many ideas at the forefront at once. I began to realize that the source of my headache was from overthinking all these ideas and constantly (and I mean constantly) running them through my mind and thinking about each creative prospect or implication, hypothesizing what things COULD look like without actually implementing them to see what they DO look like. I was not initiating trial and error and it was killing my process. I’ve always been told that it’s never a bad thing to have too many ideas, but overthinking is certainly a burden, a time consuming burden. So, to escape this polluted arena of thought, I tested out one of my alternative color scheme ideas: BLACK&WHITE. Having a B&W theme was something that crossed my mind right away when starting this project. I mean, what’s more mundane than a lack of color? The only thing I am worried about with eliminating the aspect of color is that it is a crucial element of the raw beauty or sheer simplicity in some of the pictures. See below. I tested out both to see which I like better and, to be perfectly honest, I still haven’t fully decided, but I’m leaning towards B&W. We shall see!

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I’m a firm believer in the idea that there’s always room for improvement, but I would say I have achieved quite a bit in my multimedia production process. I have learned that my biggest feats with this project may be the result of ditching my original ideas and coloring a little more inside the lines. Now that I have a good idea of what images I will be using to represent the messages conveyed in my story, I will be focussing on the flow, outline, and direction of my narrative. I want it to be easy to follow, using a Z format with imagery, and also have a place in the minds and hearts of Furman students.

NOVELTY

nov·el·ty

/ˈnävəltē/

noun

The quality of being new, original, or unusual.

“the novelty of being a married woman wore off”

synonyms: originality, newness, unconventionality, unfamiliarity

The idea of novelty manifesting this post poses pretty comical irony.  The fact that this reflection will encompass the process of me overcoming my overly-zealous response to the novelty and scope of this multimedia narrative project, whilst explaining why and how I landed on the idea of novelty serving as the core motif for my narrative.  In case that’s behind you (flew over your head), it’s ironic because I became a victim of my own soapbox ideology.  I fell victim to The Novelty Effect.  The Novelty Effect was, at first, the main idea that I wanted my narrative to surround.  However, I was struggling with wanting to incorporate so many other ideas simultaneously, and my topic ultimately became a jumbled mess.

Cultivation: An Analogy

So say I’m a gardener.  I’m not, but let’s pretend I was for the purpose of this analogy of my thought process development arc for my project proposal.  I had an idea, a topical seed.  That tiny seed had huge potential, I could sense it.  I had to feed it.  So, I researched.  Every time I found a new idea, I fed it water.  I poured and poured and poured and poured into this sprouting seed.  At first, I was sensing steady growth.  The idea was sprouting.  But, with each new branch came more weight, putting pressure on the over-watered premature trunk.  At a certain point, the tree became top-heavy, burdened by the weight of too many ideas.  The tree grew into a lop-sided representation of where I saw my idea going.  There were simply too many branches on one side and not enough weight or support in the middle.  It lacked balance.  Before I knew it, the tree was toppling over and went crashing into the ground, breaking many branches through its fall.  All the branches on one side weighing it down with their heavy, far-reaching concepts.  The trunk, the core of the story, the main idea, wasn’t big or strong enough to hold it all together.  The tree is my brain.  My thought process.  My topic needed a point, it needed direction, and I have that now.

Why Novelty?

I was toying with the idea of using novelty as a theme to guide this narrative about my time abroad and how I found that everything in Europe was seemingly so much more beautiful than everything back home.  I mean everything from the churches, to the apartment buildings, to the sidewalk.  Yes, the grey, concrete sidewalk.  The one in Copenhagen – where I studies abroad – that likely looks exactly the same as the one across the street from my house in Chicago.   I retrospectively realized that because everything abroad in a new environment seemed so extravagant and beautiful because of the sheer fact that it was all so novel.  Thus, the birth of my topic brainstorm.

How Did I Get Here?

One word: M I N D M A P P I N G.  Mindmapping!  Look at the diagram below.

We spent some time discussing mindmapping in class one day, so I decided to try it out.  Let me tell you what, mine certainly did not look like the piece of art you see above, but it worked wonders for my thought process and the development of my idea.  I started with novelty, added in finding beauty in the mundane, drew a branch for Denmark, Danish culture, Hygge, cultivating Hygge at Furman, discovering novelty at Furman, exploiting the redundancy of life, so on and so forth.  It allowed me to really gain a better understanding of the direction I wanted to take my story.

When I started branching off with the idea of novelty in the middle of my mind map, I found myself coming to the conclusion that my branches seemed to be jumbled and lacked connection.  But, when I put “finding beauty in the mundane” in the middle, I found it much easier to make “chapters” out of this title.  The branches seemed to be more visibly cohesive – in terms of each one’s purpose – and connect to the main idea.  Finally, a sturdy tree trunk.

What I have discovered through Ellen Lupton’s insightful text, Design Is Storytelling, is that the multimedia elements I incorporate are truly going to matter, in terms of setting the scene, painting a picture of mundanity, and evoking emotion.  I’m a big believer in the idea that pictures tell a thousand words.  Hence, I need to choose my pictures and videos wisely and determine which photos from abroad will serve as assets, rather than fog the story with tangent-esque visual anecdotes.   I know I will need to be careful with not over-using to create a cloudy scene.  One of my biggest challenges thus far, and what I presume will continue to be a feat, is culling pictures from my time abroad and deciding how to frame new pictures in a corresponding manner so that the story flows and applies in context at Furman.

Our reading in to Seth Gitner’s Multimedia Storytelling has really helped me cull through photos.  His explanation of strategic explanation of visual storytelling, there are four different languages that a photo can speak:

• Informational
• Graphically Appealing
• Emotional
• Intimate

His description and depiction of these four categories really helped me determine how I want my photos to speak to my audience.  After reflecting on Gitner’s lessons, I have a vision of my photographs serving as the main component of the message I am trying to convey.  They are the main event, the novel, the movie, and the text is their narration.  Effectively, I want my words to explain my pictures, but for the two to support each other and have a balance of helping the reader see my point and understand my motif.  The pictures should ultimately all portray mundanity.  Hopefully, their mood will transition throughout the narrative to feeling somewhat challenged by bleakness and a scarcity of color or zeal, into a feeling of pure content and appreciation for the beauty that each of the images hold.

So, am I content with my current direction?  Yes.  But, that is incredibly subject to change.  I am still feeling uneasy about the flow and consistency of my story, simply because I do not know how to pick and choose what to include from my time abroad and what not, nor what to include from my time at Furman and what to not.  I know one thing for sure, I will be starting with explaining the concept of novelty, how it came to effect my life abroad, and how it allowed me to take time to appreciate and recognize the beauty of every day mundane life.

Stay tuned!

– Morgan