REFLECTIVE

The first week started with the group tutorial. To my mind, it was an excellent start to the working process, as we could share ideas with other students, get feedback, and see what really interests the audience. It was interesting to see how different project ideas were; all students tried to find something that they were into or what matters to them the most. I was asked some questions, which I kind of wasn’t prepared to. For example, I didn’t really think I should study one country’s language or a couple of countries? If so, which countries would I like to study? Do I have any friends, who can be representatives of such countries? What outcome do I expect to have? These questions pushed the process of me to think more deeply about my project. I started planning my project in more detail. I want to bring a message, so now I need to think of a way to do it. Should it be educational or entertaining? The way I see it now is to create a book. The book can contain both historical information and visual examples. This can be a good practice of graphic design in my work experience. The other option can be to create a website. But I think when my project is talking about language changes, the way I present it should communicate with the topic. And books are always associated with something old, traditional. What about countries… I definitely want to explore Mongolian culture, as I was amazed by its alphabet. Also, as Ukraine has a similar problem, and I am a Ukrainian citizen, I can present this problem from my own experience in life, not only materials from the internet. During studying in foundation year I started discussing my projects with friends. This one I wanted to discuss too. And that really helped me, as it appeared that some of my friends are representatives of other countries which have a similar problem. For example, I have a friend from Azerbaijani and Turkey; they told me a bit about their culture. So, for the moment, I think I would like to make some research on these four countries: Mongolia, Ukraine, Azerbaijani, and Turkey. I started by getting to know more about the Ukrainian language. I wanted to understand clearly, where the Russian language started repressing Ukrainian. I had to compare both similarities and differences. The thing which amazed me was the differences in some sounds. I decided to start my research from the roots of language. Of course, Slavic languages used to have the same base. But even in those times, different nations, who lived really close, had an expressed differences in pronunciation of pretty same written letters. What about visual aspects, I can’t say that they really differ. Alphabets are pretty much the same, excluding some symbols. But even though, the interesting thing is that the fonts differ. Due to different cultural backgrounds, Ukrainian and Russian literacy vary in their written style. At the same time as researching the Ukrainian language, I explored Mongolian. Honestly, it amazed me with the variety of its alphabets and letterings. I’ve never seen such an amount of unique writing before. Although they are not practical, I think they are really interesting to study from the point of view of graphic design artists. Here I thought about an interesting conclusion, that languages seem to become easier and simpler. Maybe, I can think of a way of portraying this idea in my book.

FMP WEEK 1

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