first

This is my very first creative process blog! I am keeping this blog as a required part of a class I am taking as an elective during my MA in Social Design graduate program at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). The course is called Expanded Design and explores use of fabrication tools such as laser cutting, 3D printing, CNC machining, Arduino programming, 3D modeling in Rhino, and parametric designing in Grasshopper.

I think it will be good for me to be required to keep a creative process blog for my Expanded Design class because I have done a very poor job of documenting my work in the past. There are sculptures I spent entire semesters building during undergrad that I have no documentation of whatsoever. I am excited to cultivate the practice of documenting not only my final products but also my ideation and learning process because learning from other peoples’ process has helped to demystify design and make it feel more welcoming to me.

The primary documentation tool I’ve got is the crappy camera on my iPhone 6 SE, so I apologize in advance for the poor quality of my documentation. I believe that something is better than nothing in this particular case, though!

I will be using this blog to track my progress on my final project in my Expanded Design course. The project is as follows:

“The final project is intended to give you the opportunity to further explore some of the concepts and materials we learn in a more personally exciting and interesting way. This is your opportunity to demonstrate your handling of the skills learned, to learn new skills as needed, and to ask questions and get help along to way. Part of this project is research based, so you will formulate a research question and I ask that you keep a journal of the research you do toward to final outcome. This will help you to make your final presentation that should be five minutes and explain your question, process, and outcome.”