October 2020

Weirdly, October feels like it’s been the longest month this year so far... I guess probably because some things have actually been happening in my life, which makes a change from most of 2020...

Even though everything has been awful, I’m thankful that I’m at least on what feels like the right path for now. Everything is paused and scary, but compared with how things were a couple of years ago, I feel weightless and free, which feels strange to recognise given everything that’s going on.

Just a rainy Battersea park.

So I got an iPad, primarily for drawing reasons though it’s proved super useful in loads of respects and I’m finding it so much more useful than I expected to. The drawings side of things though? Reeeeeal hard. I decided to work through some Inktober prompts for practice, and it’s been fun but really challenging, and at times a bit demoralising. It’s kind of learning to draw in a totally new way though, with a lot of tools at my disposal that I didn’t previously have, so understandably it’s a learning curve.

For about the millionth time since lockdown, trying to find positive focus and routine, this time with a bit more focussed intent, building up to the start of my MA.

Bad omens? Cute omens?

Went to Borough market on a rare outing beyond Battersea and my fortnightly volunteering shift. Got wildly over excited — Borough market is GREAT. So many delicious, beautiful treats! My friend Michael came too, and we had a nice catchup over outdoor street food lunch.

Lots of people were doing tweets about what their ‘loot drop’ would be, so here’s mine (often in video games when you kill a monster or bad guy, when they die they’ll drop two or three items which you can pick up, typically representative of their personality)

Treated myself to another outing to drop off copies of the Resistance Lab taser report zines south Housmans and a couple of other radical bookshops. Got to see the incredible Eduardo Paolozzi mosaics at Tottenham Court Road (and it was quiet enough that I could stand and admire them for a while)

A year into living here and I have finally found the perfect vegetable chow main within walking distance of my house 🙌🏻

Freelance work has picked up a bit this month, and with my MA starting soon, and probably another lockdown before Christmas, I realised this might be my last chance to see the sea for some time. I still feel weird/bad about socialising, so I decided to go to a sea where I don’t know anyone, and fairly arbitrarily chose Whitstable, as it’s not too far on the train. Had an even nicer day out that I expected to. Felt nourished and refreshed (and full of chips)

Even taking that one day off threw me massively out work-schedule wise, and I haven’t even started my studies left. Started to feel A BIT STRESSED

Charlie had his first physio appointment, and politely dealt with it just fine, as he does with pretty much everything life throws at him (still a very achey boy though)

I’m using Procreate to learn to draw on the iPad and it’s still hard but also REALLY FUN

Autumn!

Autumn sucks 😞

Finally plucked up the courage to DEFEAT GANON (I.e. finish the Legend of Zelda game I’ve poured nearly 200 hours into since June). It was big and exciting and I feel a bit emotional that it’s over (though I am still wandering round the world finishing up side quests)

And then... it’s time! We kicked off the MA (graphic media design at LCC) with a full intense day of introductions and lectures and brief setting. (All online). Afterwards I had to take a good long walk in the dark evening to try and process it all.

The course is very heavily focussed on research, which is kind of new to me, though in some ways I do research in my existing work, formalising it is a strange and slightly conflicted process for me. I want to engage with my work more critically and get to better solutions, but that means forcing myself to engage with processes I’d maybe sometimes rather avoid (like the Harvard referencing system, and READING)

Every Thursday we get to actually go on site to the campus at Elephant and Castle, which is a real treat. I’ve missed art college. Spent a happy half hour after our morning lecture was over sneaking round looking in through the doors of all the facilities I now have access to. I thought Brighton uni where I did my undergrad was good, but LCC is WILD. It’s all a bit tainted though, as both due to COVID regulations limiting access, and my own split focus on ongoing paid work alongside, I worry I won’t have time to make the most of it all. Here’s hoping I can!

Gonna be a lot of these onnnnnnnessssss... (I’m hoping things will ease as the course progresses... right now there’s a LOT of timetabled development sessions as well as super short turnaround projects, and it’s all feeling like quite a lot)

TL;DR, Studio Masachuka make the best ones.

Managing the many headed hydra that is a super short turnaround group project with two people you don’t know who all have very different ideas and styles. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa....

These are my NEURONS trying to hold together complicated ideas (trying and failing)

One of my guiding principles going into this course is that even when working with complex concepts and processes, I want to communicate my ideas in plain legible English, and create accessible, unpretentious design that serves a diverse range of communities... My one main worry is the focus on dense, heavy, academic language which seems to want to guide us into creating quite opaque, challenging work. I don’t think the goals of the course are fundamentally at odds with my own, but I do hope I can stand firm in my ideals while still operating at an MA worthy level of study.

Who knows though. I’m not gonna say it’s been all plain sailing so far.

One other bonus of going to LCC is that I get to enjoy one of my favourite tube stations, Elephant and Castle!

My housemate Tabitha is really great and I’m lucky to have her as a soothing and optimistic presence around the house.

Got a big warm coat n I’m ready to face November! November where I’m not really allowed to leave the house! 👍🏻