Even though the point of this blog, for the most part, is for me to reflect on my design studies capstone project, I thought it might be nice to institute some sort of weekly summary of what has been going on in the process. Maybe I’ll even start doing fireside webcasts, you never know!
This week has been difficult for me despite many good things happening like getting the books I ordered last week and having a person I really respect agree to mentor me through the capstone process. I think I’m struggling with the feeling of realizing exactly how much I don’t know and not being sure of how much detail I need to know to identify salient topics within the larger scope of Hebrew typography. I don’t want to get lost in the details or become emotionally attached to the topic too early in the process. To be honest, I’m still not sure Hebrew typography is my final topic. I’m wondering if perhaps I should widen the topic to how cultural myths about letters manifest in both modern and ancient typography. Then the narrower Hebrew typography can be a case study, rather than the whole shebang.
I’m also having a tough time relating my topic to other areas, which we talked about in class last week. We are supposed to compare our topics to other, possibly similar topics through diagramming to see if we can eke out any insights or identify any problem areas. I’m not sure if I don’t understand the exercise fully, but I’m having a really hard time figuring out how to begin. I guess I’ll just have to reread my notes (again), make up some charts, and see where that takes me. I’ll also apply some of the d.school bootcamp exercises and see what comes out the other end, even though I’m having a hard time forgiving them for using bucket as a verb.
Hopefully next week I will be feeling more at ease with the direction my research is going and more concrete about my topic. Heck, maybe I’ll even have some swell charts to show off!
