User:Colm/RW&RS-what-how-why
What How Why research methodologies:
Galerie Rodolphe Janssen website
What
Making a website to enable outwards communications of a contemporary art gallery in Brussels. The project involved building a tool to edit the content of a website that displays and explains the events that the gallery organises. Content editability and ease of use were key.
How
With a complex relation between the directors and the people responsible for outwards communication for the gallery. Practically: with a bunch of web based technologies, databases and some connections made between different tools. Personally: with a lot of patience and care and deep, calming, therapeutic breaths.
Why
Because I have acquired some knowledge on the techniques that could enable such a project. Also because I enjoy web development, and the gallery’s point of view on art. Interchange these items: to make a living, and to pay rent / out of interest for the bigger project.
HEAR - Haute Ecole des Arts du Rhin HTML 2 print
What
This was a workshop I was asked to organise for the students of an art school in Strasbourg in France in March 2015. I developed a set of work sessions around markup languages for the web and the way of styling the content with aims of printing it from the browser.
How
With help from other researchers on this topic I devised ways of relating the markup language structures to text hierarchy. Rather than sitting down and plainly learning HTML, we went through versions of this language that let us use extra layers of abstraction. This abstraction helped us to remain focused on structure rather than semantics.
Why
Because this is an interesting topic for graphic designers who regularly need to deal with hierarchy in content. Also because the schools project call was interesting. It displayed a healthy dose of openness. Also because I enjoy the idea of challenging schooling models. Teacher to students versus peers to peers.
Drawing curved
What
A text attempting to collect the reasons and frustrations of drawing vector curves in graphic design software. A vector curve is an image making and describing technique that opposes itself to bitmap, pixel based images. The text exists to think about design processes, and how our tools work.
How
In a textual form, in collaboration with a Belgian colleague, taking examples of these issues and then writing about them. Lacing the conclusions from the examples together to attempt a coherent body of text. Also it is made possible by some budget and a publishing environment that encourages these thought processes.
Why
Mainly because we’re stunned by what digital practitioners accept to put themselves through for production. Because the tools you use influence the way you work. These tools have attitudes. These attitudes can and should be questioned. The project aims to discuss and progress on the topic. It’s ambitions are quite low, if only to start discussi