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1. My essay was about how the digital age has affected creative practitioners. Some of the positives of the digital age include the introduction and improvement of digital software such as Photoshop and Illustrator, and on the business side of things, travel is less of an issue as they can communicate easily by using the internet and work can be sent anywhere in the world with the touch of a button.
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2. Producing work through digital means raises the question of its actual existence and value. Are you really making something if it only exists in a digital cloud? As creatives begin to move away from making a handmade artefact, they are becoming more reliant on technology and machinery to do the making for them which arguably is removing the personal touch from their work.
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3. Positives of the digital age have driven more people towards freelancing because people you need to connect with are still within reach via the internet. Money can also be a reason why people want to avoid working for large companies, along with the convenience of choosing your own hours and workload.
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4. The freelance lifestyle, especially when working from home, can cause a deterioration in face to face human interaction. When your job is to communicate imagery or the written word, it raises the question of how someone is meant to communicate an idea through their work when they are not upholding standard human communication skills.
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5. Isolation is the topic I have decided to progress with. It links to today’s social acceptance of using the internet as a main point of communication which can lead to people becoming recluses or beginning to feel awkward about actual face to face interaction.
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6. The autonomy of being self employed can lead to workaholism and the inability to balance a work and home life effectively. The isolation involved in working from home can lead to depression in extreme cases. Studies show that self-employment has very few health benefits with self employed women having worse health than women with more traditional jobs.
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7. Working at home also has other downsides such as not having someone around to ask for an opinion or bounce ideas off. Sometimes you need a reality check before you start taking a project off at a tangent centred around your own views. When working for a client or audience, your work needs to conform to what they require from you and this is why feedback is important. Its difficult to admit when working alone that what you are doing isn’t working and it often takes a fresh pair of eyes to notice that you need a change in direction.
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8. Kolb’s learning cycle helps to explain the importance of feedback. Feedback is needed to form an ongoing reflection of your work, which in turn, will give you the opportunity to find areas for improvement. Taking a step back from what you are doing allows questions to be asked, problems to be raised and positives to be commended.
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9. Working with and around people can be inspiring, but being inspired by the world is difficult if you're not out there experiencing it. Although being in the right place at the right time is not something to base a career on but going to events, meeting people and making connections is a lot more promising for new opportunities arising than spending time alone.
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10. Psychologist, Rick Norris, says that when people work exclusively from home, they may begin to lose some of their social skills and a lack of small talk will make them feel more isolated. Having no-one to share work problems with can lead to demotivation, stress and anxiousness and they may find it more difficult to act normally in social situations because their social skills have deteriorated.
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11. This gouache painting is about the isolation working from home can cause. It shows the home environment as significantly smaller than the rest of the city and in a darker area suggesting unhappiness. The city, in comparison represents a healthier environment where people are working together in a more sociable way.
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12. This is a short narrative about receiving feedback on a piece of work and it is particularly relevant for if you are working for a client and need to please them with what you are producing. Yes you can put your own personality into the work but it is ultimately about meeting the needs of their brief, for which feedback is essential.
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13. This drawing is about being over reliant on the internet for communication. Allowing yourself to only make contact with other people through typing a message means you cannot have the same connection as a face to face conversation and your message can be misinterpreted much more easily.
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14. This is a drawing of a creative hermit which speaks about how when working from home, it can be tempting to stay in and focus on your work and nothing else. In a discipline such as illustration it is important to keep having new experiences, stay in touch with the world around you and let it inspire you.
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15. This drawing shows the result of a lack of face to face communication with other people. It shows one person feeling alienated in a social situation because they have been alone for so long that they are struggling to fit into these surroundings. This could be a result of general loneliness or getting too used to using technology for communication.
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16. My visual diagram will be showing the effects of isolation on freelancers working from home. I am not just focussing on people in the creative field because numerous articles I have read on this topic have been about journalists and copywriters, so as a generalisation, it will be about people freelancing from home who rely on their computer for their job.
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17. Working with topics like isolation and depression means there is a risk that this poster could have a gloomy atmosphere and this is not what I want. I am aiming to produce a visual diagram that tackles these issues but doesn’t turn people away from working from home but makes them aware of the social dangers of this lifestyle, hopefully encouraging them to stay sociable.
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18. I am inspired by this diagram showing the layers of the earth because it is shows factual information but in a friendly and lighthearted way. The image works in harmony with the limited text to get straight to the point, making the information easy to absorb.
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19. This image by Gemma Correll is inspiring my thought processes at the moment. I like her humour and how she turns a stressful situation we all experience into something we can find amusing because it is so relatable.
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20. These are some initial ideas for the layout of my poster. I want to keep my main points to a minimum and I am thinking around five at the moment but this may change. The first two revolve around the image of a home and the second is based on the idea of living inside your own little bubble.
