Graduate /
Need help with Postgrad Design admission essay. [8]
Hi Sarah,
thanks for the earlier feedback. I'm hoping you can go through what i've come up with so far and give me any relevant pointers about content, style etc.
Thanks,
Mimi
I am a self-taught designer who has been working in the field of decorative painting and colour planning for interiors for the past 10 years. I specialise in custom designing and executing textured paint finishes and graphic murals for individual clients. The work is varied and often involves adding false dimension to otherwise featureless spaces and allows me to incorporate many design crafts into the decorating process. Over time, I have built a body of work which has progressively attained a high level of complexity and quality, and has also allowed me to formulate a personal design ideology and range of expression that, while being largely unstructured, is individualistic and not limited in its scope.
With regard to my formal education, I graduated with a BA in History, a subject I chose purely because I was good at it thanks to a lifelong obsession with 'the origin of things'. I briefly toyed with the idea of pursuing a career in advertising and journalism. However, my natural predilection for crafts and all the experience gained during a childhood spent tinkering, led me back to the field of design when a photographer friend commissioned me to create props and accessories for a Verve magazine fashion feature.
More prop-making work followed. Around this time, I volunteered to paint a hair salon for friends, purely because it sounded like a fun thing to do. This first project, while undertaken as a lark, made me realize my interest in and aptitude for such work and led me to seriously consider décor painting as a possible career choice. Fortunately, India at the time was on the verge of a design renaissance and I quickly found my schedule filling up.
Needless to say, when I began I was untrained and largely unprepared for what would ensue. I may have had a creative vision, but I had no plan and only some rudimentary knowledge. Standard practices, proportions, rules of thumb etc. were all alien to me. With the obvious disadvantages that this sort of situation presents, there were some very important advantages. The most important of these was the hands on experience.
The opportunity to learn by doing resulted in the wealth of knowledge that is to be had by 'Getting It Wrong'. Each wrong turn led to new discoveries and new associations. Not knowing how to get to the finish I required and having no previous knowledge of the craft led me to invent and experiment with techniques and materials I might have dismissed had I any sense of convention.
While a lot of the time the experiments themselves did not give me the results I required, they certainly expanded my understanding of processes and materials and added immensely to what I refer to as 'my bag of tricks'.
Meanwhile, working on numerous interior spaces in an active and collaborative manner, I became exposed to other aspects of design in the interior environment such as structural details, woodcraft, the need for functionality within design, etc. and began to critically observe these elements while unconsciously fine tuning my own design concepts. Consequently the scope of my work evolved and it went from being just a rudimentary application of colourwash on to a designated wall, to a complete design process where a space was planned with due regard given to architectural detail, available light, aesthetics and client preferences.
Over the years, as my expertise grew and diversified, so did the nature of projects I was being offered. In the past 10 years, I have worked on numerous media related projects ranging from prop-making for music videos and fashion features to designing colour-schemes, set dressing and production design for feature films and television.
I have been involved in the redesign and renovation of many commercial premises such as restaurants and boutiques where I was called upon to design the over all look including, furniture, fittings and leitmotifs
I have also collaborated with Asian Paints, a leading paint manufacturer in creating and a range of metallic paint glazes for their speciality paint catalogue as well as writing numerous articles as well as executing DIY features for interior magazines.
All of these experiences have led to a kind of freeform education that has helped crystallize in my mind what my strengths and weaknesses are and where my interest truly lies. However, I currently feel at a crossroads in my life - my career is at an even keel and I have built a strong reputation for myself that guarantees future success and prosperity, yet I feel as though I have met most of the creative challenges of my chosen field and that it is time to expand the scope of my activities.
That my design exploration grew to be in the realm of decorative painting is incidental, almost circumstantial. I have always believed myself to be a 3 dimensional craftsperson and for the next phase of my career I plan to go back to my roots, design-wise. My primary goal is to create furniture and objects that are in vein with my creative voice. I have always been awed by functional design that stays the balance between art and science and would like to be able to produce pieces that conform to my personal checklist for great design - functionality, efficiency, aesthetic originality and whimsy or 'personality'.
It's for this very reason that I wish to apply to the MA in design offered by -------- university. I think that the multidisciplinary nature of the course would be ideal for me to close the gaps that may still exist in my knowledge and give me the opportunity to learn new skills as well as fine tune the ideas and skills that I have already acquired. I think it is important for me to do this in an academic environment because despite the fact that I can very clearly envision in my mind the kind of work I'd like to be doing in the future, I am aware that I'm not yet fully equipped to facilitate that for myself. I feel I currently lack instant or easy access to some of the tools and shortcuts I would require for the undertaking. When conceptualising a piece I still find myself struggling to find the most optimal solutions to various problems such as those of aesthetic integrity over structural stability etc. and I feel that if I were to learn and experiment in an environment where I could draw upon resources like informed guidance, fully equipped workshop facilities and a variety of new perspectives from which to take inspiration, that I would benefit a lot more and quicker than if I were to attempt to do it my own as I have in the past.
What I'm looking forward to the most is further refining my understanding of the concept of efficiency or simplicity in design. As part of a philosophy course I had taken in college, we learned about the principle of simplicity where simplicity is understood as not the quickest or easiest solution to a problem but rather as a solution that satisfactorily resolves all the facets of the problem using the least number of working parts as it were. This explanation of simplicity always struck me as being important and I find I use it as a yardstick when assessing the design of anything functional.
I think my interest in simplicity may also stem from the fact that the shrinkage of space witnessed in most urban environments requires the designer to do twice as much with half the amount of space as was traditionally used. This provides a real challenge to creativity.
Multifunctional options like fold out or collapsible furniture etc seem to be an obvious solution but these, I find, if not immaculately conceived can somewhere sacrifice a key element like aesthetics or comfort or even basic workability in a bid to try to satisfy too many functions. I'm hoping time spent in the workshop facilities will help me gain a better understanding of the precision engineering required for such design- efficient projects.
However, functionality aside, I believe we express our better nature when the things we create mirror what inspires us and give us joy. I find that the examples of utilitarian design that resonate with me the most are the ones that, aside from flawlessly executing their station, also express something interesting or quirky - either about their environment, their creator or the world at large. Therefore, I'd also like to focus on furniture or 3D objects as vehicles for creative expression.
For this I'd like to rely upon my background in decorative crafts as well as all the resources and inspiration that are to be had in a creative environment. I'd like to stretch and adapt my skills and style to explore the possibility of integrating various decorative crafts like décor fretwork, carving, mosaics and painting etc into the modern notion of furniture design. My ultimate goal is to eventually be capable of conceiving and executing products that maintain all the requirements of high design but also convey my distinctive perspective in an original, sophisticated fashion.