So far I’ve only had brief interactions with the students in the VME program. Through these interactions I’ve begun to understand how our industries are interconnected. Designers and visual media workers have a close relationship. I’ve seen how they can work together in the game industry, such as Jessica Aceti’s experience filming commercials for children’s toys and working on indie movies. AJ Hanneld has described a close working relationship with the film industry, designing movie posters. She also had close collaboration as an art director with production artists creating game assets.
Photography and design go hand in hand. Advertisement, publishing and many more industries have a team of photographers and designers who collaborate to make projects. It is important that they have a unified vision under an art director to create a cohesive final product. They have to understand the abilities and limitations of each other to be useful collaborators. I have come to understand the design process as having many inputs to reach the final product. Design can be both the beginning and the end of the process, but the middle relies heavily on visual media.
To better understand the experience of the visual media students I talk with my fellow student Brooklyn who is in the VME program. We compared the two programs. She described how all of her classes began as seemingly disparate subjects before they began to converge on the wholistic process of media creation. My experience with Graphic Design has been more of a unified set of classes that seem to build upon each others skillset. I think that essential both practices utilize many of the same principals, i.e. composition, color theory, ghestalt, contrast, etc. and seem to differ only in execution.
VME seems to be a much more physical experience. Photographers by necessity have to be there working with the products they’re selling or people they’re shooting with. On the whole it seems to be a much more social experience. Design is indeed a social experience but also demands long hours alone at a computer. The contrast of the two I think can be felt in the disposition of the students themselves. Designers on the whole are perhaps a bit more reserved. Personally, I find myself to be outgoing and I believe this will be an asset in future collaborations.
From what I understand, VME involves a certain amount of script writing and storytelling. Design also involves storytelling, but in a more abstract way. script righting involves characters and situations. Graphic design is shapes and words.
I find film making and photography to be very cool skills. I admire the ability it takes and hope to someday learn more about the practice. I’ve been meaning to spend some free time in the photography studio observing the process so I can get a better understanding and see how I’ll fit into the whole process. I look forward to doing more collaborative projects with VME students soon, perhaps filming? A magazine layout? The possibilities are endless.