Follow-Up: Gilles & Cecilie Workshop at Parsons Illustration

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The dynamic duo of Gilles & Cecilie recently visited Parsons Illustration Concepts III classes to hold a collaborative workshop with students.  Below is their write-up about the experience and you can see pictures from the workshop above.

BRIEF:

What is your uniqueness when all is unified?

Are we going towards the same currencies/ unions of countries/ mega corporations/ mass productions/ same social networks/

listening to the same music/ dress styles/ same level of educations/

SCHEDULE:

20 min brainstorm (messy and non-critical)

15 min selecting ideas (critical and relevant)

1hr10 min visualising ideas (quick, enjoyable, experimental)

40 minutes presentation (6 min per group) (clear, concise, contextual)

ORGANISATION:

45 students divided in 5 groups. Each group had three tables and a selection of materials (papers/ tape/ rope/ pencils/ markers/ glue.)  We asked all the students to take their chairs out of the room so that they could move and interact better during the process.

THE IDEA PROCESS:

challenging, frustrating, profound, exciting, hard work, collaborative, wild, questioning, curiousity, breaking borders, mind-blowing, intellectual, involving, intuitive, world changing!

THE EXPERIENCE:

During the process of the workshop we visited each group with help from Isabelle, Guy and Sean to motivate the students to interact with each other, be working together as a whole group, be curious, develop new ways of thinking and drawing.

The students made different stories and answers to the brief and one group also involved volunteers in their presentation of an interactive puzzle on how to fit in.

Group 1 were illustrating the female with animalistic characters; group 2 developed a new way of high five human reproduction, group three made a puzzle of creatures to represent: with some alterations we all fit in, group four illustrated each other within the group visualising how they see eachother as forexample a cartoon character or just a lot of beautiful hair (as this was one students way of recognising her friend in the street) and in the end group five where making a twist on the game exquisite corps by creating several unique people with elements from all the students within the group.

As designers, we often use this speed workshop in our studio to get as many thoughts and ideas as possible about a brief from a client.  In this way we often find themes or elements to continue the conceptual process.