In a twinkling of an eye, it is now March, and more and more students applying for 2020 have started their own stage of creating overseas study portfolio. Today, Natural Light will talk to you about how to prepare the collection of works? How does a collection of works created for studying abroad stand out? First, the first step of portfolio creation is to determine the theme of the project. What kind of content this project should focus on, and what kind of problems to discuss or solve, are the basis for the beginning of the portfolio project. At the same time, the theme of the portfolio project is often the most concerned point of the admissions officer, because through the theme, the admissions officer can see your understanding of a thing or event, and how you express your views through artistic design creation, so that the admissions officer can clearly know who you are; What would you do? And why you did it.

In the creation of works for studying abroad, each student will have their own ideas, especially about the theme of the project and the specific expression of the project. For example, some students will carry out secondary design or redesign according to the existing facts. Especially in landscape architecture, many students will transform and redesign some existing landscapes or buildings.

Just like the following student case, I got the AA Architectural Alliance College Rhode Island School of Design RISD Liao, who was offered by other colleges and universities, said that the theme of the work collection project was a competition work, which was redesigned according to the existing landscape site - the upgrading of Hong Kong Kai Tak Airport. Since the airport is located in the urban area and there is only one landing runway in the airport, it was once called one of the most dangerous airports in the world.

In the early stage, the student first carried out user analysis, research on the activity lines of the surrounding residents, and analysis and survey of the surrounding environment, and then used the existing surrounding advantages of the airport to carry out a multi-functional landscape use analysis. Add the concept and environmental model of ecological green space, build facilities and sites that can meet the needs of different types of users, so that Qide Airport can be put back into use, thus bringing more commercial value and utilization rate.

The picture is a collection of works by Liao students

This type of project theme often needs the support of very rigorous data and theoretical content, such as site positioning, surrounding environment analysis, etc. Especially for the landscape design discipline, the actual implementation of each project and scheme needs to consider the use cycle. Because a landscape cycle often lasts for several years, in the early stage of the design scheme, it is necessary to give a scheme prediction, estimate the location of the landscape in advance, and what problems may occur during use. Such as local climate, surrounding residents, other landscape facilities, landscape plants, etc.

For this type of project, your creative goal is basically only one, that is, to solve the existing problems through different schemes or measures, or to improve the design, or to redesign through some schemes.

In addition to this kind of design project based on the existing project facts, most students' project themes may be conceptual. Although their themes also have certain limitations, compared with the above projects, they are very broad, often with a high degree of freedom and creative display space, and students can fully divergent and try according to their own interests.

But such projects, as the title today says, are very easy to become "prosaic". I talked with the art teacher of the visual design department before, and she told me that many students especially like to describe their dreams in the collection of works, but this topic is easy for the students who just started to create the collection of works to lose track of clues, making the project "big and empty", and unintelligible, and the final expression will fall into "plain", Some students may use irregular geometric figures to express dreams in their final works.

Secondly, this kind of situation is particularly easy to appear in the works on social and opinion topics. For this kind of hot topic with strong personal views, although everyone has different ideas, in general, they can be classified into different categories. For example, when we mentioned whether to assign homework to primary school students, the final result was that everyone either "supported" or "opposed". At this time, if your idea only stays at this step, it is difficult to stand out from the students who are discussing the same topic.

　　 So, how do you prepare your portfolio so that your ideas don't lose their luster to "hot topics"? How can I deal with my own creation so that the collection of works can be organized without lack of creativity? How to grasp the scale between the two?

Next, I will talk with you in detail about how to solve these problems in the following points:

　　 01. "I oppose/support because..."

As I said earlier, the most intuitive first step for our ideas on many topics we are concerned about should be "I support", "I oppose", "I neither support nor oppose"... This may be the case. If you are doing a questionnaire at this time, it may be enough to talk about this step and express your attitude clearly.

But when you take it as a topic for creative diffusion, your ideas and opinions must not stop at this first step. At this time, you should express to everyone what you haven't said in the second half, that is, "I oppose/support, because..." You need to tell the admissions officer and all people who see it by creating a collection of works for studying abroad, Your collection of works is about this topic. Your ideas on this topic are not only conclusive "support" or "opposition". What you need to show is the reason why you came to this conclusion and why you think so.

Even, you may need to tell others with your portfolio how you will solve this problem if you are in this situation, or how you want others to look at it. At this time, you should let others see your attitude.

For example, in the following student's collection of works, this is fully demonstrated. Ziyi is a student in the 2019 application season. She was offered by RCA and LCC for her undergraduate fashion marketing major. In this project, she showed the current situation of marginalized people and her attitude to these groups through a series of surveys and interviews:

Ziyi's Collected Works

First of all, Ziyi visited Sweden, Germany, France and other countries where the refugee problem has recently become very prominent. Starting with refugee groups, Ziyi has extended to a series of marginalized groups that have something in common with them. Through early street visits and surveys, people were asked to answer two simple but challenging questions: "What do you think would be the MOST challenging thing for reforms to settle in a new country?" and "Would you offer your help if reforms in the street asked you for help?", so as to make in-depth analysis.

In this project, the teacher of natural light did not force Ziyi to go in a certain direction at the beginning, but carried out research with Ziyi, discussed the possibility of the project, and guided Ziyi to sort out his own ideas, so as to express his most authentic ideas.

Under the guidance of the teacher, Ziyi has done a lot of cultural research. Starting with small details such as words and symbols, she has extracted important elements and visualized them to further show her views on marginalized groups, and she hopes that more people can pay attention to and think about the ideas of this large group.

Ziyi's Collected Works

　 02. Don't limit to single line thinking

Most of the students are accustomed to the results and output content in college creation. However, the results oriented college projects are different from the art study abroad collection. The collection of overseas art works often emphasizes the process and content of independent projects. That is to say, a complete collection of works does not only need to show the results in the last step, but also needs the support of huge research and "trial and error" programs in the early stage.

Because a collection of works for application is not intended to show your ability in one aspect to admissions officers and colleges, it shows your comprehensive ability in the dimension of art design, including creative ability, theme understanding ability, logical thinking, creative divergence, etc.

Therefore, it is more inclined to focus on the theme. Whether it is the early research, data collection, literature reference, or the scheme preset, content evaluation, and material test in the process, each step needs to be carried out around the theme.

At this time, in order to better express the theme, what you need to do is not to focus your thinking on a single clue, but to use multi-dimensional ideas to enrich your theme and creative line.

We often see the words "no restrictions on specific forms of creation" in the requirements for the collection of works on the official website of art schools, "the collection of works does not need to be specifically targeted at specific application majors". These words do not mean that your collection of works can be completely separated from your application to do other professional content, but your works can be spread and expanded around the theme of the main line of creation.

Because once you limit your thinking to a specific professional scope, your creative skills may be limited and restricted. For example, when we usually mention the creation and expression of graphic design, many students' first reaction will be a series of visual materials such as posters and website pages. But when we jump out of the specific professional restrictions, we can combine various ideas to express our understanding of the theme.

On this point, during the interview with the students, one of them received a certificate from Parsons Design Institute, RISD Rhode Island Design Institute, SAIC Chicago Academy of Arts Maryland College of the Arts What the students of MICA and other colleges and universities offer, I think it is very suitable to give to everyone: "I will not do what others have done, but I will do what others have never thought of."

In this student's work collection, she tried many projects that others dare not do. She applied for a pure art major. One of the projects was expressed through photography, but traditional photography was "too ordinary" for her. Therefore, she searched for information and added a very, very old image generation method called "Blue Sun" to her collection of works.

Collected works of Tiantong students

　　 03. Conceptual topics should also be "landed"

When it comes to conceptual topics, in fact, there are not a few students who choose this expression, but this kind of creative theme is also the most difficult to control for students who are just beginning to contact with the collection of works. Maybe you have a lot of ideas in the early stage to express the inspiration of xxx; Want to show your understanding of xxx; I also hope to show my ideas on xxx.

But having good ideas does not mean that you have good presentation forms and results. At this time, having inspiration is actually just the first step. You need to think more deeply about how your inspiration should be expressed? And whether it can really "land" display.

For example, the topic of utopia that many students may think of, I meet students every year to discuss the topic of utopia. These students come from all majors, including pure art, plane, clothing design, and even landscape architecture. However, not every student can think clearly about his or her creative expression at the beginning.

In the following collection of works of Tianze, who has received offers from UAL, UCA, SHU, NTU, Coventry and other universities, there is a project with the theme of "Utopia". Tianze applied for the professional direction of industrial design. Let's see how he expressed his understanding of "Utopia" in combination with industrial design:

Collected Works of Tianze

The inspiration for this project is actually utopianism, Tianze The "utopianism" mentioned by the teacher in the history class aroused strong curiosity, so he went to find a lot of materials and materials about utopianism, read relevant books, saw films on related topics, all of which gave him rich creative inspiration, and his final work expression, It is positioned at the ideological level of people for perfect communism.

In this project, although Tianze is a professional in industrial design, he did not limit his entire creative content to the scope of industrial design. Instead, he combined pure art and devices to build a device composed of skull, small parts, styrofoam, etc.

He made holes in his skull, filled with styrofoam, small building models, urban landscapes and other details to show the bursting effect of an incomplete idea. He integrated this uncertain concept into this uncertain device to show an unfinished state, which may not be as powerful as it seems visually, Its internal possibility is full of uncertainty, and he hopes to use such a work to arouse everyone's thinking.

Collected Works of Tianze

In this project, the teacher of natural light helped Tianze to sort out his ideas repeatedly. From the determination of the creation theme, every time Tianze proposed a plan, the professional tutor would discuss with him about the feasibility of the plan, as well as the later achievement preset, and constantly enlighten Tianze's logical reasoning and prediction ability. Finally, after many attempts and scheme building, this kind of very conceptual and idealistic "fantasy" is put into practice at the level of combination of industrial design, installation and pure arts.

Collected Works of Tianze

　　 04. It can jump out of the frame and take back the box

Finally, it is very suitable for students of any major and any theme. Through the guidance and inspiration of the institutional teachers of the works collection, we can easily learn how to spread our thoughts and think more interesting ideas in the creation under the long-term guidance and training. However, we should know that it is relatively easy to inspire thinking and get ideas out of the shackles. At this time, you should also learn and do it, and be able to return thinking to the "box", that is, the theme.

How to understand? As I mentioned in the above point, many students may have various ideas in the early stage of creation, but are these ideas related to your creation? Can it bring positive guidance to your project? Can you make your creative expression more suitable for the theme? It is a step that we need to consider more in our creation.

At this time, your ideas may need to be filtered twice, carefully screened, multi-dimensional thinking, and horizontally compared with the possibility, implementation, and expression results of different design schemes to finally determine your own expression mode.

For example, in natural light, professional teachers will not directly reject students' plans at the beginning, but will guide students to think many times through material tests, critical, or Tutorial, so that students can experience their own design plans from multiple perspectives, such as themselves and the result receivers.

Like the student Tianze mentioned earlier, there is an item in his collection of works, which is created from a hobby of his mother. Tianze's mother likes flowers very much, so his home is also full of plants. But after a visit, he found that most of the plants in his home were withered because no one cared for them. Therefore, starting with such a small matter, Tianze had many ideas and tried to solve this problem. Under the guidance of the teacher, they did a lot of experiments together to see what would happen to plants when they were unattended, so as to investigate plant water demand, watering time, device demand, etc.

Collected Works of Tianze

Finally, the teacher guided Tianze to carry out the experiment of Automatic Watering Product, and built an automatic watering device for plants based on the principle of MCU. And this device can be put into normal use.

　　 To sum up today's topic, how can we make the collection stand out from these different types of "hot topics"?

First of all, in the theme and inspiration stage of creating a collection of works for studying abroad, what you need to do is not only show your own results on the topic, but more importantly, your "understanding" and "attitude" to the topic, and why you have such ideas;

Secondly, in the creation stage, ideas must not be limited to a single idea. They should be spread and extended according to your theme creation line, so as to enrich your work expression;

Then, even if your topic is conceptual and not based on a specific fact, you should also think clearly before creating, in what form and result you want to implement this idea;

Finally, the diffusion of ideas is very important, and it is absolutely good to have a burst of imagination in the creation of the work collection, but you should also learn to properly put your ideas back into the "box", that is, return to the theme.

Natural light shares more topics for you:

Layout of Overseas Studied Works Collection - What page of the best creative works should be placed in the art overseas works collection for layout?

Composition of works collection - how can composition of works collection refuse to fail and brighten the eyes of admissions officers?

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