My Obsessive Compulsive Brief

Our first brief for 3rd year is to design a narrative brooch. We were given a list of possible topics which we could choose from if we wanted to. I found having a list of topics helped me to think faster and probably deeper than usual. I initially chose to base my design on superstitions, thinking of charms and thinking back to the myths and legends associated with certain stones from our stone setting brief last year. I developed a mind map which eventually led me down an unexpected path.

I started thinking about superstitious rituals and in turn, obsessive compulsive disorder. I've been looking at common repetitive, counting behaviour. My aim is to somehow describe, in a narrative form, the way someone suffering from this problem tries to cope and to perhaps design an almost therapeutic piece of jewellery.

Design Studies

During our first Design Studies lecture we were split into study support groups, mixing with other disciplines. It's interesting to meet people from subjects which otherwise you'd be unlikely to come across. In our group of eight we had two from Textiles, two from IED, two from IMD, one from Product Design and myself from Jewellery.

We were given a list of topics ranging from Crime and Design to Celebrity and Design. In our first brief meeting we decided a time and place for our next meeting during which we would decide on a topic for each person. We met on Thursday lunchtime in the Duncan of Jordanstone cantina. The topics we chose are to be individually researched and written up as a report to form our own Wikipedia. Luckily when we met on Thursday we had all decided on different topics:

Claire chose Consumer culture and design

Kitty chose Crime and design

Andrew chose Digital Economy and design

Mhairi chose Ethical labour and design

Fiona chose Interactivity and design

Thomas chose Social Networking and design

Justin chose User centred design and design

And I opted for Gender and design. I thought this would be a refreshing subject to look into but it is still relevant to jewellery design as jewellery is rarely a unisex thing. Once we've written our wikipedia entries we will read each others and leave constructive comments and feedback.