The process journal is the most effective way to share your work path and final outcomes of your endeavors during the Foundations year. It helps to collect and share the pieces from scrap ideas to hi-fidelity sketches to finalized versions of your assignments. It will be helpful for others reviewing your work to understand the depth of your efforts.
Following are some requirements and tips to create a riveting, readable, and easy-to-follow process journal. You may play with the format and style; however, keeping it simple, consistent, and highly-visual is the key to create a good process journal.
How to create a Process Post
- Click on Posts in the left navigation in the dashboard, then Add New.
- Title the post as “Title of project: Process”
- Add content as you work on your project. Follow the format listed below. Your project work will typically follow this format naturally but keep the organization in mind to make it easy to read.
- Once you have added the title, Publish the post, even if you haven’t added content yet.
- You can return and continuously add content to this single post as you continue to work on the project. After you add content, make sure you click Update otherwise it will not save your content. It is recommended to do this regularly if you’re adding a lot of content at once to make sure everything is saved.
- All projects will each use one post to document process for that specific project.
- As you create Process Posts, follow these steps to add them to the navigation menu.
What to include?
Each Process Post must have the following sections, titled as listed below. Content within each section may vary.
- Statement of Intent
Briefly describe your intent for the project. This may be your concept statement (if part of the specific project’s requirements) or a statement about your specific goals, objectives, and material/craft for the project. Generally, this should be no more that 250 words. - Ideation
This part of your work details in visual, image-based content the brainstorming and different ideas you initially explore in the project. Information gathering about project content and assigned exercises or other class activities are part of this initial idea exploration. Use this section to showcase the wide range of ideas you explore before moving into your final deliverable.
Provide a brief outline of conducted information gathering. This can include images, notes, or links that act as inspiration (precedents) or information gathered support your ideas and making. Inspirations and information can be organized like a mood board. You are required to cite sources of information for referenced or found work just like writing a paper- if you borrow an idea, cite it. Caption images to give your reader a better understanding of what you were doing or what purpose the image(s) served.
Provide images (and supportive labels or descriptions) of exercises or activities explored during the assignment process. These activities are designed to explore ideas and practice skills related to assignment/module objectives. *If your project did not have exercises, do not include this.
Provide images and brief descriptions of testing – material exploration, ideas, form, tools, and more – to highlight the variety of your explorations early in the process. - Iteration and Production
This section of your post is designed to convey the story of your working process towards the final deliverable. You will focus on the deeper development of your strongest idea(s). Select visuals (e.g., sketches, digital drawings, photos) and organize them so they clearly illustrate your process. We encourage you to use discretion as you select content- while it is unnecessary to include every little change, it is important to show progression and development towards your outcome. Create a consistent organizational framework- such as chronological ordering- to help tell the story. Use image captions or write a brief description to explain what the visuals show. Include major steps of the final deliverable’s production – Your biggest challenge is to remember to consistently document your making process, whether by hand or digital. - Reflection
The final part of the Process Post for each assignment is a brief reflection about your achievements, lessons learned, and potential improvements. Generally, no more than 250 words. - Portfolio Project
When you’ve built the Portfolio Project page, come back to the Process Post and add a link to the Project page. Follow the same steps listed at Process Link Directions.
Additional Tips
- Process posts are image-based, visual storytelling of your journey throughout each Foundations project. Be thoughtful in your image selection by showing the variety of ideas, attempts (successes and failures!), and development of your work. Select images of your work that add to our understanding of your process. Do not use images that only show minor adjustments or do not show added value to your process.
- Write in first person
- Always caption images so your reader knows what part of your process or development it supports
- Consider image size in your posts. Things that need to show detail should be inserted using the “Large” or possibly “Full Size” option. Some images may only need to be “Medium.” Always preview your post/view it on the website side to see how images are loading and remember to think about how your user (viewer) will be looking at your work
- PDFs only come through as links. While this can be beneficial to show a large body of iterative work, consider also including an image or two that represents the work found in the PDF link. You don’t want your reviewers to miss an important part of your work because they didn’t notice the link!
- If you have a lot of images to show (for example, 100 iteration sketches), we recommend using a sample of 5-10 images (possibly neatly collaged into one image) and then linking a PDF below with all the iterations.
- Don’t overwhelm the post with screenshots or images of every tiny change you made. Show your steps and development that should thoughtful progression of work.