How we Think

Lecture Review

Inspired by the vulnerability displayed during the lecture this week and the aspects of design that demonstrate ways of thinking and communicating.

Many approaches over the years in terms of understanding myself and others have led me to scientific, psychotherapeutic, and spiritual pursuits. Understanding how we think as a collective and how this influences design and creative thinking, I would like to explore the psychotherapeutic approach. More so linked to communication and thinking transactions demonstrated in the Transactional Analysis model.

TA is an approach and model that has played a significant role in my life in terms of how I view and understand, and communicate with myself and others.

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Philosophy of Thought

TA model

“For certain fortunate people there is something which transcends all classifications of behaviour, and that is awareness; something which rises above the programming of the past, and that is spontaneity; and something that is more rewarding than games, and that is intimacy.”

― Eric Berne, Games People Play

Inspiration

Atelier Dyakova is new to me and has been shared as an inspiration. I enjoy here the clean, simple, and contemporary approach. In this example, when aligning with the modalities of TA and the font type I would like to work with, this is it.

A lot of space, angular and earthy pleasing to the eye, yet embracing length through the intersection of the H and N I find visually appealing and drawn to.

Method

I wanted to experiment with thinking methods when tapping into ego states. Burn describes the ego states in the TA model as real and observable in interactions. I wanted to explore this in a contemporary manner, as all behaviour requires some conscious or unconscious thought. Burn suggests time and circumstances affect each state and influence behaviour, promoting self-awareness and relationship with self and others. (Burn 1964).

Font Match: Kallisto Thin [edited]

Colour

Black: #1d1d1b

Yellow: #fecb37

Obstacles Faced and Overcome

This font type had limited points to manipulate and used elongation to provide length space to represent the ego states. This is something I will research further to understand techniques to stylize typefaces.

New Learnings

Illustrator

Playing with the pen tool in Illustrator was fun and challenging to create smooth anchor points initially. As you can see, there are some less smooth transitions when the curve begins. This can be reviewed and smoothed out later if I have time.

The idea was formulated as I worked on this; originally I wanted the twists and turns to turn in on themselves. Due to the number of anchor points created, this proved difficult, so I decided to stick with a simple design. Each line represents a thought and communication transition between the ego states intersecting the a (adult state – present moment). A is central to the design as it represents the self, values, and thoughts generated from the true self. Later deciding to add colour to represent the positive effect this has on my own thought process and creativity.

Final Piece

Reference

Stewart, I. Joines, V. 1987. ‘TA today’. Image accessed 10 March 2023.

Burn, E. 1964. Games People Play. ‘The Basic Handbook of Transactional Analysis’. pp.3.