Abstract

This paper discusses how an accumulative and experiential learning model is imbedded in the design and delivery of the Dreamography Project – a fourteen-week studio brief for graphic design and animation students undertaking the first year of a three-year degree. The project has been written to provide a student centered learning experience that fosters an enquiry-led and practitioner-focused approach to studio practice. A Travelling Desk for Dreamers maps the key characteristics and structures that underpin student’s engagement with conceptual development, exploration of materiality and technology. Students are introduced to a design process through language, text acts as a provocation from which the notion of drawing as a cognitive activity develops and drawing becomes the vehicle that informs thinking. This paper traces the accumulative learning experience and outcomes through the case studies of four students with distinctive and different approaches.