Creating a Manifesto

Today I had a lecture about creating a design manifesto. Before the session, I assumed that a manifesto was purely a political declaration before an election. I was unaware of how designers created them to communicate their aims and principles. Our tutor shared several examples of artist's manifestos. My favourite was Grayson Perry's hand-drawn contract. His work reminds me of doodles I've created in my notebook's during long lectures. I loved how something so playful could be so representative of an individual's personality as well as directly communicating their design aims.

Grayson Perry's Manifesto

You think you know yourself until you try to compare your personality with a pack of crisp. We were put into small groups and had a list of unusual questions we had to ask each other in an attempt to learn more about ourselves. At first, the task seemed silly, but it was surprising how challenging I found it. It's nice to view yourself through a different lens. Questions such as "who are you?", are daunting when you don't know the answers. Instead, ask yourself what car you would be and strip back the response to keywords. It's a new approach which helped identify features of my personality I didn't know existed. Also, I plan to ask my friends how they view me. I think that will prompt more ideas and give me a fresh outlook. I create some mind maps as a starting point for my manifesto development.