So starting out on this project, the first thing I did was to map out a mindmap of the jobs I wanted to do in my sketchbook and from there, I decided to focus on jobs that I wanted to do as a kid and from there I started my initial research.
Initially, I could not really visualize how I was going to do it, although I did decide to do illustration, I was not sure how I can do it. So I started my initial research and found these artists. 
Louise Fili – She had really beautiful illustrations and typography. I thought this could be one way I can approach the project. It has a slightly retro vibe to it too.
Vesa S – what drew me in for this illustrator is the use of the humans to form words and I thought that could be another possibility and the use of colours is bright and pleasing to the eye.
Jessica Hische – I love her illustrations of the book covers and found that it could be possible inspiration.
I also researched on some of the jobs that I had written down and went on to look at possible visuals that could give me inspiration.
Moving on from there, I decided to narrow down my list to the main 4 I will be working on :
- Kindergarten teacher
- Detective
- Explorer
- Astronaut
I started doing some initial sketches just to get some ideas out, but found out that they weren’t concrete enough and they were not strong.
A suggestion that came up during consultation that week by Ms Joy, was to try and focus on my message and tone for this project, which will help steer it in a clearer direction. I found that really helpful. I decided that the tone for this project is for it to portray this childlikeness and naivety that a kid has when thinking of these jobs. And my message is to get us back in touch with that innocence and a sense of nostalgia (hopefully through this, helping us to think through how we look at things as adults now).
I continued working on my sketches
For the explorer , I decided to go with a journal entry but a child’s journal entry. As a kid, maybe something as simple as picking up leaves and keeping it in our diaries, is something we think an explorer will do.
For astronaut , I thought of using a gentlemen’s kit as reference and instead making it into an astronaut’s kit for kids. Because as a kid, being an astronaut means going into space with a rocket and that is cool
These were my main inspiration coming up with the composition.
For the kindergarten teacher , I decided to go with the idea of a flashcards and as a kid, my idea of being a kindergarten teacher is just teaching ABC’s.
As for my detective composition, I had a hard time thinking of a composition and all I could think of at this point was “Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar”, a game I used to play as a kid. But my ideas were not concrete enough. In the end, I decided to go with a detective board game.
I started working out the more concrete ideas digitally and I will go through them job by job, to make it less messy.
Kindergarten teacher
I decided that for this composition, it will have a frame and when printed out, it will probably be cut curved at the edges.
I decided to have the smaller words that spell out GLOJIRA be illustrated and have them drawn from words that start with the letter G.
G – Giraffe, L – Guitar, O – Grapes, J – Gecko, I – Gold, R – Ghost, A – Guppy
The big letter ‘G’ will be in the shape of GOJIRA AKA GODZILLA
However, after consultations and test printing, I realized that this colour came out too dark and the colours were not as cohesive with the other compositions as I hoped. Hence, I explored other possible colour schemes. I went with the last colour scheme in the end.
Explorer
Decided to add in the words and splatters to make it look more messy and more like a kids journal with the drawing. However, like my kindergarten teacher composition, it was too dark when printed and so I had to make the necessary adjustments. Another thing I had to change was the colour of the leaves, to make it more cohesive with my compositions
Astronaut
This was the colour scheme I had initially but I decided to explore more colours. 
Decided to stick with the last colour scheme.
Detective
I was actually working on a composition for this and decided to change it after consulting with Ms Joy. She pointed out that my compositions all have kind of a main element and with this, there were too many things going on. (This is uncompleted) And it also looks more like pirate/ explorer because the element of detective is not really evident. 
Since my concept for the detective is using a board game, during the group discussion, some of my classmates suggested adding a magnifying glass into it to make it more obvious and that gave me an idea.
I decided to make the letter G like an island, a location on the board game where you have to solve the mystery.
Added the bubbles to infer the presence of something unknown. 
Decided to add in the dice, to balance out the composition and also make it more obvious that it is a board game.
Colour Scheme
In the end, I decided to follow a slightly more retro colour scheme~
So that is basically the process/progress of my project 1:))
Some challenges faced and how I overcame them:
- The initial stage of thinking about how this whole project will look, I was a little unsure. But I think that’s the whole point of ideation and researching, trial and error. Alot of times I learn when I try it out or start doing something
- Printing – CMYK VS RGB!!!!! My test prints came out so dark and a little different from what I see on my laptop because they were all RGB! LESSON LEARNT
- Colour – I struggled with making the project look cohesive at first because I wasn’t referring to any particular colour scheme and I wasn’t looking at the compositions at a whole. But once I did that and researched more, it definitely helped.
To sum it up, I think this project was really fun to explore and it was exciting thinking and reliving the my childhood and the jobs I wanted to do as a kid. The process was an enriching one especially with the group consultations (something that is really new to me) and it was really helpful and encouraging:)
Yey:) Look at my next post for the finalized compositions