Orr, Blythman, and Mullin’s “Designing Your Writing/Writing Your Design” explores the relationships between writing and images by studying UK and US art and design students’ responses to interviews and questionnaires about their perceptions of personal relationships with art/design; peers and audience; process; and conceptions of time.
1. Data about personal relationships with art/design suggested that design student were more engaged with the visual aspect than the writing aspects of their field. Interestingly most (about 90%) of students said they went to books/teachers to develop writing ideas, while surprisingly few reported going to these sources for help and inspiration with artistic materials. Many students were not in-touch with their writing process and struggled to get from the beginning ideas to the final project.
2. This group of students seemed more in-touch with how peers and outside influences can help them radically re-invision their art, and less familiar with how similar forces can shape their writing. Similarly, they were more conscious of how audience affected their composition of art, and less aware of how audience needed to be taken into account in writing. Of these statistics, UK students were markedly less aware of “outside-class” audiences for their writing then were US students; a fact that can be contributed to less/different writing instruction to UK university students.
3. Students overwhelmingly associated the writing process with “pain” that was “inflicted” upon them. However, when students suffered from writers block, as well as artistic blocks, they were more willing to work through the artistic process that the writing process.
4. On one hand, in creating art, students thought a deadline helped inspire them to create something of quality. On the other hand, a deadline in writing was perceived as a “negative” stress.
In conclusion, the authors discuss that these results can help teachers of writing and visual literature understand the perseptions of their students, and include suggestion including how to meet students needs by making the writing process into a more visual project.
