Creative Process: Research

Research is such a broad and key element done by more or less everyone in any line of work, but being visual communicators we have to put into practice the use of visual research by drawing and surrounding ourselves in inspirational art and always taking notes and collecting images from any type of medium. 
 

There are two basic overview factors to research, narrowing down to ‘primary and secondary research’. Primary research is beginning from scratch; there is no data or information around for the researcher to use, and therefore will have to be original. The advantages for this would be that you know where the sourced information is from; it will be first person and original. For my article I decided to do a piece on the jewellery quarter and although there are basic facts on the internet I wanted to go first hand to the museum and take notes of my experience, talked to the staff and had a tour around the museum to collect my own research and photos.

Secondary research provides all the necessary information that you want, from books, magazines, videos and other media. The majority of my research has been secondary as I wanted to really get to know magazine layouts, styles and fonts. Looking at how they work, and adapting different styles of them, why it may or may not work.

I have scanned in a double page spread of front cover research from my RVJ of 'Stylist magazine' that I thought may help towards my magazine.