The Guide

Advanced Directions is built around four practical design tasks and five online meetings. The first meeting introduces the course and the first task. Each of the following meetings reviews the task named in the timetable and, except for the final meeting, introduces the next task.

The tasks give everyone a common set of design parameters while leaving considerable freedom in materials, mechanics, scale and individual approach. This gives us enough in common to compare different solutions while allowing each participant to work from their own experience, resources and way of designing.

A central purpose of the course is to strengthen analytical and decision-making skills. Participants begin at different points and will finish at different points. The useful measure is what you can see and understand more clearly in your own work as the course progresses.

The four tasks follow the same general process.

1. The task is introduced. We discuss its design parameters, examples and any particular points to consider.
2. You plan and make your design. The brief defines the areas we are concentrating on. Within those parameters, your materials, mechanics and individual solution are largely your own.
3. You photograph and submit your work. Submissions are by email. The practical details are given in the first meeting.
4. We review the work together. Submitted designs are discussed during the following meeting, with feedback prepared in advance.
5. You reflect on the review. You may decide that you would keep the design as it is, revise something, try another version, or simply carry what you have learned into the next task.

Most participants devote somewhere between three and ten hours to each task, including the online meeting. There is no expectation that the work should be elaborate or expensive.

Each task has a target submission date shortly before the meeting in which it will be reviewed. This gives time for the submitted photographs to be prepared for the group discussion.

Treat the submission date as the normal working timetable. If circumstances get in the way, contact Mark and send your work when you can. We will work with what is practicable rather than have a missed deadline become a reason to stop participating.

The same principle applies if you miss a task. Continue with the course where you can. Depending on timing, there may be an opportunity to complete the task later or to submit it for whatever review is practicable.

There is no formal resubmission process. You are welcome to reconsider a design, make changes and send another version. Participants have often made practice versions, photographed a design and then changed it, or submitted two versions of the same task. This is a useful part of developing your own analysis and decision-making. Where there is time, additional or revised versions can be included in the discussion. The four main task submissions take priority.

Questions do not need to wait until the next meeting.

If something in a brief is unclear, you are unsure about a design decision, or you encounter a problem while working, email Mark. Questions between meetings are part of the way the course has traditionally operated, and Mark will respond as soon as practicable.

You can also bring questions to the live meetings. Sometimes a question about one participant's work opens up a useful discussion for the whole group.

There are no prescribed flowers or plant materials for the course. Use what you can source and what suits the task.

Fresh, dried and preserved materials can all be used, separately or together. Artificial materials are best avoided where possible, although individual circumstances sometimes make them necessary.

There is no need to buy large quantities of flowers or seek out exotic or expensive material. Working with less can be particularly useful because it makes the design decisions more visible.

Mechanics are also a free choice. Use techniques you already know and can apply confidently, or experiment with something new if that is useful to you. A technically complicated construction is not required. Often it is better to use familiar mechanics and put more of your attention into the design problem itself.

You may work with frameworks and structures or with much simpler plant-based construction. The choice depends on your design and the resources available to you.

The review is based on the photographs you submit, so the aim is to show the design as clearly and accurately as possible.

1. Use a clear, uninterrupted background.
2. If the design needs staging, keep it simple. A plain table or plinth generally works well.
3. Leave enough space around the design for its complete outline to be seen.
4. Include at least one photograph that clearly shows the complete design, usually from the front or from the viewing position that best represents it.
5. Send between one and five photographs. Additional views can be useful where they show depth, construction or a detail that is difficult to see in the main image.
6. Send medium to high resolution images. Around 1 to 3 MB per photograph is generally suitable. Higher resolution is preferable to an image that becomes pixelated when enlarged.

If the files are too large to send easily, contact Mark and another way of transferring them can be arranged.

Choosing which photographs to submit is useful in itself. Looking through several views and deciding which ones represent the design most clearly makes you look again at how the work reads when reduced to two dimensions.

The review concentrates on the design and the decisions that produced it.

We look at how the design responds to the task, how the eye moves through it, how the materials have been organised and distributed, and how the relevant elements and principles are working together. Where useful, photographs may be marked up or edited to demonstrate a possible change.

There is rarely only one solution to a design problem. Feedback may identify an area that could be strengthened and then explore one or more ways that might be achieved.

You are encouraged to tell Mark what you see in your own work when you submit it. If you already recognise something that is unresolved, say so. Identifying the problem yourself is evidence that your analytical skills are developing, even if you have not yet found the solution.

A set of self-evaluation questions is also provided. You can use these while planning, during the making process or afterwards. They are prompts to use when they are useful rather than a checklist that has to be applied in full to every design.

All submitted work is discussed with the group.

This is an important part of the course. Everyone begins with the same broad task parameters, yet differences in materials, experience, construction methods and individual decisions produce very different results. Seeing those differences gives us more to analyse than any one design could provide on its own.

The purpose is not to rank the work or compare one participant with another. We examine what is happening within each design and why.

The most useful question when looking at someone else's work is usually not whether you would have made the same choices. It is whether you can understand the choices that were made, what effect they have, and what that teaches you about your own work.

The photographs you submit are shown to the other participants as part of the course review. Everyone sees the submitted work because shared analysis is a central part of the learning process.

Use of your work outside the class is separate. Flower Thinking may ask to feature participant work in galleries, social media, campaigns or other public material, with attribution, but only with your permission.

You are also free to share your own work publicly during or after the course.

It is possible to join Advanced Directions after the first meeting if places remain.

Joining before the second meeting is the easiest point because the introductory material can be caught up and there is still time to work on the first practical task.

If you join later, the aim is to get you participating from the point you enter rather than to create an unnecessary backlog. Use the recordings and supplied material to catch up on the course framework, then work with Mark on what is practical for the remaining tasks.

Work at a level that lets you concentrate on the design decisions the task is asking you to make. Familiar materials and familiar techniques are often a good starting point.

Ask questions when you need to. Look closely at the other solutions discussed in the meetings. Use the self-evaluation questions when you find them helpful.

Most importantly, keep looking at your own work and asking why you made each decision, what effect it had, and whether you would make the same decision again. That ability to analyse your own work and make increasingly deliberate choices is one of the main things Advanced Directions is designed to develop.