Monday, 19 May 2014

FMP Project sheets

The Sickle Cell Highway



Throughout my final major project, it involved a lot of development. From the beginning when concentrating on research and finding imagery that related to sickle cell anemia, I was forced to develop the imagery to make it into my own design. I looked at many different ways that I could develop a sickle cell haemoglobin molecule. I also looked at ways that could develop sickle cell red blood cells. I looked at different ways that I could combine them together. I achieved this by using the laser cutter to cut out different shapes, in different sizes and materials. I looked at ways that I could interlock them together so create a structure and all is recorded on my sketchbook.

Group reviews and one-to-one tutorials really helped within the progression of my final design. As my structure is for the public, it was good to get advice as to what people are attracted to. This made it easier for me to design a successful design. There are a few things that I would change about my approach to my final major project. The main thing I would change is time management. During the final two weeks of completing my project. Throughout the final major project, everything didn’t go to plan which made me worry about my final design. I found it difficult to work with hardly any imagery to convey sickle cell anaemia. This meant that I was restricted. However I was able to play around with the imagery that I did have to develop it into a final design idea. I feel like this made my project a little more challenging however it allowed me to think outside the box. Overall I feel that my outcome was very successful however there was still room for improvement. If given extra time I could have experimented a few different ways to construct the final design.

I also thought it would be interesting to include some facts and figures about sickle cell anemia on the top of my first sheep to grab the readers attentions also to help educate the about it. I found some very interesting statistics in the UK. There are estimated to be between 12,500 and 15,000 people in the UK with the disease and more than one in nine of the population are carriers. In the main, sickle cell is found in people whose families come from the Caribbean, Africa, the eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East and Asia, but carriers are also being found in the white population as a result of intermixing many generations ago. Although numbers are very low, they indicate that sickle cell disease can no longer be regarded as confined to specific sections of the population and highlight the importance of antenatal and newborn screening. The NHS's newborn screening programme, which has covered the whole of England since 2006, shows that sickle cell is increasingly present anywhere in the country and not just confined to areas of London and the West Midlands, where Afro-Caribbean families have traditionally settled. There are, however, still high concentrations in certain London boroughs such as Lambeth, Lewisham and Southwark where there are an estimated 3,000 cases, 600 of them children.  
  

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