ice breaker 29-09-16

On the first week of uni we were given the task of “breaking the ice” with our fellow classmates. We were put into groups, half graphic designers and half illustrators, and sent off with the brief. The brief gave us lots of examples of what we could organise in order to break the ice, “synchronise body clocks”, “Schmooze”, “Visit a comedy venue” and “share a fad” being just a few of the long list.

We quite quickly decided to have a cocktail party, as alcohol and breaking the ice seem to mix quite nicely.   Part of the brief was to present how we broke the ice to the rest of the groups, so we decided to pick a name out of the hat and document that person throughout the evening. A lot of us chose to document our given person by bringing a sketchbook and filling it throughout the night with things we learn and pick up about them. This was really fun as we didn’t know who had who, so trying to figure this out throughout the evening was interesting. It was also intriguing to see how the rise in alcohol levels effected our entries into our sketchbooks, how messy they became or how random the facts were getting. I found that the more I drank the less particular I became about my illustrations, and even tried some of the materials others had brought with them, e.g. oil pastels. It was a really great way to just get creative and not care about how “pretty” what I was creating was, although I and a couple of others had a bad habit of ripping out sketchbook pages we weren’t happy with, and this became a running joke throughout the evening. Here are my sketchbook pages from the evening and some I did the next day from memory:

We also decided to create a playlist of 5 songs each which we love or have a story attached to it. This was great because it got conversation going and we found common interests if someone had picked a song that someone else liked. Towards the end of the evening though the playlist was ditched and Kanye took over.

Overall it was a fun experience and really did break the ice.