Self Directed Proposal - Brendan Reid

I just found some notes from our last lesson of Professional Studies in Dec 2010 (prior to breaking up from the Christmas holidays) and in this lesson we discussed the next part of our brief, which requires us to look into the certain career field we want to follow (design related) and find a specific topic to talk about, the best way is the find a question that relates to the topic and then proceed to answer it, having something physical to show for it in the end. Now I've been struggling for a while to come up with a suitable topic to cover as I have not defined myself as a designer into a specific field, my main reasons for going on this broad-ranged design course was to help me find that out. Brendan Reid came in to help us with our proposals and talk us through our ideas. Brendan is a lecturer at UWE and teaches MA Graphic Arts there. He gave us a basic run-through of the proposal and other factors of design and the industry. He taught us the value of creativity saying that "Technical ability is important, but it is useless if you don't have any ideas". When he spoke to me about my proposal, he asked me what my interests were (regarding design), I replied with "making covers for things, visual media, print or web-based still images/adverts" after narrowing it down to magazines, I came up with a question to possibly cover. "In this digital world, why do we still have a need for magazines?". We studied the question and looked at the pros and cons of the answer. With computers, we have Kindles, eBooks and iPads which many would say are much better than magazines yet there are an equal number of people who would much prefer something physical which they can keep, the touch and feel of a magazine is superior to anything a LED screen could try to copy. I think this question has some potential, but I'll need to make something to show for what I've done, this is probably the more tricky part of the assignment. We discussed the possibility of working with Future Publishing (who produce hundreds of magazines) to create a magazine of sorts, but as for what the content or point of it could be, lies undecided. Brendan gave us all his email if we had any questions, I think I should see what he thinks.