Initially, Up Close and Purrsonal with the Felines was meant to be a joint project with a Cat Shelter in Singapore which I was volunteering at. My aim from the very beginning was to create educational brochures to educate about kitten care, to promote adoption of their cats, as well as an e-poster for them to advertise their shelter. When I was volunteering there, I picked up skills and knowledge in cat care that I felt would be useful for the public to know. For example, I learnt how to feed a newly rescued few days old kitten. I also learnt how to massage a kitten to stimulate urination and how to check for signs of possible health concerns. As such, I decided to use my personal experience as a volunteer as a primary source of information.
My Project
These are some of my favourite photos from my time volunteering.
The first step of planning that I went though was to create a survey to find out the public's opinion, experience and questions on Neonatal Cat Care as well as adoption. I decided not to ask any of the volunteers from the cat shelter to do the survey as they would have had lots of experience, so the survey results might become a little biased. Plus, the brochures are ultimately for the general public, the visitors to the cat shelter and not for the volunteers. However, after getting my results, I was surprised to find out that out of my 85 respondents, almost 30% of them had experience or knew of someone who has experience caring for neonates. I wasn't expecting that big of a percentage.
Another thing that surprised me from the survey was the number of people with misconceptions about adopting a pet. For example, some people felt that pets bought from stores would be cleaner and easier to train, which is not true. As there were quite a few people with this mindset, I decided that this would be one of my points in my brochure.
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The next thing I did for planning was to do my mood boards. Doing mood boards was something completely foreign to me at that time, so it took me a few tries to get it done right. Mood boards are used to help the designer to convey a certain feel to their work. To do this, I had to research on design intent and colour theory etc. Afterwards, I worked on it for a few weeks, experimenting with various colour schemes my brochure could take, writing up explanations for my choice, finding the correct images to bring out the colour scheme, improving on my various drafts before I settled on the final version.
I started working on my first draft of the brochure designs not long after I finished my 2nd draft of the mood boards. This was also the time when differences in expectations for my project arose. I started having disagreements with the person in charge of the cat shelter regarding the scope of the project. Although I understood their point of view of wanting a larger scale event which would definitely benefit the shelter more, I wasn’t sure I could handle something that ambitious. As such, even after some negotiations, I decided to stop working with them.
Drafts 1 and 2 of my brochures were completed shortly after
I eventually decided on the pastel mood board, and this is how my mood board helped me to design my actual brochure
At this point, I was informed that I needed to do an exhibition to showcase my brochures, so I started to discuss with 2 of my GL friends who were doing an exhibition on wildlife, to see if I could join in on their exhibition those 2 days. Thankfully, they were really understanding and allowed me to join them. We spent a couple of weeks finalizing the details and administrative side like the logs list, if I'll be needing helpers etc.
About a week before the exhibition, I finished both the brochures I was working on, as well as the poster.
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That week, I also had to do a presentation to the other Guided Learning teachers as well as the year 1s of the Diploma of Veterinary Technology and the Diploma of Biomedical Science about my Guided Learning project. It was quite disappointing to only see 2 year 1s show up, but it was interesting to hear about the projects of the other students taking this module. I was surprised to see how different our projects could be!
The exhibition was held outside the library on the 23rd and 24th July, from 10am-3pm on both days. Initially, I had assumed printing 5 copies of each brochure would be enough. However, after half of my brochures were taken by 12pm on the first day, I decided to go to TP Launchpad to print 10 more copies of each brochure. At the end of the 1st day, I was also given the feedback that i needed to make my booth more attractive. That's why on the 2nd day, I brought my cat soft toys that many of my friends and family members have found cute.
During the exhibition itself, a few of the people that came to my booth had experience with kitten rescue, and i found it really interesting to talk to them, as it made me realize just how many people needed to be educated on the issue of animal care. They mentioned that many Singaporeans have a good heart and want to help these abandoned kittens they find, but they don't know how, so they end up doing more harm than good, which is sad for the kittens.
And now, here I am, nearing the end of my Guided Learning Journey. It's been a long semester, but I'm glad I took this chance. Guided Learning has definitely been tiring, frustrating, and at times I just felt like giving up. But I'm glad I didn't. And looking back now and seeing how much my project has developed and changed from Day 1 makes me glad that I didn't give up this chance.
