Following on from the previous days experiences, I began to play more with the idea of a 'Non Disclosure Agreement' and expand into ideas of secrecy, bureaucracy and subservience, particularly in the working environment. In my time in my previous job I experienced a great deal of frustration and hypocrisy that infuriated me and directly affected my life outside of work, in so far as it affected my moods and happiness, making me less than great company on many occasions. This itself filled me with resentment for my employers, a large company with little respect for it's employee's or it's customers. I am under no illusions as to how this varies from company to company, particularly where profit is the bottom line. I had already experienced redundancy within this company and in order to not be made unemployed I had to take another position within the company that was truly mind-numbing and well below my skill-level. There was an absolute lack of mental stimulation and all attempts I made to progress into better roles were met with indifference or embarrassing failure, again leading to further feelings of resentment towards the business as a whole. Ultimately, the situation arose where I had decided to take the Foundation course, and I would need to change my working pattern to accommodate my studies, and so I requested to go part-time within my existing role, which my direct managers fully supported, but this was ultimately turned down by the company, despite my years of experience and hard work. I essentially had to choose the course, or the job, and I chose the course. I do not regret this at all, but I felt quite bitter for some time about the lack of appreciation for my work and experience. The decision to not allow me to go part-time was made by one person, based on his personal feelings regarding job-shares (which other teams not under his control were often using).
This experience started to directly feed into my work. The phrase 'Non Disclosure Agreement' became less significant and the phrase 'We Know You Know Nothing' arose, allowing me to experiment with wording and arrangement. I worked primarily onto tracing paper, using pre-prepared typeface sheets to create bold lettering by hand, and I then experimented with colour schemes using permanent marker to see how things contrasted with one another. It quickly became apparent to me that this project would be most likely leaning towards print or graphic design tools such as Photoshop, and I experimented with Photoshop primarily due to it's ease of use and accessibility.
