Wednesday, 23 November 2016
Tuesday, 22 November 2016
Studio Brief 2- Visual Investigation
Analyse relevant examples of graphic design, using knowledge obtained from the first essay.
Develop and produce own graphic design response using one of the following practices:
Typography and type design
Advertising / public awareness
Branding and logo design
Editorial design
Design for screen
Print Making
Problem analysis (1 A3 sheet)
2- Research
Visual analysis (1 A3 sheet): Requires at least 3 relevant visual examples, each image with short analysis
Contextual Research (1 A3 sheet) : Any relevant info on client background, competitors, industry, scene, culture, modes of communication, most include at least 3 references to reading done for studio brief 1
Target Audience Research (1 A3 sheet) : Demographics, info on psychographics (gender, sexuality, personality, taste, interests)
3- Ideas Generation
(1 A3 sheet) : At least 20 rough ideas/ scamps/ thumbnails solutions to the problem
4- Prototype Solutions
(3 A3 sheets) 3x graphic prototypes
5- Development
Developments to chosen prototypes (3 A3 design sheets)
6- Outcome
(1 A3 sheet) Choose one resolution and present : critically explain and justify your solution, explain how your final solution relates to your critical writing using at least 3 references.
Design Boards can be written in bullet points/ summary and include imagery. The focus is on process rather than quality of writing.
Read (on eStudio) Eleven lessons Design Council, look into double diamond design process.
FINISH BY NEXT WEEK- Defining the Brief -design board
Defining design problem: Must reference one of the CoP themes (politics, society, culture, history, technology or aesthetics)
either broadly or focussing specifically on gender and one specific graphic design discipline.
(for example for politics: a political party needs a logo and brand strategy for upcoming election.)
Client needs / requirements: hypothetically imagine who you're working for and consider their requirements.
hand in 29th January for essay 1 and 2
Develop and produce own graphic design response using one of the following practices:
Typography and type design
Advertising / public awareness
Branding and logo design
Editorial design
Design for screen
Print Making
Design Sheets: Produce 12
1- Defining the briefProblem analysis (1 A3 sheet)
2- Research
Visual analysis (1 A3 sheet): Requires at least 3 relevant visual examples, each image with short analysis
Contextual Research (1 A3 sheet) : Any relevant info on client background, competitors, industry, scene, culture, modes of communication, most include at least 3 references to reading done for studio brief 1
Target Audience Research (1 A3 sheet) : Demographics, info on psychographics (gender, sexuality, personality, taste, interests)
3- Ideas Generation
(1 A3 sheet) : At least 20 rough ideas/ scamps/ thumbnails solutions to the problem
4- Prototype Solutions
(3 A3 sheets) 3x graphic prototypes
5- Development
Developments to chosen prototypes (3 A3 design sheets)
6- Outcome
(1 A3 sheet) Choose one resolution and present : critically explain and justify your solution, explain how your final solution relates to your critical writing using at least 3 references.
Design Boards can be written in bullet points/ summary and include imagery. The focus is on process rather than quality of writing.
Read (on eStudio) Eleven lessons Design Council, look into double diamond design process.
FINISH BY NEXT WEEK- Defining the Brief -design board
Defining design problem: Must reference one of the CoP themes (politics, society, culture, history, technology or aesthetics)
either broadly or focussing specifically on gender and one specific graphic design discipline.
(for example for politics: a political party needs a logo and brand strategy for upcoming election.)
Client needs / requirements: hypothetically imagine who you're working for and consider their requirements.
hand in 29th January for essay 1 and 2
Wednesday, 16 November 2016
CoP Essay
Jansson-Boyd, C. (2010) Consumer psychology. New York: McGraw Hill Education.
- 'Many studies have found that both women and men do not believe that their current body form is attractive... Research has repeatedly found that physically attractive individuals are perceived by most to be socially more desirable than those that are perceived as being unattractive, something that is likely to have been reinforced by consumer societies...'
Key terms: Gender, body image, gender and advertising, gender and the media, gender representation, gender and branding, gender and consumer society
Researching Texts...
-------Body Image by Sarah Grogan
The basis of body shape ideals:
Western culture shows a preference for slenderness
Christian Crandall and Rebecca Martinez Study (1996) evaluated Mexican and American students' beliefs on being overweight, America being the most individualistic culture while Mexico was the 32nd. They deemed it to be less in our control to stop weight gain, the study showed the more individualistic a country is, the more we blame individuals for their life outcomes including these anti-fat attitudes.
"Within Western ideology being overweight is perceived to violate the cultural ideal of self-denial and self-control"
"Biologists and some psychologists have suggested that these body shape preferences derive from biology. They argue that these ideals are based on the fact that slenderness is more healthy than overweight. On the other hand, theorists who have looked at cultural differences in body shape preferences at different times and in different cultures have tended to suggest that biology plays a minor role in the idealisation of slenderness, and that it is largely learned."
Fashion/ Advertisement:
"The idealisation of slimness in women is a very recent phenomenon, dating from the 1920s. It is often argued that the thin ideal is the outcome of successful marketing by the fashion industry, which has become the standard of cultural beauty in the industrialised affluent societies of the twentieth century (Gordon R 1990)." pg 14
"Clothes fashions were represented by hand drawn represented by hand drawn illustrations until the 1920s, where they started to be photographed and widely distributed in mass-market fashion magazines. These magazines presented a fantasy image of how women should look. The fashions themselves demanded a moulding of the female body, because each 'look' suited a particular body shape (Orbach 1993)." pg 14
"They [the fashion industry] wanted models that looked like junkies. The more skinny and f-ed up you look, the more everyone thinks you're fabulous. (Schoemer 1996: 51)" pg 16
Men
"The naked, muscular male body which represented this aesthetic ideal can also be seen in the work of High Renaissance painters, such as Michelangelo's The Battle of Cascina, painted in 1504. (Plate 9, p88)" pg 17
"Another notable exception to this general trend is the idealisation of the male body in Nazi propaganda of the Second World War... This ideal (highly muscled, engaged in athletic pursuits) is echoed in images in the specialist body- building magazines that emerged in Europe in the 1940s (Ewing, 1995)." pg 17
Media Effects
"Silverstein et al (1986) found that, in thirty-three television shows, 69 percent of female characters were coded as 'thin', compared to only 18 percent of male characters." pg 94
"...present day women who look at the major mass media are exposed to a standard of bodily attractiveness that is slimmer than that presented for men and that is less curvaceous than that presented for women since the 1930s. (Silverstein et al., 1986: 531)" page 95
Social Comparison Theory Leon Festinger 1954
"We desire accurate, objective evaluations of our abilities and attitudes. When unable to evaluate ourselves directly, we seek to satisfy this need for self evaluation through comparisons with other people. Unfavourable comparisons (where the other is judged to score higher in the target attribute than oneself) are known as upward comparisons. Favourable comparisons (where the other is judged lower on the target attribute) are known as downward comparisons. This social comparison process may be unconscious, and is outside volitional control (Miller, 1984)." pg 100
Self Schema Theory Markus's 1977
"A self schema is a person's mental representation of elements that make him/her distinctive from others; those aspects that constitute a sense of 'me'. According to Markus, people develop their sense of self through reflecting on their own behaviours, from observing reactions of others to the self, and through processing social information about which aspects of the self are most valued."
"Philip Myers and Frank Biocca (1992) have adopted Markus's (1977) Self Scehma Theory, and adapted it to explain the effects of social pressures on body image... Myers and Biocca see a person's body image as one aspect of the mental representation that constitutes the 'self'. As with other aspects of the self, the body image is a mental construction not an objective evaluation. Hence it being open to change through new information... believe that body image is 'elastic' in that it is unstable and responsive to social cues." pg 101
Children
"They argue that children 'consume' adult beliefs, values and prejudices around body shape and size, and adopt them as their own."
Grogan and Wainwright, 1996
Interviewing eight year old girls
What do you worry about then?
"Being fat mostly"
"Being fat"
They agreed they wanted to be thin both now and when they grow up.
Text 2
------- The Media and Body Image: If Looks Could Kill by Maggie Wykes, Barrie Gunter (2005)
Self starving and body image
"In 1994 research in Australia amongst school girls found that '16 percent of the pre-pubertal girls and 40 per cent of the girls who had passed their menarche perceived themselves as too fat'. (Abraham and Llewellen Jones 1997) In the United States some estimates report that 20 per cent of young college females self starve (Pyle et al., 1990)
"Although primarily a disease of the Western, and more affluent, white world, cultural imperialism is spreading the ideals of frail, pale femininity globally via the media." pg 13
"A thin body shape is associated with success personally, professionally and socially (Bruch, 1978). pg 7
Media Causation
"We now have damning evidence from Fiji of the impact of Western ideals of beauty where, in a three-year period after the introduction of TV (mainly US programmes), 15 per cent of the teenage girls developed bulimia. The penetration of Western images coupled with and economic onsalught, had destabilised Fijian girls' sense of beauty." (S. Orbach, 'Give us back our bodies' Observer, 24 June 2002)
Cause - Effect analysis
"When evaluated in context of more attractive, same- sex individuals, an otherwise average- looking person may be percieved as less attractive (eiselman et al., 1984, Kenrick and Guttieres, 1980) This attractiveness contrast has also been observed in self evaluations of one's own appearance (Brown et al., 1992; Cash et al., 1983; Thornton and Moore, 1993). Not only may self perceptions of attractiveness be diminished from such comparisons, but lowered self- esteem and heightened public self- consciousness and anxiety may also result (Thornton and Moore, 1993)
Stice and Shaw 1994
"In one study, female respondents were shown 12 photographs of models taken from popular magazine, over a three minute exposure period. Subsequently, higher levels of depression, stress, guilt, shame, insecurity and body image dissatisfaction emerged when compared with prior exposure to photographs of average size models."
Men in Advertising
"As with women, societiety's view of men may have been shaped and re-inofrced by media images. The use and display of men in advertising could have served as a particularly potent social conditioning force in this context." (Mort, 1988; Nixon, 1996) pg 6
Culture
"African women, however, had the most accurate views about what men would find attractive, and Caucasian women held the most distorted views in this respect. The men, throughout, guessed that women preferred shapes bigger and bulkier than those actually indicated by the women (Demarest and Allen, 2000)"
Text 3
--- Body Image: New Research by Marlene V. Kindes (2006)
Sport
"Advertising in general has been shown to affect both males' and females' body imge, but does sports advertising affect them in the same way? This is an important question, because the representations of the body used in sports advertising may be perceived by the general public as the standard to which bodies would be compared in sport or exercise environments. This may affect the activities they choose to participate in and lead to avoidant behaviours, as they were worried about evaluating their body in a negative way (Crawford & Eklund, 1994 Hart et al., 1989; Lantz, Hardy & Ainsworth 1997)."
Anxiety
"Social physique anxiety is a type of body image concern where individuals feel anxious regarding the prospect of others evaluating their physiques (Hart et al., 1989).
Children
"Body image has mainly been conducted in the psychiatry and psychology fields. However, very little attention has been directed to body image in the field of education (Naruse, 1977)."
"With 8- to 12-yr.- old primary school children as subjects... Rolland et al., (1996) invesitgated what children to be the most ideal physique. In all groups, girls were more likely than boys to choose pictures depicting figures physically slimmer than themselves. Much of the recent research... has concerned itself with eating disorders, with the goal of explaining the relationship between ideal body image and eating disorders such an anorexia in adolescent men and women."
Awareness of Self
"Researchers have long emphasized the importance of studying body image in the context of structure of the self, and it was in this connection that Kihlstrom and Cantor (1984) focused on the question of how body image is represented phenomenologically. If it is assumed than an image of the body, in the literal sense, is indeed be represeneted as an aspect of the self, does it play with the same role as other types of self descriptions... compare these with body shape attributes ... which are more concrete and capable of evoking a perceptual image..."
"If so, body image attributes may play a fundamentally diffrent role in the self constructions and underlie some of the body image disturbances we see in eating disorders (Altabe & Thompson, 1996)."
Dysmorphophobia- Body Image deviation in chronic Schizophrenia
"A subjective feeling of ugliness or physical defect that the patient feels is noticeable to others, although his appearance is within normal limits." (Phillips 1991)
"It is a distressing and impairing disorder that may lead to occupational and social dysfunction as well as unecessary and costly cosmetic surgery and dermatologic treatment." (Phillips 1991) pg 149
Children
"They argue that children 'consume' adult beliefs, values and prejudices around body shape and size, and adopt them as their own."
Grogan and Wainwright, 1996
Interviewing eight year old girls
What do you worry about then?
"Being fat mostly"
"Being fat"
They agreed they wanted to be thin both now and when they grow up.
Text 2
------- The Media and Body Image: If Looks Could Kill by Maggie Wykes, Barrie Gunter (2005)
Self starving and body image
"In 1994 research in Australia amongst school girls found that '16 percent of the pre-pubertal girls and 40 per cent of the girls who had passed their menarche perceived themselves as too fat'. (Abraham and Llewellen Jones 1997) In the United States some estimates report that 20 per cent of young college females self starve (Pyle et al., 1990)
"Although primarily a disease of the Western, and more affluent, white world, cultural imperialism is spreading the ideals of frail, pale femininity globally via the media." pg 13
"A thin body shape is associated with success personally, professionally and socially (Bruch, 1978). pg 7
Media Causation
"We now have damning evidence from Fiji of the impact of Western ideals of beauty where, in a three-year period after the introduction of TV (mainly US programmes), 15 per cent of the teenage girls developed bulimia. The penetration of Western images coupled with and economic onsalught, had destabilised Fijian girls' sense of beauty." (S. Orbach, 'Give us back our bodies' Observer, 24 June 2002)
Cause - Effect analysis
"When evaluated in context of more attractive, same- sex individuals, an otherwise average- looking person may be percieved as less attractive (eiselman et al., 1984, Kenrick and Guttieres, 1980) This attractiveness contrast has also been observed in self evaluations of one's own appearance (Brown et al., 1992; Cash et al., 1983; Thornton and Moore, 1993). Not only may self perceptions of attractiveness be diminished from such comparisons, but lowered self- esteem and heightened public self- consciousness and anxiety may also result (Thornton and Moore, 1993)
Stice and Shaw 1994
"In one study, female respondents were shown 12 photographs of models taken from popular magazine, over a three minute exposure period. Subsequently, higher levels of depression, stress, guilt, shame, insecurity and body image dissatisfaction emerged when compared with prior exposure to photographs of average size models."
Men in Advertising
"As with women, societiety's view of men may have been shaped and re-inofrced by media images. The use and display of men in advertising could have served as a particularly potent social conditioning force in this context." (Mort, 1988; Nixon, 1996) pg 6
Culture
"African women, however, had the most accurate views about what men would find attractive, and Caucasian women held the most distorted views in this respect. The men, throughout, guessed that women preferred shapes bigger and bulkier than those actually indicated by the women (Demarest and Allen, 2000)"
Text 3
--- Body Image: New Research by Marlene V. Kindes (2006)
Sport
"Advertising in general has been shown to affect both males' and females' body imge, but does sports advertising affect them in the same way? This is an important question, because the representations of the body used in sports advertising may be perceived by the general public as the standard to which bodies would be compared in sport or exercise environments. This may affect the activities they choose to participate in and lead to avoidant behaviours, as they were worried about evaluating their body in a negative way (Crawford & Eklund, 1994 Hart et al., 1989; Lantz, Hardy & Ainsworth 1997)."
Anxiety
"Social physique anxiety is a type of body image concern where individuals feel anxious regarding the prospect of others evaluating their physiques (Hart et al., 1989).
Children
"Body image has mainly been conducted in the psychiatry and psychology fields. However, very little attention has been directed to body image in the field of education (Naruse, 1977)."
"With 8- to 12-yr.- old primary school children as subjects... Rolland et al., (1996) invesitgated what children to be the most ideal physique. In all groups, girls were more likely than boys to choose pictures depicting figures physically slimmer than themselves. Much of the recent research... has concerned itself with eating disorders, with the goal of explaining the relationship between ideal body image and eating disorders such an anorexia in adolescent men and women."
Awareness of Self
"Researchers have long emphasized the importance of studying body image in the context of structure of the self, and it was in this connection that Kihlstrom and Cantor (1984) focused on the question of how body image is represented phenomenologically. If it is assumed than an image of the body, in the literal sense, is indeed be represeneted as an aspect of the self, does it play with the same role as other types of self descriptions... compare these with body shape attributes ... which are more concrete and capable of evoking a perceptual image..."
"If so, body image attributes may play a fundamentally diffrent role in the self constructions and underlie some of the body image disturbances we see in eating disorders (Altabe & Thompson, 1996)."
Dysmorphophobia- Body Image deviation in chronic Schizophrenia
"A subjective feeling of ugliness or physical defect that the patient feels is noticeable to others, although his appearance is within normal limits." (Phillips 1991)
"It is a distressing and impairing disorder that may lead to occupational and social dysfunction as well as unecessary and costly cosmetic surgery and dermatologic treatment." (Phillips 1991) pg 149
Print Culture
We are currently in the 'Late age of print' according to media theorist Marhsall Mcluhan. The age of print began in 1450.
- Aura = art is superior and magical
mass production print goes against this whilst removing the elitism
Handmade production is slower but often more enjoyable. Unlike the fast, instant gratification from digital resolutions. Digital methods dehumanise outcomes, there is a global movement named:
The Slow Movement
"start by clearing space in your schedule for rest, day dreaming and serendipity."
(Book) In Praise of Slow- Carl Honore
Slow Food Movement
Manifesto to...
- reject tediousness of fast food
- return to small scale
- sustainable materials
- rely on cooking your own food/ with others
- use local produce
Slow Fashion
Fast fashion...
- designed to be traded in large numbers
- styles copied from high end labels, catwalk
- exploit consumer demand for novelty
- economic model= maximise profits and costs
- Ideology= continues economic growth
Glastonbury Free Press - use hand rendered techniques
- Aura = art is superior and magical
mass production print goes against this whilst removing the elitism
Handmade production is slower but often more enjoyable. Unlike the fast, instant gratification from digital resolutions. Digital methods dehumanise outcomes, there is a global movement named:
The Slow Movement
"start by clearing space in your schedule for rest, day dreaming and serendipity."
(Book) In Praise of Slow- Carl Honore
Slow Food Movement
Manifesto to...
- reject tediousness of fast food
- return to small scale
- sustainable materials
- rely on cooking your own food/ with others
- use local produce
Slow Fashion
Fast fashion...
- designed to be traded in large numbers
- styles copied from high end labels, catwalk
- exploit consumer demand for novelty
- economic model= maximise profits and costs
- Ideology= continues economic growth
Anthony Burrill (2011) Posters
comments on publicity, society and environment
Experimental Jetset (2011)
statement and counter- statement
The Print Project
Puts to use ancient print making machinery
-sustainability
- reviving
- society has no regard for maintaining
The Print Project- No Fly Posters (2014)
Pink Milkfloat- Richard Lawrence
Drives around/ at festivals and prints with people
Nicolas Bourriaud
Tendency to move away from making things and artwork symbolising you/ things, to social interaction
- artwork as social interstice
- relational art= connecting and networking, time sensitive artwork experienced under specific conditions
Felix Gonzalez Torres (1991) Untitled
Sculpture is where the sweets actually end up, how we interact with them, wether we eat, display, or pass them on. This also comments on our relationship with institutional authority and the way museum/ gallery guards use their power, often people are too scared too take a sweet.
- Co-existance criterion
Social relationships definitive of spending money, eg go for coffee, shopping...
Glastonbury Free Press - use hand rendered techniques 
Examples of why...
Jodi (2002) My Desktop
Hack of Tate Modern's website; the Tate family were the biggest slave owners so throughout this fake Tate website, this is mocked and exposed.
Thursday, 3 November 2016
Type Part 2- Production and Distribution
John Heartfield
The Art Critic 1919 Raoul Haussmann
Barbara Kruger 1979
London Print Studio
Free Pussy Riot
2014
David Carson
Raygun 1992
Thursday, 27 October 2016
Sunday, 16 October 2016
Thursday, 13 October 2016
Lecture- Visual Literacy
We solve problems of communication through type/ image / motion and we must be able to effectively communicate our ideas, concepts and context to different audiences in a range of contexts.
Visual Literacy
-Ability to construct meaning from visual images and type, taking into consideration the past and present range of cultures.
We were shown an example here of the toilet symbol, a slight variation of what we’re used to, however everybody could identify the meaning of the symbol, they’re internationally recognisable.
- Visual literacy is based on the idea that pictures can be read;
"Global language"
"Common set of symbols".
It's made up of presentational symbols, whose meaning result from their existence in particular contexts... the conversations are a combination of universal symbols.
- Adding context may give a symbol such as '+' more relevance, as this could mean anything however with a 'x' alongside it we can identify this is referring to mathematical symbols.
- Cultural connotations are engrained in our brain, we don't even realise this and we are in fact incredibly versed in visual language, however visual literacy is never static, its constantly evolved and effected by changing culture.
- For any language to exist there's an agreement amongst a group of people. For example we all identify the left image to read "I love New York", transferring this knowledge and visual understanding we can adapt this to "I love the UK".
-Being visually literate requires an awareness of the relationship between visual syntax and visual semantics.
Visual syntax: Refers to the pictorial structure and visual organisation of elements. It affects the way we 'read' it.
Visual semantics: Refers to the way an image fits into a cultural process of communication, this can depend on factors such as age.
Semiotics: Symbol, sign, signifier
The study of sign and sign processes (semiosis), indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor...
Symbol (logo)
It symbolises an apple
Sign (identify)
Sign for Apple products
Signifier (brand)
It signifies quality, innovation, lifestyle
Visual Synecdoche
When a part of something is used to represent the whole, or vice versa. eg. Statue of Liberty: New York. This only works when the symbol is universally recognised.
Visual metonym
Symbolic image used to make reference to something with a more literal meaning, e.g a black cab.
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