GRAP 2030 // Week 5 // Reading // Kelly (2014)

Design as Rhetoric in the Discourse of Resonance Veronika Kelly, School of Art, Architecture and Design, Division of Education, Arts and Social Sciences, University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia

"Creating something within the receiver or who you're communicating to that there's integrity, honesty and something that they relate to."

Drawing a link between "design and rhetoric, made explicitly by design scholars, is also implicit in design practice...design's purpose being to urge or dissuade a user/reader's behaviour attachment to a belief and/or value, commensurate with a communication goal."

Resonance "is presented as a desirable quality that operates to enhance meaning and a user/reader's experience, thereby contributing to the effectiveness of visual communications." Suggested that resonance as a quality dictates so clearly "that everybody [designers] can agree on its quality."
— Hmmm... I hope the rest of this article can describe what resonance is beyond these quotes. If its an ineffable quality then I'd like to see it agreed on by a jury of designers. Perhaps how the AIPP works to provide such a consistent approach to judging photographs where all the key points are debated and discussed so that everybody can understand, until the thing that makes a photograph "resonate", to borrow the term, "is the only thing left that cannot be described.

Resonance = echo

Ehses (1984) argue for "a synthesis of semiotics as an analysis of sign structures and their use in visual messages with rhetoric as a means of constructing appropriate messages is proposed as a working model of concept formation in graphic design."

3 FORMS OF RHETORIC

Deliberative // political, advisory // exhortation, deterrence // concerned with future // Judge
Forensic // judicial, legal // prosecution, defence // concerned with past //  Judge
Display // epideictic, ceremonial // praise, denigration // concerned with present // Spectator

"Deliberative rhetoric is concerned with the means to an end and with the presentation of an advocated course of action that promotes a desired result, that which people tend to seek."

"Rhetoric is fundamentally 'a technique concerning the way that things are said, but does not in any way determine the relations between teh person who speaks and what he says.' Foucault adds that in rhetoric, the 'connection between the person speaking and what he says is broken' at the same time that rhetoric's effect is 'to establish a constraining bond between what is said and the person or persons to whom it is said'." WHAT?

"...a designer is not required to believe in what they are “saying” through a design, despite asking audiences to believe in what is being said. Nevertheless, to deal with matters of choice and how things could be, to seek to effect desired responses from a user/reader through design, still means taking up certain positions in shaping communications that aim to provoke or heighten the values and beliefs of a user/reader."
— she's essentially saying that as a designer we may not necessarily believe in a message but we're still required to understand the position of the sender and the receiver in order to craft a message that resonates with the audience.

[See 'How the Trump Campaign Built an Identity Database and Used Facebook Ads to Win the Election' and 'Trump campaign using targeted Facebook posts to discourage black Americans from voting']

Questions

Blog posts
Need to keep up
Quotations from sources
Summarise the readings in a sentence or two to demonstrate understanding


Essay outlines a number of key essays that hint at where to go to gain additional clarification on many of the sources quoted here.

Essays
Reference List vs. Bibliography

Can you briefly describe resonance in your own words?
Can you think of a piece of design recently that has "resonated" with you and why? What tools did the designers use to create a piece of resonate communication?

Notes // How Designers Destroyed The World

https://player.vimeo.com/video/68470326

"our responsibility as designers"

"We see things going out the door that we're dissatisfied with, or don't work properly, don't conform to best practices, or worst of all, they violate the trust that our users put in us. And some of us try to keep these things from happening and some of us don't. We may see it as somebody else's job. We hope that somebody else shows up in time to fix it. And we get upset when they don't. Who in your organisation can pull the plug on something htat sucks. The answer of course is you. It's aways been you. There is not a cavalry, there is nobody else who is going to do your job but you."

"We are mired in a design culture that either doesn't understand the responsibility to the world we live in or worse it doesn't' care. And it doesn't take malice to bring bad design in the world. All it takes is carelessness. Design is nothing more or nothing less than human beings attempt to explain or manipulate our environment."

"Design is how it affects an individual, and ultimately, the environment we live in. When we ignore that affect we are at best negligible and at worse culpable."

"We need to fear the consequences of our work more than we need to fear the consequences of speaking up. We need to fear the consequences of our work more than we need to love the smartness we're doing."

"We have an ethical responsibility to not make things we don't want in the world."

Victor Papanek. Designers are gatekeepers. Design for the Real World.

"We used to design ways to go to the moon. Now we design ways to never have to get out of bed."

"Too many smart people are deciding on what problems to tackle based on whether they can be funded and flipped."

"Venture capitalists are the most dangerous of all charismatic mega-fauna."

"Stop hoping other people will allow you to solve the big problems."

1. Designers Responsibility to the World
2. Designers Responsibility to the Craft — each job you do is a representation of the craft. You represent us all. It's why the AIPP is so important.
3. Designers Responsibility to Clients — don't work for anyone you're afraid to say no to. You are not an order taker. No one hired you to be their friend.
4. Designers Responsibility to Self — if you take responsibility for your work, you will create better work, you'll enjoy it more, this will lead to better possibilities

"Imagine a world where the CEO or the marketing manager are sweating bullets because they're thinking "we'll never be able to talk the designer into doing this". And that's a fucking beautiful world."

"Designers complain about clients but they never complain to the client directly."

Portfolio = Reputation = Integrity

Destroy Your Ego = Kill Your Self (TDR)
Ego is fear in the way of solutions.
Destroy Your Fear
You won't get everything. You will fuck up. You will get up again. Never trust a designer that's never been punched in the mouth. They haven't done anything interesting enough to get punched and they're too scared to make the decisions that'll lead to getting punched in the mouth.
Destroy Your Apathy
Be intentional in your actions. If you don't care about what you're creating stop. There are other professions, then find one you love.
Destroy Petty Authority
Act like the expert that's been hired.
Destroy That Voice Inside
Design what you know is right. Get in trouble. We should be in trouble.
Destroy Misogny

GRAP 2022 // Week 5 // Reading // Steven McCarthy - Designer as Producer

Book title Designer as author, producer, activist, entrepreneur, curator and collaborator. Book author McCarthy, Steven J. Citation details Extract, pages 129-151 Extract title Extract from 'the designer as author, producer, activist, entrepreneur, curator and collaborator.

"Design fiction posits that the future can be imagined through narrative devices, and that indeed, this is already related to the way designers work: brainstorming, speculating, creating and prototyping."

"Design fiction" reminds  me of Syd Mead, concept artist and futurist who said that in order to create a better world we have to imagine it first, after insinuating that he was sick of designing dystopian futures because if we keep seeing them then that's the only world we'll imagine.

"...to expand the definition [design fiction] and range of design fiction so that more design disciplines can benefit from its intellectual reach."

The works discussed "occupy three different points along a spectrum of 'the rea'—the degree to which reality can be said to be necessary for fiction to be plausible."

"Francheschini's users collaborate earnestly and endeavors to create meaning with the environment and their place in it. Reality is built upon actual, and virtual, social networks and interactions. Ideally, the future is ethically constructed through people-design-people relationships."

"Taking the expansive view, design criticism and design fiction are part of the design authorship family. They expand the discipline into what might appear to be foreign territory, but really tread on familiar and accessible grounds once the roots are exposed. Because of this, these new directions offer strong potential for enriching the design discipline while being inherently interdisciplinary." —WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?! So far all this article has said is "if Designers make some shit then they're actually saying something and being authors." Well done. Designers who create are authors. This concept of the design fiction, which just means "stories that incorporate fictional designs" are basically any film that incorporates concepts that aren't a part of our real world now. This whole article seems pointless so far.

"When designs work well, when there is a perfect symbiosis between form and function, the value increases as the user's needs go beyond satisfaction to having emotionally rewarding experience with the design. However, in the hyper-consumerism of the global economy, the notion of 'needs' that are met through designed artifacts, environments and services has become consumer desires that are anticipated, manipulated, cultivated and consummated."
— unpacking this means that rather than the design serving a function and fulfilling a need that already exists, instead, the consumers desires are designed. So, design addresses less needs and more desires.

"The function of much design now is to lubricate the exchange of currency, not to provide affordable housing, healthy foods, efficient transportation, accessible information, a cultured citizenry and more. The success of much design is cemented the moment i leaves the store, not over the lifespace of its use, or its reuse, or in its discarded state."
— I agree with the idea that design doesn't necessarily serve as much a purpose as it did, though we're invited to believe in its power through TED Talks and "new technology" that makes "so and so" easier and more efficient. Design and marketing typically work together to sell us things. BUT the author assumes that design has always had these lofty ambitions to help save the world and I'd argue that design from the beginning has never been about these things. Considerations of environment, sustainability and reuse are only present facets we teach because they're necessary now to our continual survival. We've only considered them honestly since the 80s and seriously since the late 2000s (thanks Al Gore, and now Arnold Schwarzenegger). Further, it's not necessarily "design" but more precisely "architectural" and some "product" design that has ever been concerned with housing, transportation and cultured citizenry. So, it's a great sentiment but I don't see it grounded in any reality I'm aware of.

Chris Jordan Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption. "Visually seductive while shocking the viewer with a disturbing portrait of consumption and waste. Through personal expression the images are art; through communication of environmental issues teh images are designed to create awareness and inspire change." But ARE they inspiring change? I'd argue that for anything to genuinely facilitate change it must also provide a solution for how to adjust behaviour rather than just shock. When a viewer leaves the exhibition, they're likely to forget what they just felt if there's no avenue for them to follow through immediately on what they've learned.

Regarding the Design for the Other 90% about "designs created for popoulations who do not enjoy the standard of living taken for granted in the Western World" is just an art exhibition unless the the designs, such as the Worldbike cargo hauler and LifeStraw water-borne bacteria filtration system are actually manufactured on mass and distirbuted to the people's who need them most. If design is about function, then the function of the design is actually to be used by the people it is designed for and solve the bigger problem. I've had a look into Worldbike and sent them an email to see whether they're still in production and how it went. LifeStraw appears to have gone into production, though with a price-point starting at $39.95 for a personal straw, it's pretty fucking expensive to give one to every person in a developing community—so they give one to a school child based on purchase, a similar model to Zambrero's who give rice to communities based on the sale of each burrito.

"Art is conceptual. Ideas about seeing, feeling, observing, documenting, communicating, parodying and satirizing give art its social and psychological impact. Art gives voice to fundamental human emotions. Concepts of visual and spatial syntax, semantics and semiotics relate art to design. Event he notion of art being therapeutic for its creators is valid to designers as they are called upon to emphathize with their users."

"Art has social, cultural and political influence. Art's roles include both reflecting back at society and speculating as to society's future. Like design, art imagines scenarios — not just applied, problem-solving scenarios, but imagining for imagining's sake, an act of pure speculation. Art also serves as critical commentary — it gives voice to the marginalized, the outsiders, it speaks truth to power."

"One long-held assumption is that art comes about from an internal, personal motivation while design requires an external, public impetis. Another is that design results from a client commission, thereby casting the activity as primarily an economic trade, while art might eventually sell int he marketplace but this shoudl not taint its creative production. Both assumptions carry truths as well as myths, and polarize creative activities that design authorship strives to bridge."

I still have no idea what this concept of "design authorship" means and why its a necessary definition.

"Design has a purpose. Art has no purpose. I can't imagine one without the other." — Paula Scher.

"... a more appropriate definition [art and design] might be that art and design have an ever-shifting and contextual relationship. Lacking a firm border, they share a gray zone of indeterminate boundaries, awaiting creative exploration."

GRAP 2030 // Week 4 // Reading // Rhetoric

Visual Persuasion
— Ethos // Credibility (personal qualities)
— Pathos // Emotion
— Logos // Argument

Bush

• worms eye view
• Greek columns = power
• 'In God We Trust' — religion, control, reassurance and power
• American flag — patriotism, strength, courage
• auto-cue off screen

Castro

• impassioned speeches
• combat uniform
• 
  

Pathos // Emotion

What is not shown?

What sits outside the frame?

What has been deliberately excluded?

How would this alter the perception of the image?

How would this detract from the argument the image is making?

CLASSICAL RHETORIC

Speaker // Rhetor try to persuade.

• Inventio // content, arguments, examples, anecdotes appropriate for object and public. Consider circumstance and time (kairos is prefect timing)
• Dispositio // structure of content and argument
• Elocutio // express with feeling, with style and humour, comparisons, repetitions, wordplay (entertaining / engaging)
• Memoria // familiar with the story through practise (or PowerPoints / autocue)
• Actio // presentation. Maintain eye contact, use your voice, be convincing, use gesture

Metaphors are important to persuasion:

"images of things that are not actually present made so visible in thoughts

MODERN RHETORIC

Renewed interest coincides with WWII "into processes of persuasion in the mass media, and particularly research into propaganda messages."

SPEAKER // RHETOR

Who is the speaker? Less clear in printed material. Could be originally producer of photographic image (photographer), the journalist or editor-in-chief who selected the image, or the organisation who purchased the image from another vendor.

Speaker is not always an obvious presence.

Ethos // Credibility

• objects such as white coats (doctor / scientist)
• celebrity endorsement (sportsman for sneakers)
• content of publication
• layout, typeface, colour

Pathos // Emotion

• images that are provocative
• violent, soft, quiet, misfortune, happy, attractice, etc.
• cropping of photograph (or manufacture)
• historical relevance of images (relating one to another)
• metaphors

Logos // Rationality

• realism and evocative power of photographs and illustrations

Kairos // Perfect Timing

• When is the right time to express a particular sentiment?
• When should an image or advertising campaign be released?

Rhyme // Alliteration

In text

• Rhyme // repetition of last syllable
• Alliteration // repetition of first letter
• Contrast of form // 'Cool Stuff, Hot Prices"

In images

• Rhyme // drawing connection between two similar shapes, items, forms, colour
• Verbo-pictorial scheme // image as substitute for text (glossy lips become "O" in the word "gloss"
• Repetitio // repetition of something in image, or pattern
• Contrast // clear separation of two objects or things (colour / size / statement / metaphor)

Tropes // Irregularities

• Metaphor // substitution, one thing for another. "A man is a lion." A lightbulb for idea.
• Paradox // contradictory
• Synecdoche // 1) pars pro toto (a part stands for whole) 2)  totum pro parte (whole stands for part).
• 1) pars pro toto
• symbol of man stands for men's toilet (symbol means "all men"
• shoes at Auschqitz recognised for the deaths / dehumanisation of people who owned them
• bottom of two people's feet in bed stands for sex
• 2) totum pro parte
• Scotland has beaten England at football — Scotland victorious
• Comparison // similar portrayal to draw connection
• Personification // object / thing / creature made to resemble human
• Hyperbole // exaggerated figure of speech (obesity using comically overweight people rather than just a mildly overweight person // big ears on Obama in caricatures)
• Litotes // understatement
• Oxymoron // two things become paradox eg. organised chaos, pretty ugly, fire hydrant (hot) in snow (cold)
• Pastiche // imitation (reinterpretation?) / cliche of the well-known or recognised. Eg. The Beatles Abbey Road album cover reinterpreted or Uncle Sam

METAPHOR

Synectics // the bringing together of two different things

RESULT

It is possible to use illustrations / photographs to mislead the public. For example, the illustrations of possible weapons of mass destruction trucks that were used to demonstrate Iraq had chemical warheads.

• travel photographs Taj Mahal before and after
• images demonstrating what buildings will look like when they're finished (with ghost people)
• before and after photographs

Visual language: persepctives for both makers and users, 2012. Jos van den Broek, Willem Koetsenruijter, Jaap de Jong & Laetitia Smit. The Hague: Eleven International Publishing, pp 111

FRAMING

To provide with a frame. To isolate particular phenomenon and control context. 

• Selection // which images will be included and what do they say? Why this and not that?
• Salience // what is portrayed, made noticeable, striking, composition, colour, perspective
• Spin // what twist is required to achieve the effect

Gestalt // explains the perceptions of visual communication

Semiotics // the process of signification

Rhetoric // how signs persuade us

 QUESTIONS

Find a popular tourist destination (such as the Taj Mahal) and look for perfect images used in travel brochures versus the reality of what is seen when visited. Discuss what is manipulative about these images? How do they affect you?

Can you think of something that was released at the wrong time, or held back and reqorked bfore being released because of a certain incident? (First thoughts are the original Spider-man poster with the Twin Towers scene of a web strung between them)

GRAP 2022 // Reading // Kress, 2005

Interactive participants

Image producer — viewer
Who are the invisible actors?
Magazine example — who is responsible for what you're seeing?
Fashion campaign
Design campaign
Advertising campaign
Theatre performance
Film
Television
Illustration

Real author 
Implied author disembodied voice with implicit norms. No voice but presumed. Implied reader is one with preferred reading position. We speak from a similar stance.

Producers work within rigid conventions and values of social institution to circulate their work. Readers recognise communicative intentions and values even if not accepted as own.

Believes conduit idea is limited. Assumes the producer has all power to write and read. Viewer can only read. Viewer has right to recognise senders message and then accept or reject it adopting a new stance depending on personal perspective.

Demand (Halliday 1985) is an image that directly addresses you. Can be come here, go there, get away, worship me, abhor me. Asks for participation. Think "Call to action" at the bottom of a poster "Book now!"

Offer or Demand. Sense of connection with viewers and authority figures.

A.B Original key example:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BRbsJK9A_Q5/

http://musicfeeds.com.au/news/briggs-fires-back-australian-ab-original-historic-music-prize-win/

Best / Worst PlayStation Ads

http://www.giantbomb.com/playstation-3/3045-35/forums/top-10-worst-best-playstation-advertisements-from--12016/

http://mashable.com/2014/12/03/20-years-playstation-commercials/#RsF91.01xiqV

Chris Cunningham
Brother, "what the hell was that?! I did not like one bit. Weird. Ugh."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkbHsa0qing

Let me tell you what bugs me of the human endeavor I’ve never been a human in question, have you? Mankind went to the moon I don’t even know where Grimsby is Forget progress by proxy Land on your own moon It’s no longer about what they can achieve, out there on your behalf But what we can experience Up here and of our own time And it’s called mental wealth

GRAP 2022 // Week 03 // Preparation

"We would all benefit form having a public voice or voices capable of critical discourse about style, form, and design rhetoric ... design is part of ... the larger spehere of ideological understakings known as the social construction of reality. The realm of the symbolic is the realm of human understanding, self-identity, and social formation." (Drucker, 2013)

Break it down to what you know—if you like a particular music style you may wear clothes that reference that style. Metal heads, punks, indie, hipsters, hip hop, pop. By wearing a particular style of clothing you're building an identity and a tribal formation, you cluster. You may assume that people wearing a particular t-shirt have similar value systems. Think Sea Shepard—I know they're all for animal rights in the water, they may also be vegetarian or vegan, they may be more aggressive than regular "hippies" and that they're up for a fight. If someone drives a BMW or Mercedes we might associate a particular social class with them—they have more cash, they're willing to show it off, they may hold high power positions (not necessarily true—sometimes this is a facade). These different groups also use language differently, colloquialisms that act as a communication shorthand that simultaneously includes those "in the know" and excludes those who don't understand. Graffiti, for example, can be read by some with experience reading it and not by others—reading the way someone loops letters or uses more aggressive angles may more greatly indicate where they've come from, the people they grew up with.

VisComm a Signifying Practice operating through Systems of Representation
Language as Social Practice (discourse)

Forms of visual Language: Representation, Interaction, Relations

1. Visual language, forms and relations; theoretical connections; how the role of language in design can be overlooked
2. Communication as a process; a conduit metaphor of communication
3. Contesting and suspending meaning
4. On metaphor (briefly)
5. Visualising a design process

———

1. Language

"A series of marks and noises used by humans to achieve their goals."

Role of language can be overlooked depending on the model of communication used to understand users response to message receipt:

• Passive receivers of messages (process model)
• Cultural agents in production of meaning (semiotics)
• Active participants in argument (rhetoric)

Positivism: relies specifically on scientific evidence, natural phenomena, observable and measurable properties and relations (I still don't understand positivism at all).

Modernism's "language of graphic design" where visual elements are ordered using systematic principles "to seem like the natural order of communication." For example, Isotype or "picture language" designed to be universally readable. Marriage of language, graphic form, logical positivism. "A scientific formula."

—this still relies on the assumption that all people read and understand visual images the same way and must draw a connection between what is seen and what can be understand within their own social discourse.

London Tube Map

Harry Beck, 1931

Considered 20th C modernism. Objective, reductionist, representation of physical geography without referring to it realistically. It is a suggestion of space and order where there is otherwise chaos. This provides "neutralising perspective to instil comfort and security through efficiency".

—remove unnecessary information and focus on the key points, the nodes, where users will get off. We don't need to see every corner, turn, street because the important information is actually the links between stations.

BUT Forty (1986) argues the reduction is misleading, condensing the perceived physical space that London occupies in order to make it seem more traversable. It "makes London look very much smaller than it actually is, as the outlying areas seem deceptively close to the centre." The map does not correspond with the physical reality.

Hadlaw (2003) says the map relies on understanding of modernity and urbanity, "it was comprehensible because the logic that underpinned it was coherent with their experience, as modern individuals, of a historically particular time and space." We had to understand modernist art and design and communication principles in order to read the map—the white dots indicate station nodes, the lines the route and hte colours teh various places. We also had to set aside our former knowledge of geographical maps in order to understand this simplified structure.

Scientific Design?

Scientific design modern industrialised design

Design science "systematic knowledge of design process and methodology"

Science of design study of design

Relationship created between engineering, political science, psychology and planning to explain design process and methods.

———

2. Communication as Process

Conduit Method

Linear process of communication. Sender-Message-Receiver (SMR). Efficiency of transmission and reproduction is valued with the reduction of "noise" or extra information, distortion, etc. Technical evolution based on technological understanding, not organic.

Receiver is considered passive.

"Ideas (or meanings) are objects... Linguistic expressions are containers... Communication is sending."

We are bound to communicate by the language we understand. "People cannot help but perceive the world through the vocabularies tghey are using, even if only to describe it."

Often when talking to clients, selling the idea is the hardest part. We need to talk around issues to come to a common linguistic understanding—we may have trouble explaining why negative space is important when all a client sees is white space so we need to explain how it's not wasted space but instead helps direct the eye to the most important information.

Conduit metaphor meaning is contained in objects (artefacts, images, symbols, brands) and meaning is transported from one place to another (rather than reinterpreted each time it is read).

———

3. Contesting and suspending meanings

1970s post structural theory, cultural studies and feminist theory questioned truth and universality creative objective systems of representation and relations to power.

Post structulralism contested "universal truth" and fixed meaning. Deconstructionist criticism and postmodern approach to suspension, dissolution and production of meaning.

David Carson Ray Gun "illegibility" as postmodern design to break understanding of "transparency of typography" introduced during modernism. (Is it new, or a return to the old style of type production dating back to early 1900s.)

Derrida said "undecidability of hte sign" means there is no fixed meaning and every reading leads to a different interpretation. 

Postmodern design believes

1. Meaning is dissipated or destroyed
2. Meaning is proliferated or produced
3. "Undecideability" as description of production and destruction of meaning

Semiotics assumes all artefacts as "texts" providing relation between graphic design, language, and communication.

———

4. Metaphor

Metaphor operates via substitution based on a relation (i.e. similarity) of form or content. We substitute one thing for another in order to create new meaning according to previously understood conventions.

From Artistotle The Art of Rhetoric and drawn "from related by not obvious things" to creative "actuality", or movement. 

———

5. Visualising a design process

Models, maps and diagrams help map human activity through time and space but can't show everything. Choose most important elements.

"No map or model can be comprehensive... This means we have to be purposeful and deliberate in our choice of map; we have to know why we have turned to it and what insights we require from it."

The information we select can give away our perspective, just as the language we use to describe it can give away our position. Even the labels on maps can change the way we perceive the information.

———

Questions

1. Can you think of examples of visual design from past decades that evoke these ideas of universality, rationality, order, reason, logic?

Olympic games use a system of symbolic representation of events but they still rely on your knowledge of what each game is. Videogames often use symbols to stand in for different experience. Think WipEout and it's weapons structure. 

2. What kind of language do you use to describe your own design work when you are discussing with your peers and or presenting to others?

Maybe a list of terms? Try describing a piece of work you've created to another student and see what language you use. Is it common, universal? We talk about negative space, visual interest, contrast, line, form, tone, colour, etc.

3. Do you, or have you ever used a conduit metaphor to describe ideas or how visual communications work? If so, can you think of an example?

4. Can you think of examples in your own design process where you have used metaphor to explain an idea,  a design, or your approach to visual communication either consciouly or without realising it? Why do you think that is the case?

GRAP 2022 // From Visual Culture to Design Culture // Julier

Visual Culture: reading images devoid of context
Material Culture: objects as value
Design Culture: the production of meaning through cultural symbols
— what's the connection?

Visual Culture — way of looking. Authors "explain their discomfort and inability to deal meaningfully with the functions [what functions?] of ceontemporary design." pp. 65

"...proliferation of images becaome a characteristic of modern social organization."

"Commodities and services needed to be made more self-consciously visual in order to advertise and market them to a wide, anonymous audience." pp. 65 In discussion of Victorian era. In addition to "new visual technologies such as film, animation and photography.

No clear distinction between literary era and visual era.

"all media are hybrid, 'impure'." "They do not merely engage one expression—visual, tectual, aural, material—but are dissolved within their mediatory contexts. (One cannot talk of the Internet in terms of either visual or textual cultlure but, perhaps, as screen culture.)"

Essentialist view that the visual is the medium of our times ot a Complex view where the visual is intrinsic and important social and cultural expression.

Visual Culture "disembodies images from their primary contexts of encounter. Adverts or photos are quite lieterally cut out of newspapers and magazines for analysis" which removes them from the very culture and place which has given birth to them. Example would be Colour magazines advertising.

Martin Jay provides three steps for visual analysis of renassaince painting.
1. Static position of viewer
2. obvservational empiricism revels in surface detail
3. viewer must piece objects together into narrative
This is useful for exploring the beginnings of r adesign object and environment but doesn't take into account it's place within cultlure.

Scott Lash notes, "Culture is now three-dimensional, as much tactile as visual or textual, all around us and injabityed, lived in rather than encountered on a separate realms as a representation." — cultlure encompasses all. And architectonic perspective. Design is "more than just the creatiuon of visual artifacts to be used or "read." It is also about structuring of suystems of enouncter within the visual and material world." pp. 67

"Systems are orchestrated and routinized for maximum perceived efficiency, leaving the consumer as a passive participant." Also the term"the tourist gaze" which accepts "tourism as a form of spectacular consumption in which sites are arranged for visual pleasure. Tourist spaces are produced and viewed as an alien 'other'".

GRAP 2030 // Week 02 // Reading // Csikszentmihalyi (1996)

"To move form personal to cultural creativity one needs talent, training, and an enormous dose of good luck. Without access to a domain, and without the support of a field, a person has no chance of recognition."

"When we live creatively, boredom is banished and every moment holds the promise of a fresh discovery." – What other professions does this hold true for? SCIENCE. Oh heck yes.

In the way of creativity are four problems:
1. Exhaustion: "exhausted by too many demands" and have trouble accessing creative energy
2. Distraction: "easily distracted and have trouble learning how to protect and channel whatever energy we have"
3. Laziness: "laziness, or lacking discipline" to direct the energy
4. Unknowing: "not knowing what to do with the energy we have"

All people have roughly the same brain power and energy the difference is "how much uncommitted attention they have left over to deal with novelty. In too many cases, attention is restricted by external necessity."
— too true. I stopped playing videogames because too often I found any energy I had to create was immediately absorbed by the television and console controller so even though I thought it was a "recreation" it was actually drawing attention away from the things that satisfied me most—the art of drawing and creation. Further, we too often believe that recreation is the thing that will give us satisfaction btu if you really stop to think abotu it, greater satisfaction can be found elsewhere.
— for students I believe the desire to study and worry about "getting things right" is the hiundrance to creativity even within a creative degree such as design. It's necssary to forget that the work we're doing is for grades and instead lose yourself int he process. Same appleis for commercial work—when you let go of the stress and worry you're removing a blockage from the real work.
"There are real limits to how many things a person can attend to at the same time, and when survival needs require all of one's attention, none is left over for being creative."

"... often the obstacles are internal. In a person concerned with protecting his or her self, the practically all the attention is invested in monitoring threats to the ego." — which reminds me of Ian Anderson of the The Design Republic's discussion last night (7 march 2017 at Mercury Cinema) in which he discusses "Kill Your Self" t-shirt campaign. He said it wasn't meant in a negative light but that rather instead of preening and primping oneself to make sure we "look our best" in front of the mirror, instead we get over it and move on with more important things in life. We kill the ego in order to gain control of our lives."

Never fear being wrong. "A paranoid tendency is one obstacle to the free deployment of mental energy. The person who suffers from it usually cannot afford to become interested in the world from an objective, impartial viewpoint, and therefore is unable to learn much that is new." — and we might attribute a fear of experimenting, pushing boundaries, trying new things, for fear of failure prevents us from pushing forward. As scientist on BBC Science Hour (or was it The Monkey Cage) said, "I love being wrong because I've still learned something. I've learned what doesn't work." Which means you're still describing the parameters of something through it's negative instead of positive which still helps us to form an understanding of the thing we're doing or exploring. It's like drawing the negative shape in life drawing in order to learn new forms.

Cultivate Curiosity and Interest
Children's curiosity "highlights and invests with interest anything within range."
Adults "lost the sense of wonder, the feeling of awe in confronting hte majest and variety of the world."
"Yet without awe life becomes routine."

"Creativity within a domain often goes hand in hand with conformity int he rest of life." Using Einstein as an example, but is this true? I don't know—I hope I can disagree!!

Things to help creativity:

1. Try to be surprised by something everyday
2. Try to surprise at least one person every day
3. Write down each day what surprised you and how you surprised others OR Keep a Journal / Sketchbook
4. When something strikes a spark of interest, follow it BUT be careful when these things are found on Facebook. Perhaps a better way of approaching this is to subscribe to blogs and emails which pique your interest and follow these instead. For example, I love Nautilus and Capture and sometimes even AGDA.

Cultivating Flow (or Focus) in everyday life

1. Wake up in the morning with a specific goal to look forward to—also be sure to keep lists of things TO DO and be sure to include on them things that you want to do for YOURSELF and NOT JUST for work. Too often we write lists of things we MUST do instead of lists of things we WANT to do.
2. If you do anything well, it becomes enjoyable. 
3. To keep enjoying something, you need to increase its complexity—which is true. Continue to push yourself daily and you'll quickly improve. This goes for design. If you've mastered one grid, then try something new. If you already know how to draw figures then begin to apply that knowledge to drawing horses. If you've mastered typeface then try to design one.

Direct your time

1. Take charge of your schedule
2. Make time for reflection and relaxation — when shooting a recent burlesque show The Deco Dolls (3 March 2017) I was using a 70-200mm zoom and after shooting portraits for a period I put the lens down and realised that in focussing on the face for 20 seconds I'd completely missed the beautiful foot work and flow the dancer was cultivating with her legs and the sensuality of her hands. I needed to see the whole picture to appreciate what I was missing because my focus was too narrow. Though, it was necessary to focus at the time!!
3. Shape your space.
4. Find out what oyu like and what you hate about life OR know your feelings. This is important to understanding the way you work as well. If you know that you require time away form the computer to socialise in order to do your best work then do it. If you don't like to hang out with a certain person because you feel they drain your energy, then don't. If you don't feel like drinking then don't.
5. Start doing more of what you love, less of what you hate

TBC

GRAP 2030 // Week 02 // Lecture "What is Design Process?"

What does creativity mean to you?
How does process assist in your design creativity?


"You cannot hold a design in your hand. it is not a thing. It is a process. A system. A way of thinking."

design = process
design is NOT an object
though, it may result in a design artefact, or a designed system

What is a design process?

BUT process is not always linear.
There will be false starts.
Problem and context need redefining.
Even solution may not be the best in application.
Remember to step back — see Make time for reflection and relaxation in Week 02 reading.

Design Process
1. Resolve ill-defined problems
2. By adopting solution-focussing strategies rather than problem-focussed — DISAGREE with Myra's discussion that in science there is only one correct solution. Instead, I would argue that in engineering there must be a correct solution. In science, an answer that is not desirable may still produce beneficial results.
3. Through employing adductive reasoning — MAY BE multiple solutions. There WILL BE a new solution by every designer that attempts to define and resolve a problem. The problem may be defined differently, the skill set of the designer will result in a different solution, the cultural heritage will inform a different solution for every problem, the age and experience of the designer will result in a different solution, even the drawing abilities of each designer will result in a different solution. ‚ SKETCH don't DRAW to expand the possibilities of your own thinking. For example, if you sketch out ideas as stick figures, ideas in their piurest form, you can then develop them later. You're not being held back by your own skills but rather but your ability to imagine a new solution.
4. Using nonverbal, graphic / spatial modelling media as a means of communicating solutions and developing specification for production.

Design process as TRANSFORMATION

"A skilled professional communicator who mediates between an expert and the audience. the transformer's job is to put hte expert's message in a form the reader can understand, and to look after the reader's interests in general."

Key Questions for successful design process
What action is desired? What do I want the audience to do or how do I want them to respond?
What does the audience need to know to respond in the desired way?
Waht is the best way to facilitate desired response?
Waht will it say? What will it be? What will it look like? — Why are these questions so important? Look back at Nigel Cross who quotes Denys Lasdun "Our job is ot give the client, on time and cost, not what he wants, but what he never dreamed he wanted; and when he gets it he recognises it as something he wanted all the time." What is the thing that you're providing the client? They've asked for a poster but is it really a website they need? Or a flyer?

Photography // Photographers and Art

Am I a 'modernist' photographer? When shooting, am I creating art or just another photograph? I wonder... though I'm not sure there's a definitive answer.

In an article for PetaPixel "Why Photographers Don't Get Art", John Raymond Mireles discusses the nature of modern professional photography versus contemporary art to try and tease out the differences between the two and how they might be reconciled. Central to his argument is the idea that photographers operate within a narrow definition of what's considered a great photograph through a modernist lens. Or rather, technical proficiency equates quality of art—camera operation, quality of light, aesthetic achievement and the description of a visual narrative must be of the utmost quality. Photography is a well-defined narrative captured in a single image, apparently.

Art, Mireles argues, relies on the "underlying conceptual currency"* of the piece and less so on the aesthetic result with "the move away from craft...art has increasingly focused on exploring concepts and philosophies and less on advancing art on its aesthetic merits. Postmodern art especially is about dissecting historical perspectives and denouncing traditional narratives. Basically, you have no idea what you’re looking at nor how to judge it unless you read the often densely written artist statement affixed to the nearby wall." For conceptual art this might be true—ideas push the artist to explore abstract concepts rather than obvious visual narratives—but not always. And there are many practicing artists who's craftsmanship is impeccable.

Acquisition, 120cm x 50cm, Charcoal on Paper © Yanni Floros. Used here with permission from the artist.

I take issue with the photograph he uses as an example of "commercial photography" as well. The image by Mark Seliger is the most cartoonishly exaggerated example of a female cowgirl standing on an obvious set with painted backdrop and all the props you can scavenge from a country goodwill store in order to make his point. But commercial photography has so many facets which include the creation of images that are inspired by art, or documentary, or editorial styles. Sven Kovac, for example, created this beautiful commercial / fashion image which also feels like the best of contemporary street photography.

© Sven Kovac, borrowed from Instagram.

Still, I enjoyed reading the article and it's obviously got me thinking which is never a bad thing.
Drawing from my own city for example, Adelaide local Yanni Floros has produced a series of hyperreal illustrations of men and weapons to discuss masculinity and power using only charcoal as a medium. Joshua Smith creates incredible miniature reproductions of real dilapidated storefronts inspired by his love of graffiti culture and architecture, spending many hours developing new techniques to perfectly reconstruct tiny bricks, chains and milk cartons. And Lisa King, who paints aesthetically beautiful images of women in oil, inspired by the work of fashion photographers and designers and while her images may appear "simple" in composition there's many hours of mood boarding and concept development before she even begins painting. Then there are artists such as Tom Borgas who creates highly refined sculptural works that exist in reality but which he only completes if they "look good through a camera, as all work exists to be digital these days." (I'm paraphrasing Borgas here from a presentation he did a few years ago at the Relay design forum.)



Maybe I'm going off point but I feel that the position taken by Mireles assumes that most photographers are still steeped in traditional values only held by pure commercial studio photographers of the late 1990s but aren't necessarily here today. At least, they're not the same views held by many of my contemporaries (photographers in their late 20s to early 30s) who love and appreciate art in all its facets.

* How great is the phrase "conceptual currency"?!

Photography // Portraits as an image but not an identity

"Identity is not a fixed thing, and no person is one-dimensional, so the idea that a single photograph can stand in for the totality of a person is a polite fiction at best." – Phillip Prodger

Fleeting Truths: Thoughts on Portrait Photography

A fantastic article with photographer Phillip Prodger on why we shouldn't consider portrait images to be the end all and be all of the identity of the person photographed.

It's something I especially encounter when photographing actors for theatre, film and television—often times when sitting to shoot character portraits it's hard to see where the actor ends and the character begins and so it becomes unclear who it is exactly you're shooting. A look here, a slight adjustment to posture there. You take a shot and you've captured an incredible emotion that is fictional—the look of a character and story brought into being for a split second by an incredible professional talent. The final image might bring tears to the person who sees it but its origins are fictitious.

And my style of photographer, extending from my history as an illustrator, forces me to consider photography as a story-telling medium. I prefer to craft and exhibit series of images that have a beginning, middle and end, because it provides context for the single image. A single image may contain great meaning but a single portrait is often contextually void—is a look angry, frustrated, or concerned? Sometimes its hard to tell without seeing what came before it. Sometimes it just boredom on the face of a model, or a moment of serious focus listening for the punchline of a joke. The next frame might have been uproarious laughter.


Prodger draws comparison between film, motion and still image, describing how they're becoming quickly linked—the language of film informing the vocabulary of the photographer. Directors and actors Jo Stone and Paulo Castro of Stone / Castro Productions have described my photography as "cinematic" in the way that I captured their performance of 'The Country' by Martin Crimp. I shot still frames the same I would have for film and television and the comparison is legitimate.

Nathan O'Keefe and Natalia Sledz in 'The Country' by Martin Crimp, directed by Paulo Castro // Stone/Castro Productions © Daniel Purvis

Stage and lighting design for 'The Country' by David Lampard and Daniel Barber © Daniel Purvis

I'm looking for shots that create a sense of distance, that heighten drama, cropping in to create tighter portraits full of emotion, narrowing the large space of the theatre. If you were to stand in the crowd you'd see the large, flat, dilapidated fronting of an old farm house and you'd view the actors walking back and forth across this set in its entirety. Instead, I charge in and capture that single moment of pain, shock and panic and freeze it. Tight and sharp. Agony and pain made large where live you may have only heard it in a voice. But it's a story—a single image can only give a glimpse of what the story entails. None of them is a whole story in itself.

And so Prodger describes "Narratives no longer have to be complete to be meaningful. Photographic storytelling is more about networks, nodes, and webs than it is about concise statements. In this world, relationships between images become central." And at the National Portrait Gallery of London has facilitated the acceptance of portrait series in addition to the single image, which gives me hope. Where a single image might split time, I feel a series of still images does more than minutes of motion capture to tell stories. It provides us the ability to take this network of nodes and then allow our minds to fill in the gaps. We don't need to see everything, and it's the photographers duty to pick the most poignant moments.

Anyway... enough rambling.

———

"...we’re just messy, organic beings, full of contradictions, uncertainties, inner thoughts and outer projections. Who we are is indefinable and unmeasurable."

"Photography excels at splitting seconds, not surveying lifetimes. It is by nature mechanical and distant, not warm and knowing. On paper, it is the worst possible tool for portraiture. Yet there is something undeniably magnetic about photo portraiture that defies easy explanation."

Cobalt mines in the Congo // Smartphone

Dropping this here as future reference when discussing the role of the designer in a globalised economy. Should also be useful for a discussion of ethics, recycling, and other new-tech related issues.

Also, find below the Facebook video for comparison. Rather than sticking to "straight journalism" like we see in the YouTube video (thought it's still going for the heartstrings), the Facebook video below is all depressing music and emotive words, which is entirely the reason I have Facebook autoplay videos disengaged!

https://www.facebook.com/skynews/videos/1659591590722098/

GRAP 2030 // What is a Designer?

What is a designer?

A confusing selection of responses based on who knows what. What is a designer? This is something that Poynor gets at to some degree in his piece "Time for being against." If the general public don't have a clue what we're doing then we've failed at communicating our own role. How are we going to convince a client we're valuable?

But then again, if you put a designer on the spot how well will they respond? Is it possible to communicate exactly what we do in just a few seconds in front of a camera?

Off the top of my own head...

What is a designer?

A designers role is to interpret information, sometimes complex, and turn it into something useful. It's a problem-solving position that requires one to look at the world and question the status quo and investigate if things can be done better, if things can be communicated better, if practices can be smoothed out and made simpler. We take ideas and make them reality. We create new things, or fix old ones. A designer uses their "creativity" to craft messages in such a way that their meaning can be predictably interpreted by the receiver. Much of our knowledge comes from semiotics—how signs signify meaning and how that meaning is understood by others. We navigate cultural norms seeking to exploit and subvert them for the good of society (well, that's the goal anyway!).

Not a bad start but needs far more critical support.