Final Reading - Chapter Seven and Conclusion

Reading Notes

Chapter Seven – pgs 224-234

 

The Changing Notion of Audience

Interaction design is easier through computers

Behavior study is becoming part of the design process

Sanders – designing with people, not just for them

All things have affordances, some more obvious than others

A New Paradigm

Research is necessary and valuable

We shouldn’t define the limits of graphic design, but instead push the limits

Chapter 7 part one

Reading Notes

Chapter Seven – pgs 208-224

 

A New Paradigm: Designing Experiences, Not Objects

The designer takes on the traditional role of tradesman, in addition to those of artist and communication strategist.

Software made creation an output much faster. Type is now easier to manipulate. It allowed anyone to become a designer.

The Insight of Marshall McLuhan

1.                  Medium is the message – media change the world around them by effects that supersede the very content they seek to communicate. The impact of television on how we see the world is bigger than the content of any single program. Many use the cell phone to get feelings to incite emotions that are otherwise absent in our daily lives.

2.                  hot and cool media – our sensory experiences with differing levels of message definition under various technologies. Radio and film are hot because they are clearer and more information-rich. They require less sensory participation to complete the message. Political cartoons and television are cool because they require more involvement from the user. His definitions may be out of date today.

3.                  Acoustical space – pre-literate, oral traditions in communication. There is less mediation with hearing than with sight

4.                  Global village – electronic media gives people equal access to public information and re-establishes the simultaneity of the pre-literate acoustic culture. Mentions the JFK-Nixon televised debate.

A Convergence of Media

Convergence – a move from media-specific content to content that flows across multiple media channels; the interdependence of media systems.

Remediation – is the process through which the characteristics and approaches of competing media are imitated, altered, and critiqued in a new medium – the representation of one medium in another.

Complexity and Experience

Contemporary design problems are increasingly complex and defined in terms of experiences rather than objects.

An experience must have a beginning and end. An experience is composed of parts that are distinct but that flow from one to another without interruption. An experience may be described in terms of a quality or unity by which we name it, and thus recall it long after it has happened. An experience has a pattern and a structure of alternating between doing and undoing, which should be balanced.

(I’m not going to read the upside down type on the fig. 7.11 concept map)

Finishing Post-Modernism

Reading Notes

Chapter Six – pgs 190-205

 

Cultural Position

Cultural position – the post-modern concept that we all hold identities and subjectivities that determine our particular interpretation of the world. According to this concept, we can never overcome these biases completely.

More stuff about cultural biases and how experiences alter our perceptions

Vernacular, Appropriated, and Default Forms

“If modernism was about abstraction and the “high” culture of fine art, post-modernism is often about the iconic forms of popular culture and the “low” art of advertising.”

Mentions how well Bodoni goes with Helvetica (just like Larry said)

 

By the 1980s and 1990s, some designers were feeling that graphic design had lost its expressive role in communication.

Apple’s 1984 Mac let people create typefaces. Technology always influences design

Émigré is/was a foundry that wanted to make more expressive fonts

Keedy – pro-sampling, as long as the designer is dead. Interesting fact: sampling in hip-hop also came around at this time in history.

Appropriated – taken for one’s own, usually without permission. “Appropriated Form” in design is often taken from another culture or period of history in order to borrow the connotations of the original.

Hyperreality and Living in the Image

Ads attatch attributes to products so people think that they are buying the attribute.

Style and image are central to po-mo

I should get into the wedding industry…

Hyperreality is unnatural, an illusion, a simulation.

Post-Modernism Reading, Part 1

Reading Notes

Chapter Six – pgs 174-189

 

Post-Modernism: Reading the World as Texts

Postmodernism questions the powers that be

Postiche – a mixture of visual references that imitate previous styles or works in a new context; a fragmented experience.

Bricolage – the construction of something from a diverse range of things

Postmodern architecture tends to show the structural skeleton

Post-industrial – an economy that no longer relies on heavy industry or mechanical production (how is the U.S. postindustrial?)

Postmodern things are open to interpretation. They can be ambiguous. “difficult whole” “messy vitality.” Modern things want one single point of view that’s universal, while postmodern things could have many meanings.

Postmodernists used vernacular rather than uppity design lingo that the user didn’t understand

Postmodernists were inspired by pop artists to look at commercialism and pop culture for inspiration

Postmodernists criticized modernists for their delusional universal beliefs when the majority of their clients don’t understand modernism.

Postmodernists started the backlash against Helvetica due to the fact that numerous corporations used it. Helvetica was supposed to be neutral but meanings got attached to it.

I don’t think that post modernism is very good commercially. You don’t want your audience to get confused with the subjective meanings. You want the meaning to be clear to most everyone.

Chapter 5 pages 158-173

Reading Notes

Chapter 5 – pgs 158-173

 

Troublesome Issues of Class and Style

Taste – interpretation informed by experiences related to one’s social class, cultural background, education, etc.

The public appetite for style was fueled by the Industrial Revolution.

Appearance emerged as a commodity that could be bought and sold

The book kinda rags on style and fads, saying they separate form from substance. What’s wrong with sentimenting about the past? A lot of the past is beautiful.

Modernists despised style (ironic now?)

“form follows function” – Louis Sullivan

Modernists are very anti-ornamentation

Modernism – less is more

The problem is probably the majority of people like decoration and ornamentation. Sure it’s primitive, but it’s how we are; why fight it?

Modernists weren’t concerned with beauty.

Modern design shifted from social agendas to political agendas

After WWII, design in America was all about style. We romanticized products and sold the American Dream.

Suburbanization. Commerce and therefore advertising booms. (less about social and political agendas, all about capitalism?). advertising becomes a profession (madmen).

Media and technology have a major influence.

They imply the potential upward mobility through consumption.

Chapter 5 and Modernism

Reading Notes

Chapter Five – pgs 134-158

 

Design ideology arises from social conditions and from the trajectory of ideas across time

Corporate identity – the persona of a corporation, usually expressed through its name, logo, typefaces, and supporting visual applications, which are guided by a manual of style

Objectivity – the ability to view something with accuracy and neutrality, as it actually exists

Photography was a big modern thing: mass production, objectivity

Photomontage – illusion of photographic objectivity giving way to propaganda

Varvara – photo montage more precise than imperfections of drawing

Abstraction explored, naturalism to elitist. (the modern opposite of straight photograph?)

Modern art and design were socially motivated. Through pure, objectivity, sensory experience they were thought to transcend the boundaries of class and politics

Standardization – Swiss and Bauhaus, international style, Tschichold

Standard ratio, everything halved

ISO – international organization for standardization

Tschichold had good form, but his philosophy is whack

Universal – an unchanging entity or quality that transcends the individual, culture, or time

Futurists were into dynamic sensation. I always thought futurists were daft.

De Stijl – reduction, harmony, balance, boring. Not universal, many people don’t get it

Bauhaus – practical, function. Still use their foundations idea

Neurath – stereotyped, kinda racist. Doesn’t seem all that neutral

Are there “international” Asian or Arabic typefaces?

Chapter 4

READING NOTES

Chapter 4

Semitotics – is the study of  the life of signs. It was developed in by Swiss linguistic Sausssure. It’s the science of signs

Design is both a science and an art. It’s mostly an art, semiotics is the science

Technology always has an effect on culture and society

Form doesn’t inherently have meaning, we give it meaning.

(why/how did the rattlesnake evolve a rattler? To the snake, it has inherent meaning, but to a human and other animals had to learn and give it meaning)

example of semiotics – hip hop chain: gold =money, big =success(manhood), chain=slavery memorabilia

a sign is something that stands for something else. $ = money

design is more about the experience than the artifact (a challenge for me)

signified – concept, the object or thing the signifier stands for

signifier – a sound/image that stands for something

signification – consumption of signs

semiosis – the act of making something meaningful

langue – form, rules, grammar, language

parole – meaning, demographic, user

interpretent – context, condition, or function of signs

structuralism – a methodological approach to the interpretation and analysis of human activities that focuses on the relationships of contrast among elements within a conceptual system, not solely on the elements themselves

ideographic writing – each word is a single sign unrelated to the sound of the word (Chinese)

phonetic writing – direct link between symbol and sound (English)

seems like they are trying to complicate something that is common sense.

Univers – Swiss type, 1950s-1970s

You can make something look more independent by making it look hand-made/drawn

The other half of chapter 3

Reading Notes

Chapter Three – pgs 77-99

 

Most clients think that designers just make things look pretty

how things mean rather than what they mean

schemas – are mental structures that contain general expectations and knowledge about people, social roles, events, and places. These structures tell us how to behave and what to think in certain situations and are formed through our social encounters, in real life or as represented by the media.

Stereotypes are powerful because they direct attention, guide the encoding and retrieval of information, and save cognitive effort.

Shock is one result of a stereotype appearing outside its normal context.

Stock photos are broad and aren’t new.

If everything screams, nothing is heard.

A bunch of architecture metaphors that I couldn’t really grasp

Consider economics of design. (like to avoid recall)

Designer should be well informed.

Chapter 3, First Half

Reading Notes

Chapter Three – pgs 56-77

Components: example – typefaces

Products: example – brochure

Designers must know about the social and cultural experiences of the user.

Designers must also consider the consequences of their actions, how it may affect their audience.

Consumption is fueled by design.

Our assignments are at the product level, but our social responsibility is to systems and communities.

Ask yourself: “what makes this audience different? What do they have in common with others?”

(visceral – instinctive, unreasoned)

Reading Outlin #2

Reading Notes

Chapter Two – pgs 34-53

 

Signs – something that means something to someone. Basic

Physical attributes of the sign are arbitrary to what it stands for. (debatable)

Reflective approach – meaning is inherent and language mimics what is already there

Intentional approach – meaning is imposed on the thing by its creator

Constructionist approach – the meaning of something is shaped partially by the social practices that surround it

Connotation – an idea or feeling that a representation invokes in addition to its literal meaning. 2^nd level, relative, subjective, emotional.

Denotation – literal, direct, explicit meaning without metaphor. 1^st level, less relative, objective, rational.

The designer must search for signs that are generally understood to represent the appropriate concepts and also present them in a way that competes successfully among other demands for people’s attention.

Signs should be familiar but used in inventive ways.

Analogous – a representation that is natural or that physically resembles what it stands for. Not abstract.

Syntax – visual arrangement of elements with the representation (composition, structure?)

Type and images should interact with vectors

Usability, usefulness, and desirability

Propaganda – sways opinions

-          Testimonial

-          Bandwagon

-          Scapegoat

-          Reward and punishment

Reading Outline #1

Robby Barr

Reading Notes

Chapter One – pgs 15-31

 

Messages should be sent without noise/interference.

Context is circumstances and background as well as the communicators themselves and other factors.

Content is the subject matter or topic of a message.

Even if the design is good formally, it may fail if it doesn’t communicate.

Zeitgeist – spirit of the times

As designers we may view the world and messages differently than our audience.

Elements – text, photos, symbols

structure – composition. Arrangement of elements.

Our code interprets gain and loss with top and bottom rather than left and right.

Treatment – style. More subjective

Aesthetics – deals with a philosophy rather than a style

Don’t just sell a product, sell a lifestyle.

The market favors narrow audiences.

Look for common perceptions and values of audiences.