Show & Tell: Unnecessary Process

Recently, I saw the new Jose Cuervo ads for their Living Notoriously Well campaign. On first watch, I found them really entertaining. There have been differing opinions on their entertainment value posted on various blogs, but I'll let you decide. To watch the ads go here: livingnotoriouslywell.com Enter your birthday and then click on the right under televised notoriety and watch the two commercials. I thought these were unnecessary processes, particularly How To Negotiate because one of the steps is: have a back up plan. What sort of process negates its worthiness by saying, this may not work, have a back up a plan. It's as if the step to a cake recipe was, buy cake from store just in case. I know it enhances the humor in the ad so I do understand its purpose, but generally speaking, I feel like a well written process should cover all your bases in a way that you'd be successful in the end... but that's just me.

And here is what I am bringing to class, because I found it amusing. The steps show (1) a hand crumpling this piece of paper, (2) the hand hanging the waded paper onto a christmas tree. 

TV and Web Harm Kids

I read this article on Reuters the other day: Lots of TV and Web harms kids' health.

Essentially, a bunch of credible institutions compiled data from studies going back to the 80s to the present, and tallied the information. The studies focused the health effects between children and technology/entertainment, specifically television, but also video games, films, music, computers, and internet use. The findings showed consistency that children who consume high amounts of media have poor health, "The studies offered strong evidence that children who get more media exposure are more likely to become obese, start smoking and begin earlier sexual activity than those who spend less time in front of a screen." Some people have drawn the conclusion that it isn't quality but quantity that is the issue. But, what really got me was the Reuters article constructed the issue like this, "Three quarters of them found that increased media viewing was associated with negative health outcomes." I mean, wow. Three quarters of studies say that our chosen field, effective communication and technological mediums cause NEGATIVE health incomes. Yikes! It really makes you wonder the consequences of the messages you're sending out there, as well as the consequences of the absence of the messages you're not sending out there.

Project 5, Phase 4: Movie

Hello again. If you don't mind repetitiveness, since you'll have to watch this on Saturday, would you mind taking a look at my Phase 4 movie and leaving me a comment for those points where the text goes by too fast or goes by too slow. I'd welcome any other feedback, but this is my biggest concern at the moment. Much appreciated. And, if there is music/sound effects do your best to ignore them, because they're not right at all at the moment. Thanks again. 

Project 6, Phase 3 - TEXT

Hello, class. I'm having trouble reaching the 300 words for Project 6 (Packaging). Below is my content so far. Hopefully, you'll understand what I'm doing by reading it, but in case you don't, I'm re-purposing bricks as book ends for a haughty home furnishing line. If you have suggestions for things you'd like to read about that would fit along the lines of what I've written, please comment!

General audience:
Well off home owners that prefer simplicity and understatements (or even natural antiquity) to opulence and luxury in their home decor.

Text so far:
Brick Ends
from No Mortar … building great design brick by brick

Uncomplicated design need not connote unattractiveness. At No Mortar, we prefer a minimalist approach to house furnishings. Our authentic class B engineering bricks in fire red will enhance your rugged, exposed brick walls or be a well-crafted juxtaposition to your home décor. This brick set are perfect shelf ends for the minimalist, au naturel or artisanal home.

Built for strength, this brick set is capable of holding books, heavy or oversize books, magazines, records, CDs, DVDs and other items in an erect position on shelves or mantels. Each brick has a unique texture with shallow caverns and pin-hole chasms. The three-hole pattern in each brick not only lightens the weight to prevent excess strain on its ledge, but also adds dynamic visual depth.

Remove the wire holders with scissors to release your brick ends.

• Class B engineering bricks
• Fired clay, water and sand
• 2 dimensions
• 2.7 kg per brick
• Made in the U.S.A.

No Mortar’s Home Collection includes well crafted, minimalist home furnishing made from the earth’s most natural sources of clay, sand, stone, wood and water. www.nomortar.com

Week 10 Reading: Insights

Here are two things that I noticed from this reading, that I'd like to point out because I'm not sure if I could make sense of them in class off the top of my head:

One of the follow-up questions to Jacinto Jesus Cardona's "Bato con Khaki's" is "Why is bato 'too bold' a word for the speaker's 'mother's blood?" (339). Then, right after that, in Jamaica Kincaid's essay "Girl," a dominate voice, probably female (perhaps a mother, older sister or older family friend) speaks to a girl about how to grow up appropriate. The connection between the two pieces highlights how it is the responsibility of the mother/female to raise the next generation both male and female, which is probably obvious because it falls into that domestic sphere.Then, wouldn't it also be presumed, that those children's failures are automatically projected onto the mother? It becomes the mother's responsibility (and shame) when her son becomes a bato or her daughter a slut. Considering all of the outside influences that act upon children--media, technology, peers, other adults, history, it's quite unfair that females are forced to bear this responsibility alone. Katha Pollit supports me (or I guess, I support her), when she wrote "They let parents off the hook--no small recommendation in a culture that hold moms, and sometimes even dads, responsible for their children's every misstep on the road to bliss and success" (399). And isn't unfair to fathers that they aren't given (more) credit for the responsibility or shame that they bear for their children's futures?

Although McQuade and McQuade do a reasonable job to separate gender and race into different chapters, race is still a significant factor to consider when talking about gender (some people debate that it is completely inseperable when speaking of gender). I thought Judith Ortiz Cofer's "The Story of My Body" hit the nail on the head at the end, when she writes,

In college, I suddenly became an "exotic" woman to the men who had survived the
popularity wars in high school, who were now practicing to be worldly: They had
to act liberal in their politics, in their lifestyles and in the women they went
out with (349) [emphasis added].

The questions of exoticism and exploitation are really interesting. Conversely, in "How to Write A Catchy Beer Ad," when the ad makers were filming the ad, they wanted women "to look hot but approachable, someone I wouldn't be scared to talk to" and thus went with twins who were "All-american and real" (391). (Funny--of course they're real, they picked living, breathing humans?! And what does it mean to be All-American?!) They wanted women who were similar to themselves, but "approachable" which could be read as non-threatening, subservient, less than. And are exotic women thus oppositely viewed as other and scary?

Week 10 Reading

Yes, I am posting on Thanksgiving. Some people may make a big deal out of this, as in this isn't much of a holiday if I'm doing school work, but what's a better way to chill out and digest than blogging? Probably watching a movie, but blogging it is.

I was anticipating this week's reading, because I have a vested interest in gender studies (I wish more people did). Mainly I tell people I have my degree in English, but I doubled, and also have a degree in Feminist Gender Sexuality Studies. Try not to let the F-word scare you.

More or less I found that McQuade and McQuade had good insights and asked several important questions. I highly suggest:

• p. 343 Judith Ortiz Cofer's "The Story of my Body"
• p.353 Marjane Satrapi's excerpt from "Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood" - if you haven't seen the film from this graphic novel, Persepolis, Netflix or rent it IMMEDIATELY. It's brilliant (and entertaining) and showed me a world vastly different from the few stereotypes I had in my head about Iran.
• p. 366 Jane Slaughter's "A Beaut of a Shiner"
• p. 370 Portfolio: Nancy Burson
• p. 378 Susan Bordo's "Never Just Pictures"
• p. 390 Chris Bollard's "How to Write A Catchy Beer Ad"
• p. 398 Katha Pollit's "Why Boys Don't Play with Dolls"
• p. 402 ARMY ad "There's Something About a Soldier"

I don't have a highlight this week, however I will post a few insights I had (immediately following this post--yes one rock, two birds.) But I will end with this food for thought from Pollit's "Why Boys Don't play with Dolls."

Every mother in that room had spent years becoming a person who had to be taken
seriously, not least by herself.

Web Accessibility

Tonight, I went to the lecture regarding Web Accessibility for blind persons presented by Anne Taylor, director of access technology, Wesley Majerus, access tech specialist, and another gentleman whose name I didn't catch. These individuals were representatives from the National Federation of the Blind.

It was an interesting talk, and here are a few key points in no particular order:

• To make an accessible web site, you need to understand how screen readers works (which I don't, and still don't quite get after this talk), and you need to do user ability testing with blind persons.
• Blind persons have to invest a lot of money (a minimum of $2,500) in screen readers (even more money if they're deaf and blind), so they expect web sites to function accordingly to meet their needs (quite understandable.)
  
• They don't believe in text-only pages on the basis that separate is not equal. Reasons against separate text-only sites: they're not maintained as well, they tend to be boring and plain, and it's not a cost effective solution for a company to run two sites.
• Apparently, Flash sites and PDFs can be made accessible if they're labeled appropriately. (Unfortunately, she didn't get into how to do that--maybe it's a given?)
• In the next 20 years, the market demand for accessible websites is going to increase rapidly--all those baby boomers who know how to use computers will want to continue to use them in their declining eyesight, old age.
• Other reasons why you should go out of your way to improve accessibility: by improving accessibility you will automatically improve usability, it differentiates your company as one with particular values, and to avoid legal litigation (the NFB just settled with Target.com for $4 million, an amount she said could have been avoided with about $50k worth of accessibility redevelopment to the site!)
  

I wish she had gone into more detail as to what needs to be precisely done in the coding and what not. Rather than being a tech informational lecture, it was more of an tech advocacy lecture, which is fine, just not what I was expecting. Although, she said much information could be found at their website: The National Federation of the Blind. They also do website certification that is somewhere above federal 508 compliance, which is the sort of thing I'd want to see as a norm.

Choosing to attend this lecture, I missed out on the Bringhurst/language talk at UMBC. If anyone went to that, please post about it or let me know how it went. Thanks.

Call to Action Posters

I feel like these campaigns, sort of put us all to shame... ahh, back to the drawing board. Check it out: Design as a Force of Good from PSDTUTS.com

Week 9 Reading: READING ICONS

I'm going to do this week's recap of the reading a little differently. I was surprised (and yet, not surprised) that the icons the chapter chose to use and questions it asked, were icons I had seen in the past week and questions that had been asked in other design forums. I found this very coincidental, and expected, they are icons after all and chances are their "easily determinable meaning" is often parodied and reconstructed for that very reason.

So, to go along with the bathroom icons on pages 499-505:
I like this design very much, particularly for the angles of their heads. However, if could easily be misinterpreted as one bathroom being for well, number one, and the other bathroom for number two. Nevertheless a good try. And much better than the image of the dog's face on p. 504 from Hong Kong, which I don't understand at all... anyone?




Then to go along with p. 508, Grant Wood's "American Gothic." Which I've seen parodied a hundred times, but really knew nothing about, and was very glad to read Guy Davenport's "The Geography of the Imagination" for insight, I present:



















This chapter's Profile is of Tibor Kalman, who altered the racial identities of high profile people, pages 546-556. In true Kalman style, someone/some people altered the racial identities of Barack Obama and John McCain--who to give credit to, I'm not exactly sure:
















To sum up, I'd like to look at the Mercedes ad on p. 520-21. It says "Glimpse at them for a split second, and you know exactly what they mean." I feel like the reason we redesign and parody iconic images, is because as message makers we understand that NOTHING has a definitive meaning, icons change according to audience, culture, time, place etc. I'll admit I might be putting words into people's mouths, but this is the way I'd like to see the world: We, as image and message makers, toy with these icons because as much as we create design and images to market, persuade and sell ideas, we'd much prefer to market and sell to an astute and interested audience who would rather read messages and interact with images, rather than "glimpse at them for a split second."

Show & Tell: Favorite Words

Here are some of my favorite words:

RE words: revelation, reactionary, revolution
*These words sound strong and round.

Words whose synonyms I detest: flatulent, skivvies
*I loathe the word fart. And dislike the word underwear. I'm also not crazy about diaphragm, like... and others I will add when I think of them.

Words with a story: wonderful, via
*The first time I saw the movie from the Lemony Snicket (sp?) books, I remember being so content when I left. I loved how it was so imaginative and there was so much child like wonder. And then I realized it was full of wonder aka wonderful. The meaning of the word really hit home in that very moment, and I realized it wasn't just a synonym for good or hapy or pleasant. A character from Jitterbug Perfume (by Tom Robbins) argues, "There are no such things as synonyms!"
*The story for via (pronounced the British Vie-a, not V-a) is that I heard someone talking on NPR and they say vie-a and it took a moment to register what they were saying and it was probably the first time I was aware of the differences of English and the significance of the pronunciation.


Words I mispronounce: mountain (moun'in) or any word with a strong 't' in the ending syllable, it tends to get skipped or rounded out to a 'd', when (win), pillow (pellow). I find it funny that I mispronounce them, so I don't mind at all, unless I'm talking to someone academic/scholarly and then I feel a bit like a joke.

My disdain for filmmaking

I'm not crazy about this movie project. In fact, I've been dreading it since the Profs. mentioned it way back when we had the week off. I don't know why, it's just another project like any other. I thought because my thinking isn't very linear, it may make it extra difficult... but then I remembered my few interactions with film... and I'm still cringing.

In early middle school, I remember some boys who I went to elementary school with, coming up to me one day to tell they had been over to Josh's house and were watching their old soccer games. Well, apparently, there's a video of me playing goalie and one of the other boys (who was of course, the most handsome, charming, funny, soooo cute boy in the sixth grade and a neighbor of mine) running up to the goal and kicking the soccer ball... into my face. I was told I cried. I was told it looked like it hurt. And then they laughed. I didn't remember it at all, but at that moment, I absolutely hated technology that could record past events to be replayed unbeknownest me.

Then, in seventh grade, everyone had to make an "ad" in Social Studies. A friend and I made one for a trip to D.C. that the school was having. I played the Star Spangled banner on my sax for the soundtrack and we acted out a ridiculous script. Oh, the laughter that ensued. The tape of my saxophone playing was way too loud in the background to hear anything that was being said. And too loud to not notice the all too often errors. (I was never much for practicing.) It's like being in a ball park and the singer of the anthem is just too bad that you just want it to end. Well, it's 10x worse for the singer. I wanted it to end too. But no, the three minutes dragged on. How was I supposed to know that you have to actually adjust sound levels? Wouldn't it just tape the way it was playing out in my head?

I quit saxophone and stayed out of the spotlight for most of high school. Until senior year, when in one last show of bravada, some friends and I created a dance routine for Moulin Rouge's "Lady Marmalade" to perform as part of Air Band (essentially an end of the year hurrah where everyone lip syncs to silly songs in front of an auditorium of people.) Mid song I manage to forget most of my dance movies. was much more interested in observing the audience observing me than in actually performing. Well, unfortunately, during the senior week breakfast morning, they decided to have viewing of the evening's performances in case anyone had missed it. I slunked so far down when my group's song came up, I might as well have been lying on the floor.

There also may be a story about an educational video for Spanish class, but I'm not ready to open that Pandora's box. (Did you know Pandora actually had something more like an rounded sort of jug/vessel/vase thing, not a box? Box was just a word a writer chose because it sounded better.)

There's something about film and me that I equate with humiliation. But, hopefully this time it will be better--because I'm not in it, I'm behind it. Nevertheless... please keep your giggles to a minimum... or else I will never work in film again. That's a promise.

On a side note: after this project, I have an increased respect for moviemakers. I've always been impressed by the thoughtfulness of it all: the angle of shots, shooting scenes out of order, creating an ambience, multitasking in every aspect of life (sound, light, movement, time, etc.).

So, props to all you filmmakers out there.

Project 5 -Narrative

This iMovie project is definitely going to be not my best work, so to speak. I have no idea how to use iMovie and more own thinking isn't very linear, so this whole thing is going to be difficult. Not to mention, I'm just using jpgs, everytime I want someone to movie I'm working with same still and moving a limb or an eyebrow just a bit again and again. But anyway, that's not what this post is about.

There's something to be said about people who go through the trouble of stop-motion videos. Here's a great one (I don't know if there is sound or how it looks with sound, I don't have sound currently...): They used over 3,000 images.


London (harder, better, faster, stronger) from David Hubert on Vimeo.


[Update 11.12.08]
Here's another cool video (not a stop-motion)--again, no sound, so I don't know if the music is any good. I like the concept. It starts to lag, but watch til the end, the credits part is pretty cool.
I wonder if they hired a hand model?


KRAAK AND SMAAK squeeze me from FunkySpaceMonkey on Vimeo.

Show & Tell: Narrative

For last week's class, I brought a Tretorn ad that was a photograph of a boy chasing a girl on a bike. I thought it might constitute a narrative, but it turns out the image itself isn't a narrative, it's a visual snippet, and as the viewer I create the narrative (he catches the elusive girl). Although, I think it was close to a narrative because it did show action . I think the main thing that prevents it from being a narrative is the fact that it didn't show a progression of time. I suppose that's the difference between vignette and narrative. Vignettes are snippets. Narratives include time.

I guess an important thing to discuss is to define what narrative is. Dr. Gisbon says it has to include two characters, conflict, time... maybe some other stuff. The dictionary defines narrative: a story or account of events, experiences, or the like, whether true or fictitious. So I think the most important part of narrative is that it's an account of events (plural!). So not characters, conflict, etc., but time.

Which brings me to this Candian Club whiskey ad, which is one of my favorite ads. I think this is a narrative because we see the images as retelling events, and the headline "Your mom wasn't your dad's first" is the thread between the images. With both these elements there is a narrative within the ad, rather than being supplied by the viewer--although, the viewer could easily add more to the narrative with some imagination.

Week 8 Reading

Real quick, some good parts from Chapter 3 in McQuade & McQuade.

• Tom Brokaw's "An Ode To Loved Labors Lost" p. 253, mainly for the sentence "and sensing for the first time in my young life the genuine excitement of wrestling with big ideas, and the force of intellectual curiosity." I heart that excitement.
  
• "The First Thanksgiving" by Sarah Vowell, p.256
• "Fish Cheeks" by Amy Tan, p. 261, Amy Tan can break my heart with words.
  
• Art Spiegalman, p. 300. He wears an upside down peace pin (p. 302), I wonder if he's turned around yet.
• "Vivian, Fort Barnwell" by Ethan Canin, p. 323. My brother has a photo on me and him on his wall as kids and I think it's really sweet, (he's pretty separated from the family), that I didn't have the heart to tell him it wasn't us--or at the least not me. I think it was some family friends--also biracial asian kids.
  

There's a lot of good stuff in this chapter. Highlight: Savulich's portfolio, p. 274-278. I'm interested by the fact these images have captions. I'm not one for gruesome things or heartbreaking things (like watching a jumper on a hotel roof), so I'm wondering about his need to include captions. He says that he feels he's "recording something that's really happening." which I definitely understand. There is action and a story in those photos, so again, why use the captions? Is he just concerned that we interpret the "correct" story?

A new beginning in sight

The news that Barack Obama will be the next President of the United States is momentous. I am exhilarated (and grateful that devastation isn't the only emotion there is post-election poll results, I was starting to worry.) I think The New Yorker cover is stunning and sums up so much so simply. [Update 11.06.08: Brian Stauffer was the artist of this cover.]

I like design because....

I teach creative writing girls to some high school girls on the weekends, and I was helping them with their college essays. And a girl remarked that in an interview they asked her why she liked theater, and she was completely unable to articulate her passion. I thought that was the root of why her essay wasn't effective. So we all took some to write about what we love/like. Here's what I wrote:

I like design because it combines art with emotion for an effective purpose. It makes you feel something through well crafted visuals and can make you have an "ah-ha" moment and usually all subconsciously. Design is thoughtful and enticing, always a mystery of details--why is that there in that way in that color in that font in that medium? Why do I want to look at it and touch it and interact with it? Design is the tangible creation of my curiosities.

I like this concept and feel like I articulated it well. I found a common theme in being able to speak about your passion: define--and not in a dictionary definition sort of way, and say how it relates to you specifically.

I'm curious what your interests are and how you would answer, "Why do you like...."

Spring 2009 Classes

I was checking out what classes are going to be available next spring and I was wondering if any of you knew anything about the following professors or classes:
Editorial Style - Arthur Magida
Typography - Dina Wasmer or Max Boam
Publications Management - Cathy Lips

Any insights would be greatly appreciated or any professors/classes you strongly recommend would be fantastic, thanks.

Show& Tell: Typography

For show & tell this week, I brought in Mark Danielewski's "House of Leaves." There's a lot going on in this story, and the different typefaces help distinguish between the three concurrent narrators.

In addition, the typography begins to get crazy as the events within the house become crazy. Sometimes words will run up and down a page to mimick movement along a staircase, or only a single word will be on a page so you feel the narrator's increasing isolation, or the type will be backwards to show his movement through a place. This treatment is always a thoughtful decision that reflects the story--it's never done as a decorative element, it's done because it adds to the story. In addition, there is a page of braille, there are crossed out lines in red, missing text, text overlap, etc.

It's very fascinating and even though it can get tedious to read a footnote that extends into a story on the following pages, and then turn back several pages to get to the original story that had the footnote; and to turn the book 360 degrees while reading, it's quite the experience that adds to the act of reading. I suggest reading and trying it to see how it effects you.

REDESIGN, Project 3: Call to Action

I'm a strapped for time this week. But I had an epiphany and am now redesigning my phase 4 comps for Project 3. While I like where I'm going with this, I'm wondering if I've "been in the monkey house too long" and can't smell the stink.

So here are the before and afters. Please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions--if you don't like the new ones, please say so, considering the professors won't hesitate to point out everything wrong, I'd rather not walk into class disillusioned that I had a good idea, but then again, maybe you'll like them...? I'd greatly appreciate comments, although understand, again with the time budget, I don't know what changes, if any, I'll be able to get to. But thanks!

Magazine ad:
















Post card: the redesign isn't quite finished, and I forgot to make a jpg of the old version--but it was horizontal and it had a picture of the movie poster and book cover and it said VISION.

Design Ethics: Shepard Fairey

I was meandering on the web, when I found myself in the art section of the Obama store. If you scroll down to the sold out, iconic red, white and blue image of Obama and CHANGE poster at the bottom, you'll see Shepard Fairey was the artist. What made me think twice about him was in his quote he wrote, "I know I have an audience of young art fans," which I think is an interesting statement and I wanted to know more about him.

Well, it turns out he's the designer behind my favorite fashion line (OBEY)! And let me clarify by "my favorite fashion line," I mean, my favorite shirt is an OBEY shirt, and it's the only one in the line own, but I do heart it a lot and as a result OBEY is probably one of the only fashion lines I can name. But to continue on...

I was super excited to find out more about Mr. Fairey's company, past, art skills etc. (a la Wikipedia), but then I came upon this page: Obey Plaigerist Shepard Fairey. Essentially, the article claims that Fairey has pilfered the majority of his works from dead and living artists. He reappropriates art and imagery into a new context, but usually changes very little or none of the art itself, and he mass markets it under the presumption that it is his own work--never giving credit to the original artist or piece. [The side by side comparisons in the article are quite incriminating. Some look like exact replicas.] And, as the article points out, not only does he do this--he profits from it. Essentially, the article claims, he is stealing both art integrity and money from the original artists.

I'm just curious where people stand on this. Is Fairey a hack who has crossed the ethical design line? Has he cut ethical corners like any other business man does? Can he claim it as his own because he has created it in a new context? If it's not copyrighted and in the public domain--either because it's too old or was never registered--is it fair game? Is Fairey taking advantage of the fact that is hard to patrol and penalize art/idea theft? Does the belief, that an artist has a moral obligation to other artists to respect their work, exist in other career fields or is special to the art field because our creations are personal?

I'd like to know what you all think on any of this. Also, if you read my previous post on Foundation for a Better Life, you'll see that a similar thing happened to me--I love something, google it, then find obscure article blasting it. And like in real life, I'm having trouble finding the final Truth on the subjects on the Web. Ahh, elusive Truth, where have you gone?