activity 3A

For this assignment we were asked to choose a location in groups and watch people. We had to observe as much as we could then discuss with the rest of our group what observations we had made.

Myself and a group of 3 other girls decided to go to the casino and observe as none of us had ever been before, and apart of the experiment was to put yourself in a position where you felt uncomfortable and didn't really know what to expect or do. When we arrived at the casino we were all quite nervous and didn't know what to do or where to go but luckily Ruth knew the body guard who showed us the ropes, this immediately put us at ease altering our experience as we felt more comfortable than we would have otherwise.
To enter the casino we had to become members and use our cards to swipe our way through to the games room, where there were lots of slot machines, betting tables and interactive machines which showed the live roulette game allowing you to play along.

There were two very distinct areas within the casino, the bar and the floor filled with the betting tables. The atmosphere at the bar was laid back and everybody sitting there seemed quite relaxed and chilled out having a wee chat and a drink. The bar staff were very loud, laughing, joking and having fun .
On the floor everybody was a lot more serious, nobody seemed to interact with one another and they all seemed very standoffish and tense. The players seemed to be mainly men and i was surprised that there were more students then middle aged people. We also noticed a lot of asian players which we weren't sure was a significant observation or not.
The people playing at the tables all seemed to sit the same way with there bodies facing away from the person sitting next to them, and there elbows on the table, maybe to mark there territory, show there in control and appear strong or maybe just bluffing. They all seemed to have quite harsh postures with there shoulders raised as if they were all tense and unease. There were cameras at all the tables, which was quite invasive which may also have made people feel unease as well as the uncertainty of winning or losing all your money. The staff working at the tables were very quiet, unfriendly without a single smile and didn't seem allowed to interact with the players.
The casino wasn't very busy but had more people in it at the start of the night about 10 ish than it did later on at about midnight. Nobody seemed to associate with one another or even acknowledge their existence as when you walked passed someone in stead of looking at them and smiling everyone seemed to automatically look away as if to avoid giving too much away about themselves.
The lights in the casino were very bright up at the bar and changed colours every now and again which we thought may have been to almost create an illusion and remove you from reality in order to make you bet more.
There also seemed to be a repeated red theme occurring which we thought might have been applied to convey a similar sort of frame of mind. After looking up the meanings red can have i have found out tat it can raise blood pressure which may be one of the reasons it has been used within the casino as when your are stressed you don;t think clearly therefore possibly resulting in you betting more than you can afford.

The atmosphere within the casino was a lot different to what i expected as i expected the staff to be watching you all the time and making you feel very uncomfortable but it wasn't like that at all i found it quite relaxing , it was just after watching the expression and body languages of other people that you started to notice a tense atmosphere. I'm not sure if its because it wasn't that busy and we knew one of the staff which made me feel this but think we need to take a trip back to the casino in the early hours to see how the atmosphere changes and how the people present change.

We also received ponchos when we left which came in very handy as it was pouring with rain out side.

getting there

After a couple of stressful weeks i finally seem to be getting there. Most of my projects are coming to an end and i have successfully completed the pictorial narration project ahead of schedule which is great as it gives me a little more spare time to concentrate on my 3d typography project, which hopefully shouldn't take too long. I know what i'm doing and i've started so its just a case of finishing and fingers crossed it works out how i expected. :)

activity 2E

For the final part we had to go back to our original images and see if we could get our desired story by adding a word to one of the pictures so i decided to add the word "cold" to my image of the fireworks,

Female, 19 , graphic design student, A mum and dad take their boy to see the fireworks, they have a cup of tea to warm up because it's cold outside. Its the first time the boy has seen fireworks so he is surprised.

Female, 19, textiles student, it was cold outside and the little boy was watching the fireworks while drinking tea to warm him up .

Female, 19, textiles student, it was firework night and the wee boy was excited about seeing the fireworks, it was cold outside so he needed a cup of tea to warm him up .

Male, 19, Freelance designer, on the third of june five boys set out to find the brightest firework. they each had five fireworks and so the first boy set one of his fireworks off, and then the second boy, and then the third, and then the fourth. however, the fifth boy decided that he didnt want to set off one of his fireworks at one time, but he wanted to set them alllll off at the same time. so he did! and the results were brilliant. The other boys were so sleepy and forgot that they had 16 fireworks between them, all just laying in a pile. this was very dangerous as the fifth boy had thrown the lit match onto the pile! however, the result was something extraordinary! the pile of fireworks fizzed, and bulged, and then "POP!", a tea bag appeared!
the end. it's a mini adventure

Female, 54, Shop assistant, even on such a cold and dark night you can see from the expression on the little boys face how much he enjoyed the fireworks display with his family when they got home they all had a hot drink of tea to warm themselves up

Despite getting a few inventive stories the majority were very similar to my desired result its hard to say whether adding the fourth image or adding the text worked best as i seem to have gotten similar results for both. This was quite an interesting experiment and shows that images alone can be just as powerful as words.

activity 2D

The fourth image i added was in the hope it would suggest being cold, giving me my desired story which was that at the fireworks it was so cold that the little boy couldn't wait to get home for a cup of tea. I chose this as two people from the first activity had an answer similar to that so i thought it would be the easiest story to get more people to come up with.

I showed my selection of images to a group of people who were different to the first group,

Female, 20, textiles student, on halloween night this boy got taken to the firework display by his sister it was a very cold night so they wrapped up in hats and scarfs and after drank tea to warm them up.

Female, 46, Security Liaison Officer, The little boy wanted to go and watch the fireworks so he had to put on his hat and scarf. When he came home he had a nice hot cup of tea to warm him up.

Male, 31, PHD in engineering, Young lad watches fireworks in amazement and keeps warm by wearing woollies and having a cup of tea.

Female, 19, IPD student , the little ginger boy put on his hat and gloves to go and watch the fireworks with his mum and dad and they got a cup of tea when they were there to warm them up.

Female, 19, social work student ,ron weasley was craving a cup of tea and harry potter tried to make it come out of his wand bang there were fireworks and out came a scarf.

by adding the fourth image i got roughly the story i wanted from everyone minus one subject who was very inventive with the story they made from the images.

activity 2B & C

For this assignment we were asked to randomly select three images which would then be given to subjects who then had to create a story using the pictures. We weren't allowed to tell our subjects anything about the pictures other than they had to use them to create a story and could use the images in any order. My images were.
I gave my three images to a selection of people and got a few different stories,

Female, 48, Housewife, I took my brother to see the fireworks and it was so cold that i couldn't wait to get home for a cup of tea.

Male, 16, high school student, A boy tries to light a firework and blows of his arm.

Male, 45, consultant mechanical engineer, The mum is making a cup of tea while the boy is playing with fireworks and one goes off and gives him a fright.

Female, 19, graphic design student, a wee boy is screaming because he is scared of the fireworks and doesn't like them so his mum brought him a cup of tea to cheer him up.

Female, 19, geography student, the little child thought that the tea bag was so interesting that he decided to throw a party with all his friends to celebrate this wonderful invention. at midnight, they all gazed up into the sky as fireworks flew above their heads...to form in a teabag shape .

Female, 20 HND art student, The ginger boy went to the firework display but was so cold he had to go home and have a nice cup of tetley.

no two stories are exactly the same although there a few similar ones, now to add a fourth image to see if i can manipulate the desired story out of people.

Activity 2A, Barthes

We were asked to read Roland Barthes famous essay The Rhetoric of the image, it was quite hard going as it has been written in academic French and then translated into English so some of the sentences didn't make sense, but despite this i found it easier to understand than The Culture of design.

I gathered the main points that Barthes was trying to make were that an image without text should be strong enough to give off a particular message, but by standing alone it creates questions as an image can be ambiguous and depending on the individual a different message may be picked up than desired. He says that all images are polysemous and they contain many signifieds which viewers either chooses to ignore or see, meaning that an image alone may not always be effective.

By adding text to an image you can automatically draw someone to the desired point as you eliminate any other meanings the image produced when it stood alone and direct them exactly to the point. This is useful for advertising as they need to create an advert where the point can be picked up straight away as generally when looking at an advert you don't have more than a couple of minutes to take in what is being seen, so there is no time for confusion. This is why adverts generally include a linguistic message such as a caption to manipulate the viewer in to seeing exactly what they want them to.

In the advert of the pasta Barthes says there are several messages being produced, the first being the linguistic message which is created by the word "Panzani" this makes the viewer aware of the company name as well as hinting at Italianicity. The image used also hints at the Italianicity due to the colour scheme used, as well as suggesting several other things such as he freshness of the products and the range of products they produced, which is emphasized by the products overflowing from the bag. In this case no text would be required to pick up on these messages as the image alone allowed for this conclusion to be created.

Comics are created with strong images so that a reader can quickly scan the images and understand the story being told with out much thought, text is included but it becomes part of the image telling the story rather than manipulating your thoughts unlike advertising.

So is text always needed?, does it just repeat or back up what is already there or does it add something else to the image? I suppose it all depends on the image, i f a strong enough image is created then it can stand alone while giving of the same or even more powerful message than one accompanied by a linguistic message.

After reading this essay we were asked to discuss this with our groups, although i have not had a change to discuss this with my group yet i have discussed it with other class members and we seem to have drawn similar conclusion.

It's all too much!

As if we didn't already have enough work to do we have been told that we have to make a 3d type installation and we only have 2 weeks to do it. Two weeks seems like a fair bit of time to complete a project but not when you have 3 other class projects to concentrate on, all to be completed for the same week as well as design studies work. It's all just too much, along with uni work a lot of us have part time jobs so that we can make the money which allows us to be able to get by while were at uni and it feels like theres just no time to breathe. I thought uni was meant to be fun, not right now its not!

I feel this is a good representation of how i'm feeling at the moment...

My thoughts on The consumption of design (but have probably missed the point entirely)

We were asked to read chapter four of The Culture of Design by Guy Julier and then express our thoughts on the subject. I found the reading of this chapter very intense and not particularly enjoyable, i struggled to follow what was being said but after rereading i was able to draw some conclusions.

We appear to live in a world were consumption is inescapable it surrounds us. Nothing these days is free, you can't have a good time without consuming something somewhere along the line. Even a night in consists of possibly dvds and a few drinks all of which have to be consumed, just sitting browsing the internet or watching tv also costs as you've had to pay for the license and the internet connection.

As graphic designers our role in the consumer line would be to advertise and encourage consumerism by visually communicating "amazing" products that everybody "needs" and "must" have, so i suppose graphic designers could be classed as the reason people are so addicted to consume, as they are being manipulated into thinking they have to. Despite this graphic design can't be held solely responsible as consumption doesn't just involve one aspect, as it "involves the interconnection of a range of actions through a chain of sites and times." Thus meaning there are lots of things which contribute to why and what makes us consume.
Consumption also seems to be contradictory as it can be two things at the same time "both active and passive, meaningful and meaningless" meaning it has the power to shape and change into what it needs to be at that specific time to make it more effective.

We haven't always been so obsessed with consumerism so it makes you wonder what happened which altered this world in to being so consumer driven, i suppose its the fact that people are more privileged these days than they use to be, so they have the opportunity to participate in having the new trends to appear "cool" but why? because if nobody consumed it in the first place then nobody would be any different and in doing so everybody would be "cool".

Assignment 1A-1D

For the first assignment we were asked to exchange photos of us growing up or photos from our home with another student who we didn't know and analyse the photos trying to figure out as much as we could about that person. It wasn't until i had already swapped my photos that i realised you were meant to swap with someone who had taken the same selection of photo as you, but by this stage it was too late as everyone had already swapped and i thought it would be better to do it this way than not at all.
I swapped with Sara Greenwood who studies textiles i didn't know her that well so was intrigued to know how much i could find out about her from just a few photos. As intriguing as it was i found this assignment a little weird at first as i felt like i was invading there privacy despite having permission from them to do so. I was also quite interested to find out how accurate Sara would be on her analysis of me.

While studying the photos i noticed that some were quite similar and gave off identical feels. From the photos the main points i made where that Sarah is quite friend and family orientated as there are pictures of her on holiday with her family and pictures of her at parties and sleepovers when younger and nights out. From the holidays photos i could guess that she was the eldest of two other siblings and the only girl, i also guessed that she was quite adventurous as a child as she is climbing on a fountain. She also appears to be quite caring and loving towards her siblings as she is holding and preventing one of her brothers from falling off the thing there sitting on.
The picture of her with a friends around the table suggests she was and probably still is quite girly as she is wearing a dress and has a pink princess birthday cake, her smile also suggests she was quite cheeky and possibly quite enjoyed getting her photo taken.
The picture with her friends and all the teddies on the floor with a duvet suggests she enjoyed having girly sleepovers with her friends and suggest her parents are quite laid back as they didn't mind her taken over the living room with all her friends. The teddy she is holding was probably her favourite at that time and the large TV and quite fancy fireplace suggests she is quite well off.
The picture of her dad when younger suggests she is a daddy's girl and she appears to look quite a lot like him.
The final and most recent photo of Sara and her friends at a bar suggests she like to go out, have a few drinks and have a good time with her friends, it also suggests she is still quite girly as she appears to be wearing a dress or possibly a fancy top.

After analysing the photos we were to meet up with our partners and discuss our findings. I was surprised to find that we were both very accurate in our results and everything we had guessed was pretty much spot on. I was amazed at how much you could tell about a person from just a few photos and how much your possessions and decor of a house gives away about you. Neither of us discovered anything about the other person that we didn't already know.

I found the whole process quite fascinating and definitely enjoyed taking part in it although i preferred being analysed than analysing someone else as i didn't really feel like it was my place.

Ethical issues may have arose if permission hadn't been given to publish the photos.