Theory + Practice = Research / Polina Zioga

Today it was explained to me that second year theory as practice is completely dependant on you and what you want to research. This includes things of interest and relevance to your progress. The research can relate to your projects and interests in design, or anything related to design.

After second year theory as practice was explained, I was shown how to research more professionally compared to last year. There are three key stages to hit, what, why and how. What is the theme and research subject at question and what do you want to create. Why, investigates the context, background and literature review. Why do you want to investigate this subject, how does it relate to you and to look at what other creatives and researchers have done in this field. Finally, there is how. How to approach research with methodology. Questions to ask and answer include, how will you proceed with your critical investigation and what kind of tools, media and methods will you use.

Next, we put our research skills to practice by researching and breaking down an article handed out to us. I had to answer the questions, what is the theme, how it relates to clients needs, how designers approached this and what was the result. The theme of the topic was a campaign to put humanity back into TV and it related to clients by sharing incredible human stories that matter in third world countries, showing the viewers unity amongst people and how to appreciate the little things in life. Not focusing on world problems illustrated on the news. Designers approached this documentary with deliberately set up events to create cinematic scenes and capturing the moments of wonder people express enjoying the little things. For example, the third world children floating across the water with hand crafted glowing lanterns to light up their path in the midnight sky. This little but unordinary experience for them allows viewers to see the elation and expression on their faces, bringing about a warm feeling inside and makes them remember the good in the world. The result of this injected humanity back into the news and gave a voice to those who are often forgotten.

http://red-dot-21.com/design/hear-the-human-story/

Concluding this seminar, it has been very insightful to learn how to research in depth in terms of breaking down the design practice in a campaign. For example, how designers approach these campaigns to advertise it, what they do to relate this to clients and more. I feel more prepared to approach my own research than I did before the seminar today.

Digital Self Breif Introduction / Nick Deakin

In this lecture I was introduced to the first second year brief. I have been given a topic to develop my own interpretations from to create a design outcome. The topic I have to interpret is Cybernetic self. Cybernetics by definition is, the science of communications and automatic control systems in both machines and living things. I feel this is a good brief to begin the year with. We interact with machines constantly in the modern day and they have pretty much become part of us. There will be a lot of directions people could take this brief. After discovering the topic of the brief, we was introduced to possible directions we could take our ideas. Autopoiesis, Sociomaterial and Network self.

https://www.cocc.edu/uploadedimages/departments_/community_learning/j0316779[1].jpg?n=9238

Autopoiesis is a sense of self making, a process of building who you are as a person. Interactions with external sources cause us to learn and create our own laws inside, this contributes to our personality. We depend on social situations to learn from other peoples autopoiesis to create our own and we depend on this to show our personality. The idea linking this with machines can relate to what we learn from machines and how it effects us as a person, for example, are people who play 5 hours of computer games a day thinking differently to non gamers. Autopoiesis is hard to get your head around but I the video link below helped me understand.

https://vimeo.com/41782295

Sociomaterial is having characteristics of both social and material practices. This is representing a shared understanding through technological devices, for example, being at one with the car to make it move, playing games online with friends, social media and more. Basically, its interacting with technology to connect with the world. Sociomaterial is vital in the workplace, the use of technology increases the presence, scope and potential of businesses. Without sociomaterial the world would come to a standstill.

http://www.androidslots.co.uk/images/online-gaming.png

Finally, Network Self. This is basically how we present yourself through networks of social connections and new media environments. People often represent themselves to have a completely different personality on social networks to what they actually are in real life. This brings about the idea that you never know who you are talking to online and it can become quite dangerous. There are many factors to take into account with this theme, self presentation, behavioural norms, patterns and routines, social impact, privacy, activism, political impact and more.

http://beatcreativemarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/The-worst-selfies-via-RealClear.com_.jpg

Seminar 1 / 27th Sep / Tracy Lannon / ideas

Following the Lecture introducing us to the Cybernetic Self brief, I pitched my initial ideas to my course leader Tracy Lannon and seminar group. Talking about my ideas and hearing ideas of others was a great way to gain direction towards the cybernetic self brief. After the seminar, my focus towards the brief had expanded to an array of directions to experiment with, a lot more than I had to begin with.

To begin the session we all participated in a little ice breaker task, as we had not seen each other for a while over the summer holidays. We each had a sticky note to write down what word best describes yourself and what world would others use to best describe you. I wrote 'happy' for my self and 'random' for what my friends would say about me. then we shared what we had wrote with the class and I discovered nearly all of the sticky notes had really diverse descriptions of people, which was interesting to find out.

One idea I have about the Cybernetic Self project is the idea of perception and the inquisition that you never actually know who you are talking to over the web. Funnily enough, after the lecture I was scrolling through my news feed on Facebook and I came across this illusive image of two faces. when you look closely you can see a man in the foreground, however step back or squint and you see a woman. The idea behind this image is to express what you see when you are drunk, hence the pretty girl from far away or squinting and the emergence of a man as you look in greater detail. I think this illusive image would work great to express the dangers of talking to strangers over the internet. The illusive side of the image will show two different people to explain the false perception, is the person really who they are behind their profile picture. I like this idea and I will research this in greater detail.

In addition, I also thought of an idea around gaming vs reality. Are hard core gamers viewing the real world differently to non gamers. I could research around this idea, as to how the brain could be effected. Maybe a gamers brain could be programmed to see the worst in people and create a sense of social difficulties in the real world. Or maybe their brains may have been hardwired to have greater reaction times, due to intense focus and coordination when gaming. I am sure their are many theories to research about this situation and it would be interesting to see where I could take this.

Welcome to Year 2 Lecture / Peter Norris

Already in my first lecture the impact of it was significant. It was just what I needed to set me back on track and back in work mode. The lecture was hugely insightful towards design within industry and the real world. It was a lot different to last year. Last year lectures was more about understanding design, but now its about understanding clients in industry and what they want from us as designers.

Industries wants three main things from designers. Independence, self thinking and analysis ability. Employers often give us designers a reasonably open brief to generate an end product, so it is crucial we can explain our process and discoveries to illustrate how we got to this outcome. Most employers will not get the designs we create and this is where our analysis ability comes in to explain our independent journey to the finished outcome. This will help them to understand.

I learnt about the reasoning behind why businesses pay designers to work with them to promote products. Some industries do not employ designers, for example, machine tools do not need aesthetics or marketing strategies and only need to be useful. However, industries wanting to expand their product to a wider market population need marketing strategy and aesthetic products to appeal and out compete their competitors.

Expanding on this, I learnt what we do as designers to promote products in a business sense. Designers have to know product orientation and market orientation. Product orientation is knowing the product and understanding the target market. Leading to Market orientation, which is having the assets of Product orientation and knowing what the employer wants you to do with them, such as required media channels. The products are manufactured in firms, expanding to markets, national economy and then global economy. This leads us to Micro and Macro Economics, an important situation a designer needs to be aware of when communicating through design. Micro-economics is known as a bottom up approach in economics. It is the study of individuals and business decisions regarding the allocation of resources and prices of goods and services, taking into account taxes and regulations enforced by governments. Whereas, Macro-economics is known as the top down approach. Macro-economics looks at the issues from the perspective of the country as a whole, and the politics affecting the economy. New tax laws or other implications enforced by macro-economy will effect businesses in micro-economy and business may have to change their prices of products and what they pay staff depending on the situation. As, designers we learn to cleverly advertise around these factors to achieve the best marketing strategy for a product.

Next, I learnt about the four 'Ps' in marketing. Price, Product, Promotion and Place. Price is how much designs will cost to manufacture, deliver, package, plus cost to administrate and manage and how to calculate this to create a profit element. Then there is knowing the core product and secondary product. The core product is what in fact the design must do and the secondary product is knowing why the customers buy it to. This will help promote the product by understanding a psychological aspect as to why people drift towards certain products. Knowing this will help promote the product, to know the appropriate media channels to use to engage the audience. To help persuade the market through pricing, offers and packaging in the advertisements. In order to hit all of the previous points designers also need to know about place. Where is the product being made available, a shop or online and where is the product being consumed, at home, on the move, in the office and more. I have learnt developing an understanding of all of these points will help develop a successful marketing strategy.

To conclude the lecture, I was shown how designers are divergent, in relation to convergent engineers. Both significant in the world, but approach tasks in vastly different ways. Design is about solving problems through creativity, whereas engineers solve a problem by converging one answer or outcome. Diverging basically means exploring all different approaches and areas to move towards an outcome and that is how us as designers work. It was pointed out to us, that it is because we designers are divergants industries hire us to work around a problem convergents would struggle to accomplish. This skill is important in marketing as it helps to discover problems and work around them to advertise to the appropriate audience. This was a nice ending to a very insightful lecture and gave me an extra sense of self worth, to leave and know why designers are so significant within industry.

Flip Book Animation / Riyad Mahrez / Autonamous Jouney Summer Project

 
Riyad Mahrez Flip Book Animation from Charlie Hamnett on Vimeo.

This hand drawn flip-book animation is a response to a summer project challenge, this was to keep my hands in the world of design while on my holidays. The brief was to explore the idea of a journey and I thought there was no better journey to use than underdogs Leicester City and Riyad Mahrez's triumphant rise to success as inspiration. I focused primarily on Rihad Mahrez in the flip-book, showing highlights some of his best moments throughout the season, earning him the prestigious 2015/16 Barclays Premier League Player of the Year Award and helped Leicester City win the title.

I arranged the scenes in the animation to guide you through a short highlight reel story. I establish the first scene with the focal point, Riyad Mahrez, along with type to inform the viewers of his name and the success of being crowned player of the year, plus the badge of Leicester City to establish the team he plays for. The frames of the flip book then progress to an action phase where we see Rihad Maherz perform his ability to beat players and score goals. The animation climaxes at midpoint when he scores his goal against Tottenham and continues to the point he scores against Manchester City. Beyond the goal against Man City the flip book animation is resolved with the pace of the frames slowing down to the motion of Mahrez running off celebrating his goal and concludes the video.

Creating the frames for the flip book animation was a really long drawn process, using pencils, a light box and coloured pencils to trace and recreate the frames in an order I intended to portray a story. I simply recorded my work and edited it in Movie Maker, adding music and commentary to reinforce the impact of the flip book animation. In addition, even-though it took a long time to create, I have learnt allot in terms of how to structure to a video and how to structure my time efficiently. Plus, I feel the outcome works really well and it was a fun and engaging challenge to complete this outcome.

ART WORK FRAMES