Methodology & Case Studies / Polina Zioga

Today we discussed the case studies we are going to explore for our essay. As a group we each expressed our research question and we all contributed input to help guide everyone's essays in the right direction, in terms of researching case studies.

I told the group my essay is based around, 'how graphic design has helped the development and distribution of cyber crime'. I expressed that I have already gathered statistics and the different methods of cyber crime, to initiate the discussion. Constructively, I was told to look more into how and what cyber crimes are committed, and how graphic design was used to sell the crimes to fool people into buying into it.

I have researched about the money flipping scandal the was shared across Facebook and Instagram, and we talked about this. Graphic design was used within this cyber crime, selling false pictures, videos and comments, designed to formalise a believable trick that made money you send in into more money. But, the people who bought into this never got their money back. I was informed that I need to gather more case studies similar to this one and break apart the use of graphic elements that are used to create the illusion of a real account.

Polina Zioga / Methodology Of Approach / Essay Prep

In this seminar, we was discussing the structure of our essay and how to approach it. We looked at a good quality essay and evaluated how this essay was writ to confer great clarity and focus.

First of all, the topic is clearly outlined in the introduction. The author is exploring the connection of inverse presence and mediated experiences. This is believing a mediated experience that is not in fact mediated, for example, seeing something and do not quite believe it. Virtual presence, is a huge factor in this and effects the way our minds work, connecting real life events to what would be seen in a movie. The author states many times, people who experienced surreal events often reflect virtual presence, quoting 'it was like watching a movie'. The author explains what they intend to do to investigate this concept. They will investigate many news reports, positive, negative and the unusual to determine a conclusion to the essay. This also underlines the structure of the essay, we now know the order of the essay and what he is going to write about.

In addition, we picked out key words to use and define the essay. Inverse presence / presence / Illusion / Mediation / Hyper reality. These can be used to guide and discover research, a useful notion for me to apply to my essay to help write and guide research.

This essay is an original idea and no one knows what inverse presence is until the author defines the term. This is a new phrase the author has made up to help confer the idea behind his essay. It refers to believing something is or is not real when witnessing a real world event before your eyes, and your mind connects it to surreal imprints virtual reality has had on your brain.

All in all, I have learnt a lot from this seminar. I feel more confident in how I should structure my essay. Defining my topic in the introduction and after, provide the reader with background information after the introduction to create an understanding of how the essay is going to be structured. This essay was a good example to get an understanding of structure writing style.

Polina Zioga / The Abstract / Seminar #9

Today was learning about how to write an abstract for our essays. We was given an example of an abstract and we dissected it to pull out important structural information that I need to include in my own essay abstract. In the abstract we was set a task to highlight the main terms and concepts, background information, research question and how the author attempts to answer the question.

What are the main terms and concepts?
The main terms and concepts are defined in the essay keywords, visual communication, advertising, design basics, visual hierarchy and mind motion. Plus, the author also notes in the first sentence of the abstract, effective communication and visual recognition. These are all of the terms and concepts.

What background information is provided?
After the first sentence where the author outlined their essay terms and concepts, they follow with a background information to help paint a picture of the essay content.
'Designers of advertisements have always been trying to organise the visual hierarchy throughout their advertising designs to aid the eye to recognise information in the desired order, to achieve the ultimate goals of clear perception and effectively delivering the advertising messages.'

What do you think is the research question?
The author cleverly states their research question in amongst a body of text. 'Many assumptions and questions usually rise on how to create effective hierarchy throughout advertising campaigns and lead the eye and mind of the viewer in the most favourable way.' Basically, within this body of text he states the research question and explains this is what they are going to investigate and explore.

How do you think the author attempts to answer the question?
The author states their essay intentions at the end of the abstract. 'It explores the theory behind it, and how the very principles can be used to put these concepts into practice. The paper demonstrates some advertising samples applying visual hierarchy and mind motion in a representation of applying the basics and discussing the results.'

To conclude this seminar, I feel more confident in approaching a essay abstract now, after dissecting a good example to learn what I need to include. Over the Christmas break, I will begin to work on my essay and use these seminar session blog posts to help me in the process.

Key Words and Literature / Polina Zioga

Today we investigated how to apply keywords and literature review within our essay. First of all Polina outlined keyword strategies to help with research and to correctly define our essay topic. She explained, to help pick key words we need to pull out the words that indicate the main concepts of our topic and to brainstorm alternative keywords that a relatable author might have used. Also, to consider database keywords that relate to my topic that can be used to find books in the library database, this will help for research purposes.

After, we looked at the structure of a literature review. To start with, I must outline our topic. Then I need to provide definitions and basic historical framework to create a platform for my next step, presenting main ideas, writings and practices. Leading to the last stage, presenting my research question, what is it I want to focus on and find out.

What the literature review does. The literature review will show my knowledge of the origins, definitions and vocabulary of my chosen topic. It will explain my knowledge and understanding of the main ideas, writings and practices on my topic, show a variety of approaches and opinions in my topic. It creates an understanding and significance of the ideas, writings and practices I express in my essay. Plus, it enables the ability to identify areas of interest, but also areas that might be neglected. All of this will show how your research question will fit in and why you want to follow the particular research.

How to find main works for literature review research. Going to the library and using my keywords to find sources of research in the library database is one way. It will help to find any form of text, work or item that has had an important effect or development in the field of my chosen topic. There are different types of literature that I can obtain from the library, books, articles, catalogues, artefacts,
websites etc. All of these can contribute effectively towards my essay. However, I need to bare in mind that I need to gather research from three of the different categories, Primary literature, secondary literature and tertiary literature. Primary literature is the origional insights or creative expression, secondary literature is the analysis and popularisation of the primary literature and tertiary literature is, dictionarys, encyclopedias or handbooks.


In response to this seminar, I have created initial keywords to define my essay topic.

Visual communication / Cyber-crime / Social media / Mind motion / effective communication

Polina Zioga / Essay Introduction / 18th Nov

In this seminar I was introduced to the second year essay and visual appendix. I am required to write a 2500 word essay that addresses a set of histories, theories or technologies which informs my own practice and my course specific research question.

I learnt how I should structure my essay. First of all, include my title to clearly outline and focus the essay topic. Then below, place 5 key words that communicate and depict what the essay is about in a very short manner. Leading to the 150 word abstract that clearly summarises the essays arguments and position. Moving on to the body of the essay, we start with an introduction. The introduction needs to outline the main arguments and materials presented and establishes the structure of the essay. The essay body should communicate a logical and well supported argument, supported by a litterateur review to reinforce the message intended. To end the essay argument, create a conclusion which reaffirms the main argument and identifies further questions, plus plans for related future work.

In addition, it was also explained to me what is expected for the visual appendix. I need to create an A2 poster that communicates the argument of my essay. The poster needs to include my name and course, the title of my essay and my 150 word visual appendix to address the audience about my research poster. This will be part of my research focused exhibition at the end of term two. It is concerned with representing a visual summary of my essay at a glance.

At the end of term two, I will need a 750 word start to the essay to show and submit. I will get feedback upon this to see if I am hitting the correct criteria and to push me in the right direction to get a better grade. This process is a good way of learning and helps prepare me for future essays and generates a greater understanding of what is expected as research.

Pete Norris Business Lecture 5 / Economics

Today we began by discussing, every profession has its own tax exempt elements. Whatever equipment or facility you may be using has a cost and are all costs to do the job. When we start earning money, there are ways you can start to reduce your cost on what you are spending for the equipment and facilities. This is important to get an understanding of your costs, especially as a freelancer. Make sure that you get your costs right.

Finance is all about the control and flow of money. Its knowing where it goes, where it goes to, how its noted and more. Money has several definitions. First of all, it is the cash you have, it is short tern and is very fluid. Then there is the cash you have + the cash that you can get, the availability of money to an individual, e.g savings. Next there is the cash you have, the gash you can get + loan credit, this is less fluid and you have to pay back the money that you have borrowed. Finally there is loan credit. This is short term and long term, for example a mortgage or my student loan, with 25 -35 years of debt and small amounts of money flowing out to recover that debt. It was interesting to learn, if you are owning a firm and your going to run it, short term loan credit is what your after. Banks offer loan credit to agencies on a short term basis, about a years worth. So if an agency is running a project, people need to know when am I going to get paid and how quickly can they expect payment. It is usually around 30-60 days for the short term loan to take effect and enables the agency to pay their workers.

Next we learnt some basics about finance, cost and price. Cost is what you have to give to get something you want, it is not necessarily financial. It is normally described as a monetary aspect but there are always more difficult things you have to cost. This could be simply being polite to a client, even if you may not like them. Next there is price, what an item is actually sold for. Fashion items for example, cost little to make, but are sold for a high price. So if this client expects a high price, charge them. If the client says this job is going to cost £1000, charge around £1000 if that is what the client is expecting, when it's only going to cost them £100 to make the product. If you only charge £150, with £50 profit. The client may think, there is something wrong here, Im not going to get what I expect and wont buy from you. So it is important as a designer to be aware of what the market expects. As long as you can deliver the quality there is no problem and then charge appropriately.

After we covered more key pointers in finance. Profits are the difference between cost and price. Price above cost leads to better income. However, loss is is the negative difference between cost and price, with prices sitting lower than costs. Then we looked at Income, Income is money coming in, this can be cash or credit. You need to understand what your income is, because based on your income helps decide whether a bank will give you a loan or not. on the other hand, there is expenditure. This is the spending of money and the money that is going to leave. Next we looked at debt. Debt is the money that is owed to you or the money that you owe. This is connected to expenditure in a way. You have to know what money is leaving as you also have to pay the workers in the business, if you accumulate debt you cant pay these workers and they stop working and the whole plot falls apart. Finally there is credit. Credit is how much money beyond that which you have, you may use, this is often a positive element in business. I have learnt a lot from this business lecture yet again and I have learnt how important it is to plan your flow of money in the world of industry.

Pete Norris Business Lecture 4 /

First of all, we looked at buyer behaviour. It is key to us to know how buyers behave, this will give us an insight on how to create designs that hit all the correct points for the buyer. To begin the buyer behaviour design process, you have to initially recognise the need. That need triggers research and pre-purchase evaluation, accessing your memory to ask questions what worked last time and what didn't. For example, is this new car going to last me 10 years or is it going to be like the othe models you may have knowledge about, or how much better is the mac better than the PC I am using. The more complicated the product the longer the evaluation. After this phase, we move onward to the purchase and consumption phase. The consumption phase is using the product you have purchased and during this process you are evaluating how good or bad the product is. This is the post purchase evaluation lodged into your memory. Would you buy the product again, would you recommend it to a friend, was anything about the product memorable.

Next we investigated the buyer behaviour process and how it is affected by the environment. Factors include, environment, culture, social, class, family, work and ethics to name a few. what you see in advertising and how it impacts your family and friends will also have an impact upon you. Equally, memory has an impact upon the buyer behaviour process. This is impacted buy your exposure to a range of different adverts to get you to comprehend what ever is being advertised. Once you have managed to get a viewer past comprehension they will retain the information whether they accept the advert or not. If a design gets the viewer to retain the information, the design is doing its job whether they accept it or not.

With this in mind we was shown Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs in a way to clarify the information we have just learnt. I was told to imagine that I was put on an island and ask myself what are the first things you will need to survive. Obviously we begin with physiological needs, such as food and water. Then we create a sense of safety by building a shelter and a form of defence. After this, you start to develop relationships, form a home and create families, developing a form of belonging. Then we start to develop esteem and status within the community, to generate a aura of power, respect and worth. Finally ending with self actualisation. Maslow states that very few people reach this level, this is priministerial level where you reach such a huge degree it begins to effect your personal values. This lead us to the 80/20 rule, which is important to know as a designer. Only 20% of people in the world want to make decisions and the other 80% are happy with having a nice income, a family, a home and content with what they have. Interestingly 20% of the people earn 80% of the income and 80% own 20% of the wealth. This is known as the Pareto principle and is an standardised statistic.

Next we discussed buyer behaviour in terms of which product they will buy. First, the buyer will access their memory and reflect on whether the product was good, bad or indifferent and then many other different experiences and outside factors influence their behaviour when it comes to buying a product. Me as a designer needs to research and have knowledge about this when advertising products to audiences with different buyer behaviours.

Finally we looked at how design and business connect. If you are designing for business there has to be a two flow way and that the business are aware of what you can do for them. When you talk to a business in this way it is important to understand that there is market issues. As a designer in industry it is important to know what is going on in the world and knowing what is happening in their markets and the direction it is going. Do this by researching their market segment issues, the real market issues and what their customers actually want. This will enable you to come up with a design that fits the business far better and brand their product to meet the consumer demand. Expanding upon this, we also have to consider the macro environment issues and the ethical and social issues, understanding the public relations. All of the public relations stuff is, damage limitation for a business. Damage limitation will always occur, big or small, it is our job to understand and know ways to reduce the impact of the damage for the business. This is investing in the local community to make sure when something goes wrong, the business has a bank of stuff they can cash in at the time and not create a bad name for the business. I have learnt a lot from this and I now understand a lot of different factors will allow you to target your design for a business in the best way possible.

Polina Zioga / Formative Assessment Feedback / 11th Nov

Today I received Feedback on my formative, contextual presentation. My strong points was layout and the content I put on the slides. My content was short and concise and created a sense of mystery for the audience, in which I explained to clarify. This helps to engage the audience and prevent them loosing track of the presentation by having to read a lot of information from the slides.

What I could improve upon is, I began to stray away from the relation to graphic design and I need  to go back a few steps and engage with this message a lot more. The question that was brought up was 'and how has graphic design impacted cyber crime' and I need to investigate this in greater detail to bring my presentations message back on track.

Polina also expressed, factors that our group as a whole was strong and weak about. She liked the content and interesting initial platforms of work to establish a research question, liked the presentation design and liked the time management of the presentations in general. In addition, Polina also noted out general points of improvement for the group as a whole. One was to make sure the presentation design is more visually engaging, do this by using the whole slide as a template, place text and images close to the edges and do not include too much text. Some times the topic subject can be too broad and needs narrowing down. Make sure the title summarises your topic and not a representation of the research question, the research question needs to be as focused as possible to guide research in a channelled direction. I  will take all of the feedback provided and use it to improve my work to get the best result I can do.

Financial Cyber Crime / Cybernetic Self

Financial Cyber Crime is an offence committed over the internet, having a major impact on international banking and the financial sectors. Financial Cyber crimes affect individuals, companies, organisations and astonishingly even countries. All of this creates a negative impact upon the entire economic and social systems, because of the considerable loss of money.

Organised Criminal networks are drawn to the crime, due to the huge profits that can be made. The most worrying aspect about all of this is that, there are a number of factors that make it difficult and sometimes even impossible to trace the criminal or the illegal assets. This can be because of differences between countries and their national jurisdictions, how their international conventions are implemented and their general level of expertise in the investigative process and propositional authorities to catch the cyber criminals.

This is a factor in the growth of this crime. Alongside the ease of creating methods to steal valuable data and financially harm victims, the fact there are ways to hide and get away with the crime internationally, criminals seem to be seizing this opportunity. This is why it is a scary place sometimes online and people need to be aware of the dangers out there. Amazingly, 90% of all emails sent in the world are fraudulent. Baring in mind 294 billion emails are sent each day, that is a lot of scam emails. I will create a poster for my project to identify some crimes that are out there online and I will illustrate what you need to look out for and how to avoid the cyber crimes.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-35201188

https://www.interpol.int/Crime-areas/Financial-crime/Financial-crime

Social Engineering / Cyber Crime Research

Social engineering is a form of psychological manipulation that is becoming increasingly sophisticated. Criminals have developed a unique sense and strategy to fool people, through social learning. Technology is continuously expanding and more and more social connections are creating new platforms for cyber crime to take place. Cyber criminals learn from what the see online and discover methods to manipulate victims through confidence tricks to influence their behaviour.

International police agency Interpol, expresses social engineering as one of the worlds most emerging fraud trends. It is explained why, because of its ease of creation and distribution. You don't need to be a skilled hacker, just someone willing to communicate with people and write emails. Plus, the growth of the internet has played right into the hands of the criminals and it is now very easy to gather information about a target. A key part of social engineering is having information on your victim and criminals can easily get this from buying hacked company data and studying their victim's social profile.

Socialengineering.org have compiled research fro a survey to figure out statistics leading towards cyber crime. They found out,

• 90% of the people we ask will provide not just the spelling of their names but their email addresses without confirming our identity
• 67% of the people we ask will give out social security numbers, birth dates or employee numbers
• We have a 100% success ratio in physical breaches

The data collected is truly shocking, but it is a human error we all can make when not 100% focused. Also, they have compiled more research data into an info-graph that clearly depicts the methods and strategies cyber-criminals use to manipulate their victims, who are the main targets and financial statistics. As well as, security and defensive precautions to help you avoid becoming a victim.

90% of emails are scams, this is astonishing. I have discovered that most common cyber crime attacks mimic banking institutions. This is because, people trust banks and believe they are sincere, professional and dependable. Making it a great platform for criminals to illude victims. They often create a false situation and say, 'you account has been compromised' and informing you to transfer your money into some other accounts they have set up in the victims name for safe keeping. They would reinforce the situation with measurements with emails, letters, phone calls and act very professional in general to create a believable atmosphere.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-35201188

http://www.social-engineer.org/social-engineering/social-engineering-infographic/

Design Content & Delivery / Polina Zioga / Seminar / 21st Oct

Following on from last week, I prepared and presented my draft presentation to receive feedback for improvement. We presented our draft presentation in pairs and talked about it with lecturers Tracy Lannon and Polina Zioga. I discovered that I need to reason my research findings in greater detail, to explain 'who is this', 'why is this', etc.

After, Polina reinforced to us the structure of the presentation. Start with your research title, blog URL, name and course on the first slide. Followed by a background and literature review around 5-7 slides of your research title. Finally, to end the formative presentation with a main research question, that will set us up for research leading to the summative presentation assessment.

To conclude the seminar, presenting my draft presentation has provided me with an insight of what my lecturers expect of me when it comes to the formative assessment. I have come out of the seminar much more aware of what I need to research and how I have to display my research findings. Before we left Ploina once again outlined the dos and don'ts we need to remember for when we present.

Pete Norris / Lecture 3 / Market Data and Market Research

Moving forward from last week, Pete taught us about market data and market research in industry. Data and research is the logical next step from last week after learning, after analysis, understanding the brief and what the client wants. Now its time to discover what more we can get to help us design for what we need and research is the way to push this forward.

Initially, we looked at marked research. There are two types of market research, Primary data and secondary data. Secondary research is known as, desk research. You use the internet or books and fire away to find data and information, everything is at hand and there is no need to create any hassle to go out and find it. On the other hand, there is primary data. Within primary data there are two stems, quantitative and qualitative. Primary data is when you go out to find your own body of research.

Quantitative research entails asking a lot of questions and usually undertaken with the classic clipboard and pen. There are three types of quantitative data, geographic, pshycographic and socio-economic. Geographic data discovers how you live and where you live. Figuring out whether the area you live in has an influence on you and the type of things you will buy. Phycographic looks at how you think and what interests and excites you. What you think and what interests you may have may determine what you buy and this is what phycographic research finds out. Then there is socio-economic data. This looks at your class and financial ability, discovering whether this will influence what you buy. Quantitative research is good because it helps to pinpoint a market, lots of answered questions makes lots of clarity and detail. However, this method can be complex and difficult to due, especially if you have time restraints. Plus, it is carried out at a price, usually £150.00+ and an ethics form is needed to ask the questions in public.

Qualitative data is much more regarded as quality data. This is the interview and focus group, talking with people who are in the know and talking about a market or issue that you need to understand. It is much cheaper than quantitative research, all you need to do is arrange a meeting and go and talk to them. So, it is easily done and offers a much better three dimensional view of the situation. The cons are there are no statistical validation, it is an opinions affair and the success of this research depends on your ability to control the discussion.

After you have obtained the required research you need to use it, introducing market segmentation. Market segmentation works out exactly the people who you are talking to, this is critical. Once you understand those certain people who you target to can begin to picture them and know learn to understand how to communicate to them. You can break your market down by all sorts of things, age, sex, social class, geography, interests and more. Doing this will help to cleverly focus design to where your market will see them. For example, you would not situate a design for an old person far away from them at the back of the room, you would situate the design somewhere where they are sitting so they can easily interact and see.

A way to explain Market segmentation, we looked at the market for books. Books are broken down into two areas, non fiction and fiction. Fiction breaks down into all sorts of areas, children's, comic, horror, romance, thriller and more. Then each of these are expanded to their own brackets. For example, children's books will be broken down into age, 1-3 years, 3-7 years and 7-12 years. All of this helps to create a focus towards an audience and target what you design for them.

To make sure you have segmented your audience successfully, you have to make you it is measurable and something you can identify. Also, to make sure you can get access to it and use it as a means of communication to access these particular people. Then you need to make sure that sour market is substantial, in terms of what you are going to be paying for adverts. Is the audience great enough to generate an income. Because, I learnt if you wanted to insert and advert into the market, you have to pay an awful lot of money. Mens Health for example, if you wanted to inert a mens health advert into a cover of a magazine, your looking at around £15,000 per insertion. There is a lot of money involved and you shouldn't be scared of it, if you carry out everything we have learnt advertising will work. Finally, are your designs meaningful. Basically, is it relevant to the company and audience, if its not it wont work effectively.

Next, I was introduced to data sources. some are private and confidential that me as an academic can use to research, discover and learn for myself within the world of design at the moment. The data that is private and confidential, is only retrieved at a price so it is very important I do no share the information I may find out from these sources. The data sources are seen above.

To end the lecture we was shown a reel of cleaver adds that amazed the world and successfully advertised their products in unique ways. We was shown this as to make sure our minds think wider than from just traditional paper. Also, to be encouraged to not stick to the limits necessarily when given a brief, to push the boundaries and be unorthodox. With social media these days, anything out of the ordinary goes viral and the whole world sees the advertisement. Hitting a much wider audience that you could have imagined. Which is a way of thinking that will continue to evolve and grow as technology and social media continues to rise. I have learnt a lot in this lecture and can take a lot away from it. I now feel more confident and aware in terms of research in industry and I have a more open mind to ideology in terms of answering briefs than I did before the lecture.

The Research Question / Polina Zioga / 14th October

Understanding how to develop a research question, was the topic of today. A good research question talks about your research subject and reveals how you will investigate your research subject. It will provide direction and become a guide to what you research, acting as the spinal cord of a body of research. Helping to narrow down research, instead of aimlessly researching anything and everything. Plus, it helps you stay on track and not stray away from the subject at hand, which can happen when you write a lot without a solidified focus from the beginning.

It was explained to us how you create a research question. First you state your subject and interests and create a title. Then research around the area and highlight all of the relevant information that intrigues you the most ticking all the boxes that you want to investigate. From this you should be able to build a research question. Below is an example to summarise, investigating Scandinavian graphic design.

After, I put what I had learnt to practice to create my own research question. My area of interest for my project is to raise awareness of criminality online through interactivity with anonymous profiles. In pairs, we both pulled out questions from each others title and gave feedback of what and how to research to create a research question.

Questions we pulled out from my title include
'investigate stories that have happened'
'tricks and illusions the criminals set in place that make you mistake and interact'
'types of crime online'
'who are targeted / different ages? / old people scans / credit card scams / young?'
'Technologies influence, before and now'

From this discussion about research angles and feedback, I have an idea of where I could take my research and create a research question. I could create a research question to focus on certain topics within my broad title. For example, I could create a research question focusing on specific targets and specific crimes, credit card fraud or determining whether old or young people are more vulnerable to criminality online through anonymous profiles.

Pete Norris / Lecture 2

Before the lecture started we had a little discussion about placements. He informed us of useful websites to consider using to help in the searching process and encouraged us to wrote letters instead of email. Letters are much harder to erase and can be passed through a chain of people before it is thrown away, where as an email can simply be deleted. This tip will hopefully be very useful.

Next we began the lecture, discussing design in industry. In industry designing is influenced by all sorts of areas not just you. Finance, marketing, you, production and technical R&D all contribute to the design on the inside and market research is the only outside factor. Market research however contributes to decisions made on the inside of the company. To gather ideas and concepts, finance will have to contribute money to the cause of marketing, in order to generate a design concept. Then we develop the design which also costs, calling upon finance to fund the production side of the company. Sometimes these coordinators on the inside conflict and me as a designer needs to be prepared for a reapplication to the design process to overcome the problem and find a solution. The design then gets finished and ready to send to the market.

Obviously there will be pressures in the design work place and there will be some error you will make every now and then. There are two types of error, human error and design error. We must make sure it is never a design error, this can result in huge costs for the company and results in loosing your job. For example, recently Samsung had a design error which resulted in huge costs for them. The Samsung mobile phones overheated and set on fire, causing severe injury to many people and damage to the environment.

Next, it was interesting to hear how Peter as a designer dealt with clients and what he learnt from his 20 years experience in the design world. I learnt, every time you speak to a client you should make note of their requirements for a source of proof. This makes it harder for them to reject the idea with their input also residing within the design. It is important to let the client think he is the boss, as some of them is then in the design and makes it difficult for them to say I don't like it. Also, never just answer with just 'yes'. Ask questions. 'Why do you want this style', 'why this', 'why that', 'why then', etc. You need to ask questions , because you must understand that the client is probably not giving you all the information you need to create the most appropriate design, so you must work it out of them. This was very insightful to learn and will stick with me.

Now I moved on to product positioning. It is basically assessing situations as designers and where you should position the product to hit the best market. There is an individuality and common aspect to this idea. For example, why do we wear the clothes we wear, why do 25 year olds want to be 21 year olds, why do 30 year olds want to be 25 year olds and so on. Product positioning is measured on a scale of price and quality. Things genuinely high price and high quality and low price, low quality. You don't have a low price high quality item. If you did, it would become in demand and drive the price up to re-position it as high priced. Its important to understand that there is a market anywhere within the dotted area in the graph. There is a market for low, low, as well as the richer population who may strive to edge into the high, high bracket. As a designer you should ask, where does the brand want to be in ten years time. If the brand gets better in quality and raise the price, there will be a whole new breed of competition. Will the brand do well competing with this competition, or is it best competing with the lower priced competition. Because, you still make great profits in the lower bracket of the product positioning scale. Me as a designer should ask these questions to a client to discover the brand direction and position.

I was then introduced to the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) matrix graph that illustrates the brands positional journey in the market. It basically illustrates how a new design enters the market, in high demand and high in value, for example a new iPhone has just come out. This will flow along a certain time scale becoming less and less in demand and reduce in value. At this point it reaches the cash cows level and needs revamping to get the product back into the market. This is where the designers will produce a new advertising to re-promote the product. Sometimes the product can just fall straight down the 'BCG' matrix. So it is important that you understand the client does not know everything and you use your own knowledge of how to position and sustain the brand in the market.

After, I was shown the PEST analysis, this is analysing whether the product is political, economic, social and economical. But, it is also how you analyse the product in 5 years time or 10 years time, as to whether or not it will still tick these boxes. For example, will you product continue to compete with the laptop in ten years time or will it take over from the laptop. Its is basically thinking outside the box, tactically how you can position a product over a duration of time. Then I learnt about SWOT analysis. This is understanding that strengths and weaknesses are internal and opportunities and threats are external. Most of the time you can not undertake things in the internal side, only the external. As a designer you do not know it there is a very harsh political or financial environment within the company, you only work with the company.

Product Life cycle. A product life cycle all start off with an idea, then develop making an initial loss draining money to advertise and promote the product, but then grow at it hits the market, then eventually matures to then decline. Product life cycles can be extended through advertising and promotions, these are the red lines in the graph. This is done by understanding all of the techniques learnt earlier in the presentation.

Finally, there is the adoption curve. It illustrates the market who you are talking to and creates a structure to aim your market towards. It begins with the innovators, moving to early adopters, then to the early and late majority, falling to the laggards. Laggards are people who dont want anything to do with the product, they are happy with what they know and stick to that product. We are all laggards in our own way. For example, Dyson owns 80% of the market and can not appeal to the other 20% because they do not want buy into this product. The style of your designs will therefore have to be different to appeal to these different audiences to engage them with the product. To finish, I learnt about obsolescence. this is basically the life span of a product in terms of function. Obsolescence of a product is both intentional and unintentional. For example, when your laptop dies in 5 years time, do you pay £500 to get it fixed of pay for a new and better laptop. Companies can make this strategical and can plan when to bring out their next products to raise profits.

To conclude, I have learnt so much from these lectures and even though it is a lot of information to take in, I still enjoy it. The information is provided vital to know to succeed in the design industry so I try to take in as much as possible and take as much notes as I can.

Contextual Portfolio / Polina Zioga

Year Two has been a great leap from last year and yet again today has been hugely insightful to the real world of design. In this seminar, I learnt how to prepare and present your presentation to industry standard and how to deal with many external factors to get your message across to an audience. This is especially important as I am in the process of sorting out work placement for the following year and I will have to partake in presenting and talking to agencies and companies.

Design + Content + Delivery  //   Presentation = Performance

These three concepts combine to produce the perfect presentation. First of all it is important to have a clear title that relates to your project/ideas. It opens up the presentation with a focus to follow. Beneath the title, for my blog presentation I should be my blog URL, my full name and my course. Within each page of my presentation I should include a clearly visible citation for the content of the pages and my URL of the blog page. Usually in the lower corners so people subconsciously see and read these notations.

To present the slide show well I need to keep the slides simple and not have pages containing loads of writing or a strange fade background that makes the content hard to see. By having simple clear to the point content will help you explain and help the audience get a greater understanding as the focus will be drawn to the presenter. When doing this however, you have to imagine that the audience is intelligent but a specialist in the subject you investigate. A little advice I was given was to imagine that I am an actor and to tell a story, this also entails rehearsing your presentation as an actor would. Rehearsing to friends or yourself will help get over goosebumps, I have been informed. Most importantly is time management. Most of the time in industry you will have a time limit to pitch ideas to clients, due to the fact many designers will be pitching ideas to clients. So you cant babble on and talk forever. I have been advised to use a stop watch to create a quick concise flow to a presentation. For example, for my summative assessment I have 10 minutes to present 20 slides of my blog. In this case I will have to approximately spend 30 seconds of aural description for each. In addition, it is acceptable to take notes but do not hold the notes in front of your face and blatantly hold it in front of your face to read it.


After this, we paired up to present out ideas to one another, to use this task to practice and learn from. I had to encapsulate and explain in one sentence, formulated as a title the theme of my current project. Then provide feedback on one strong point and one point on what can be improved. My sentence with feedback was 'creating awareness of false perception and danger of connecting with anonymous profiles online'. This sentence clearly illustrates the direction of my project and establishes a platform for the audience top follow.

All of what I have learnt today has gave me direction in terms of what I should research and how I should structure the research, alongside the process and production of my project. I would start of with my research into the fraudsters using anonymous profiles to commit crimes, leading to my idea of how our eyes detect perception and illusion and how this relates to my project theme. Then leading on to the design work and how everything connects to one final outcome. Presented in an order that I am comfortable with to talk about in a flowing process and explain.

Brass Agency

Andrew who works with Brass Agency, kindly came in to talk about the world of design and what his agency does in industry. Andrew began by talking about employ-ability and placements. It was interesting to hear that he personally doesn't look at degree grades and what Uni they have graduated from, he prefers to see portfolio quality. He encourages people to create their own independent stuff, away from Uni work, websites, posters, videos and all other kinds of design associated things. He prefers to see an interesting array of skills to define who you are and also it makes you an interesting candidate to train and take on.

After, he discussed his own work with Brass and expressed how the work he does has changed due to the continuous rise of digital technologies. Most of the design work he does now is video based to play on YouTube, Social media and TV. Andrew has designed in all kinds of aspects, Websites, games, social media, YouTube, commercial advertising and more. He started off talking about the websites he had designed. Umbro, Pandol and First direct are companies he mentioned he had worked for. I liked the Umbro website where he had taken a photograph of one of my favourite footballers Deco underwater kicking a football. A lot of the work he does is really interactive and hands on which appeals to me. He said it was great fun to purposely set up the action of Deco kicking a ball under water, because 'who else gets to do that'. Also, he created games for the children's TV show with Hacker the dog, working with CBBC.

Moving on, the majority of the work he does is video based, for social media, TV and YouTube platforms. He discovered a video on YouTube with a person called Richard Povian, promoting promoting a hair product he was working for at the time. In the YouTube video the guy had created it everything he could have included and more, than what Andrew himself could have included in an advert with his design team. So to promote the product, he rang the guy up and asked him if he could promote his video, basically asking if he could make him more famous. Of course the guy said yes. Andrew arranged to fly the boy and his dad into london to work on this topic and talk about the campaign of the product. This was very interesting to discover and an eye opener to the world of design.


Continuing with his talk, he mentions many companies he has worked with. To list a few, Moam, lil-lets, loriel, Asda, Sensodine, H&M, Lucazade sport and Ribena. I thought the Lucazade sport campaign he was working with was interesting. It was at the time of the brazil World Cup and Lucozade had created a conditions zone. This conditions zone emulated the weather conditions you would expect playing in brazil, this provides an insight of how the players will endure the extreme conditions in South America. Brass created designs for all of the technologies inside the conditions centre. The technologies they created designs for monitored the temperature, heart rate, sweat loss, breathing rate and much more scientific measures.

Andrew then went on to talk about briefs. Some can be straight forward, some maybe not as straight forward. For example, he spoke about a brief he received from Ribena. This brief wanted a 'childish approach, but not a childish approach'. 'Its for adults, but make it seem as if its for kids, but not for kids'. 'We want adults to colour stuff in, make it fun'. He said this was one of the most challenging complicated briefs he has had to break down. There were also other complications, Ribena at the time was seen to be bad for having too much sugar. Plus, at the time it was said people was not consuming enough vitamin C. So through all of these complications Brass and Ribena had to deal with they created an amazing outcome for the rebranding. The Colouring Café by Ribena was invented and people could interact with the brand from online platforms to on the doorstep, people could colour tiles and place them of a huge wall and build up the puzzle to create a wall full of individually coloured tiles. The video below speaks for itself.


All in all, I have learnt a great deal from this Guest lecture from Brass agency. Andrew ended by speaking a little further about placements. He said Leeds is a lot of Independent design agencies, like Brass. Manchester has a lot of production and post-production design, BBC, ITV, etc. Then London, which has it all and huge for network agencies, WWP agencies, JWT, AQQA, Omnicom and more. His best advice to succeed is to work hard, work with people and have fun which I believe is true.

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.

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.