Lecture - What is Research (Part 1)

Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.' 

Incomplete Manifesto for Growth – Bruce Mau Design 1998

[creative practice] doesn’t just straighten and clarify the world, it reflects the world as we venture beyond problem solving into process, experiment and discovery

Martin Venezky

Ideas are driven by your research, because my doing research you're surrounding yourself with stuff that's related to your subject. Random chance can be as influential as organisation, but without organisation you're less likely to be able to put yourself in a situation where random chance will influence you.

If you get your research wrong for any reason then you still have the ideas generated from that research in your head as well as the ideas that will be generated from the research that will follow, so doing the wrong research provides benefits in the long run. Doing research right and wrong both allow you to draw links between things, which is what research is about. That said, doing research right gives you more time afterwards to concentrate on growing and realising the ideas.

Stimulated Approach

By surrounding yourself with materials that will stimulate your ideas, you put yourself in a position where you can draw links between your ideas and improve them.

Systematic Approach

Planning ahead what processes you're going to go through with your ideas can inform your ideas and give you more time to refine them.

Intuitive Approach

Your process takes place automatically without it necessarily being evoked, just pulling ideas from no-where and seeing where it takes you.

Research: The process of finding facts. These facts will lead to knowledge. Research is done by using what is already known. A process of finding out by asking the questions, 'How?', 'Why?' 'What if?'. It involves collecting information about a subject from a variety of sources including books, journals and the internet, or by carrying out experiments or talking to people and the analysis of this information.

Primary Research

Research that is developed and collected for a specific end use, usually generated to help solve a specific problem and involves the collection of data that does not yet exist.

Secondary Research

Published or recorded data that have already been collected for some purpose other than the current study or the analysis of research that has been collected at an earlier time (for reasons unrelated to the current project) that can be.

Quantitative Research

Deals with facts, figures, and measurements, and produces data which can be readily analyzed. Measurable data is gathered from a wide range of sources, and it is the analysis and interpretation of the relationships across this data that gives the information researchers are looking for.

Qualitative Research

Explores and tries to understand people's beliefs, experiences, attitudes, behaviour and interactions. It generates non-numerical data. The best-known qualitative methods of inquiry include in-depth interviews, focus groups, documentary analysis and participant observation.

Censorship and Truth - My Thoughts

I'm not too sure what to make of this lecture, as seemed to have a similar underlying message as certain points of the Globalisation Lecture did, especially Chomsky's idea of manufacturing consent and the filters which only allow the successes of Western civilisation to be broadcasted.

This lecture was about taking that principle in a broader context, and was about how you can't always believe everything you see, which I would've thought would've been a fairly obvious concept to most people at an Art College anyway.

It reminded me very much of the first lecture from last year, where Fred explained the difference between an apple and a picture of an apple, and how important it is to understand the difference. The picture of an apple is a representation of an apple, you've got accept that the apple may not look like it does in the picture, but the key elements of what you know an apple has are the same as the key elements as the picture of the apple has, such as the round shape and the little stalk coming out of the top. If you go through life being concerned that when you buy an apple it's not going to look like the picture of the apple, it's going to make it more difficult for you to eat apples.

In the same way, if you're too concerned that the media may be mis-representing something, you're going to have a difficult time understanding it because you'll always be looking at it from a point of view which you are creating that may (or may not be) the real absolute truth. By looking at it from the presented view you at least get a portion of the truth, and from there it's up to you to investigate it to get the entire truth. Going back to the globalisation lecture again, it should be clear that everything that's presented to you as 'the truth' will have some sort of bias, and I think it's important for people to make their own decisions on what they believe the truth is, be it what they're presented with, what they think could be hidden behind what's being presented, or, most likely, a mixture of the two. 

Lecture - Censorship and 'Truth'

Ansel Adams is important for his documentation of American landscapes and his skills in the dark room. Some of his images make you think you're seeing an image from a different season or time of day.

Censorship in photography is a long running thing, as shown by these photos of Stalin with and without Trotsky, someone who's political views he disagreed with.

More recent examples tend to revolve around the use of Photoshop, the example used was GQ Magazine extending Kate Winslet's legs.

Simulacrum: A small scale or unsatisfactory representation of something.

Jean Baudrillard wrote a book called The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, where he argued that the gulf war was more a war of representation than a physical war.

An-My Le worked with the American government to take photos of war that made it seem more glamorous and less brutal.

Studio Task 3 - CoP Re-Proposal

Pre-Tutorial

Research Question

Do the differences in advertising techniques used by dog food companies and dog charities justify the criticisms of wasted talent according to the first things first manifesto?

Practical Element

Some sort of advertising for some sort of Dog Charity in a manner that is more representative of a company that sells either "luxury" pet food, dog chews, or some other consumerist product that's not vital, but is generally used.

Post-Tutorial

Feedback

This question was too narrow, and because of it's specificity, it would limit what I would take going forward from the research. We discussed my principal disagreement with the First Things First Manifesto, and decided that the following question would be good for me to investigate, using some of my criticisms of the manifesto as points within my essay. 

Research Question

What is the role of ethics in contemporary advertising for charities?

Research

• Look up the lecture on ethics that I missed
• Advertising strategies
• Ethics within design

Globalisation - My Thoughts

To me, the message behind this lecture was, that in order for something to become truly globalised, it must be stripped back to become truly simple, as this means that as many people will understand it as possible, McDonalds and its no frills service being a prime example.

I think cultural imperialism seems to be very prominent, especially in developing economies such as Brazil, China and India, and if they opted to go in a different way to the western culture, the media would give us reason to worry about it, as is sort of the case with China, and I suppose this is a good example of Chomsky's theory of filters, in this instance Flak being the appropriate filter.

Chomsky's filters have highlighted how important it is that graphic design, especially in adverts for magazines, newspapers etc etc shouldn't be politically influenced, as you run the risk of stopping a certain article being published or something like that, which isn't something that should be happening in a developed, free and democratic society.

Lecture - Globalisation, Sustainability and the Media

Socialist: The process of the transformation of a local/regional phenomena into a global one through economic, technological, sociocultural and political forces.
Capitalist: Elimination of state-enforced restrictions on exchanges across borders and the increasing integrated and complex global system of production and exchange that has emerged as a result.

McDonaldization (George Ritzer): The idea that describes the wide-ranging sociocultural processes that allow the principles of an American fast-food restaurant to begin to dominate other sections of national and global economies.

Marshall McLuhan - Understanding the Media (1960's)
Discusses the idea that electrical technology is an extension of our body because of how it allows us to see and hear what is happening elsewhere, which reduces the idea of space and time, increasing human empathy and sympathy. This would lead to a "global village" where people and businesses would work together and share responsibility.

What has actually happened is Cultural Imperialism, which is the rise of a homogenous culture based around New York, Hollywood, London, Paris and Milan. The media could be thought of a system that spreads the evidence of the successes of western culture.

Schiller suggests that the dominance of a US driven commercial media forces a US broadcasting model onto the rest of the world, even though not all of the world can afford it.

Chomsky - Manufacturing Consent (1998)
Discusses the idea that the news is propaganda for American capitalism which is causing people to buy into Americanism being the ideal way of life. He says that there are filters which get rid of critical messages, these filters are;

• Ownership - Most people who have access to what is broadcasted in the media are controlled by one of a small bunch of people or companies such as Rupert Murdoch.
• Funding - Adverts provide funding for the media. Anything that would be published or broadcasted that has a message that goes against any of the adverts that it uses will be stopped.
• Sourcing - The news is only as accurate as your access to the source, which will be limited accordingly to reduce the quantity of negative reports.
• Flak - Whenever a challenging idea arises, organised groups of people and companies will aggressively challenge it publicly to pressure the public into not buying into the idea.
• Ideology - Creating and "us and them" scenario (often against Islam) makes us blind to our own problems.

Studio Task 3 - CoP Proposal

Pre-Crit

Research Question

Could consumerism function in a society where the First Things First Manifesto is more influential that it currently is?

• Look at the intentions of the manifesto, with various points of view about it was "really" about.
• Look at how consumerism has allowed people to "choose" their identities.
• Compare how both things have an element of political deception about them to keep people "happy", through a sense of empowerment, but it's how the senses of power differ that cause the separation.
• Talk about potential repercussions of having charities play off against each other to win public favour like supermarkets do, and how a lack of choice for consumers shows a regression within society.

Practical

• A series of posters advertising for charities in a way that they may look like if they were trying to gain favour based on their graphic design, by taking inspiration from big successful corporate brands.

         or

• A series of posters showing how brands that sell similar products or services could look similar if their identities were stripped away, which would show the dullness that you get when you take away the emotional connection from advertising.

Post-Crit

Issues With My Proposal

• The subject, being consumerism, is too broad.
• It's unclear weather the essay is based around advertising/branding or ethics.
• The potential repercussions of something happening have no facts about them or any information that can be solidly relied upon.

Suggestions

• Do something with the grey areas of the FTF manifesto that were highlighted in Michael Beirut's 10 footnotes on the manifesto.
• Take something that is suggested as being a waste of time in the manifesto, and compare how the branding and advertising from that product compares with an "acceptable cause" on a similar topic, for example, compare cat food designs with cat shelters graphic design.

My Thoughts

I would like to continue to do something about the FTF manifesto, as it's something I find interesting and I'm still unsure what I think about it. I think by comparing the advertising for pet products and the Design for the RSPCA I could raise some interesting issues that cover the grey areas of the manifesto, and Beirut's footnotes could be useful with highlighting some of the grey areas. Obviously I'd have to use other texts as well, particularly one in that is more pro-manifesto given Beirut's stance on it.