I thought that the design of this ad campaign was so ingenious! The ANAR Foundation, a Spanish organization which helps kids in risk faced a problem in their most recent ad campaign. They wanted to make their their organization known, however, they did not want potential aggressors to see that a kid was even looking at the ad. The solution: using Lenticular printing on the street signs.
Lenticular prints are unique in the way that they display different images to viewers at different angles. ANAR created a poster that conveys a secret message to people at lower heights, even if accompanied by a potential aggressor. They calculated the average height of a 10 years old kid and planted a message only seen when looking at the poster from that height. Adults see an innocent poster of a normal kid, yet children would see a bruised kid and a phone number for the hotline. I think this is just brilliant.
I found this article and I’m so grateful I did. Adobe , along with all other Creative Suite applications, just made a move to the cloud. Adobe discontinued their software so they can force you to rent the applications for a monthly fee. What??? That means that if you already own creative suite 6 (a 2000 dollar license by the way) you will be paying 20 dollars a month for the first year, and then 50 dollars a month after that.
Imagine that, giving Adobe $50 a month for the next 10 years and having nothing to call your own? That is ridiculous. I have CS6 and that’s more than enough and if they pull some stunt where older version files are incompatible like they did with AI and ID and I’m forced to upgrade and I can’t buy only rent? No way.
As a graphic design student, I am constantly trying to create a concept that not only is visually appealing, but will evoke emotion. This can manipulate someone’s idea or perception of an idea- to persuade or dissuade. I listened to a report on NPR that made me realize how manipulative branding can be. In NPR’s ”Products R Us: Are We ‘Brandwashed’?”, NPR interviews branding expert, Martin Lindstrom. Martin Lindstrom has advised top execs at McDonalds, Proctor & Gamble, Microsoft, etc. Branding’s so prevalent in our lives that “the average American 3-year-old can recognize 100 brands”, but goes even further to say that we are affected by branding messages even before we’re born! He proves this by noting “a recent British study that looked at pregnant women who watched a particular television show. The results showed that babies born to those women who watched the show had a stronger preference for the program than those children whose mothers did not watch the show while pregnant.”
Since I’m a student and on a tight budget, Whole Foods isn’t my go-to for groceries, but after reading the section about Whole Food’s branding scheme, I’m sure I will be more skeptical. As you enter their stores, “their employees are cutting fresh flowers.” Lindstrom confirms that this is done on purpose ”to tell you on an unconscious level that, in fact, everything is fresh in this store.” The fresh bananas you see sitting in wooden crates? They were transferred from plastic bins in the back.
Whole Food’s slogan is “Whole Foods, Whole People, Whole Planet.” Maybe not the whole truth.
Read the full article here: http://www.npr.org/2011/10/23/141470152/products-r-us-are-we-brandwashed.
As this semester draws to a close, what were people’s favorite aspects about the class? Though I did not speak much I did enjoy listening to other people’s thoughts and insights about various topics. I do feel as though my writing has improved overall, if not by a little. Now I am not struggling as much to find the right words to say. The design proposal, while being my least enjoyed project of the class, did have a good amount of practicality to it. The examples Professor Beach showed did prove to be rather helpful while I was working on mine. One lecture that turned out to be more useful than I imagined was the one about how to structure emails and what to say in them. I now refer to those tips when I send out emails at work. Finally, the 79 Essays readings proved to be pretty interesting. Though it may be silly, the short lengths of the essays along with the colorful writing kept me engaged with the material and left me eager to discuss them in class.
Like many of you, I have been getting to know the people at FedEx. They see me almost every week and expect a lot of questions. But with all this 2D printing, did you know 3D Printers exist? Basically you can replicate a 3D object. In this clip, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHnMj6dxj4, they replicate a wrench. Not only does it have the same dimensions, they added color and the cloned wrench works! Graphic Design sounds ice age to this, but what if this was accessible- what about copyright laws? Oh, the possibilities..
Sweet sweater, right?
Earlier this semester in my globalization class we talked about the concept of the digital divide. Simply put, it refers to the technological gap between people and how well they are able to access it in relation to one another, along with their geographical location. At this point it can be safe to say that those who live in developed countries have better access to information technology resources than people in developing countries. This idea had me thinking about how graphic designers in developing countries go about their design work. I’m sure they have access to computers, but probably not as much as people in developing nations do. I am just curious as to how graphic designers in these nations go about creating work and the kinds of design movements that occur there. It seems like an interesting subject to do research on.
Just to lighten the mood, let’s talk about AIGA! I’ve never heard of AIGA until my Writing for Artists Class with Ms. Beach. She talks about it so highly and so admirably (almost every class), and after doing my own research, would love to join that community when I start working professionally as a Graphic Designer. The more I hear about AIGA, the more convinced that I NEED to join and will join. I am a HUGE NPR fan and would love to work for NPR one day and hope to work for a company like this in the future. It just made me so proud to know that NPR’S branding team takes part in AIGA and won four ADDY awards last year 
FYI- The ADDY Awards is the world’s largest advertising competition with over 50,000 entries annually. What an accomplishment!
Read about NPR’s branding team here: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thisisnpr/2012/03/29/149410337/pantone-prowess-nprs-in-house-design-team-honored-with-addy-awards.
There are always pros and cons to a job. There is absolutely no way of pleasing every one. Of course, there are professions that have more pros than cons, and vice versa. This reminds me of Michael Beirut’s essay “Graphic Design and the New Certainties” in Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design. Beirut talks ab0ut Graphic Design’s “pros” in that it can create an identity or present an idea, and it serves the purpose of relaying a message. As an artist, it provides a “medium of self expression (great for designs with something to express, not-so-great for designers with access to a lot of Photoshop filters).” This makes me feel happy and proud to be a part of the design community, until I get to the part where Beirut mentions Michael Braungart, chemist and author of Cradle to Cradle Remaking the Way We Make Things. Braungart declares that “graphic designers are contributing to the destruction of the environment.. he displayed a chart that described the precise amount of toxic elements in a single ink color..analyzed for the harm it could do to our environment.”
I work at a print and mail shop. We go through millions of sheets of stock a year. I, as a graphic design student, go through a couple sheets, but ultimately would like to design for mass production. Artist or Destroyer of the Earth?
Being design students just about all of us have been exposed to Adobe’s products. I am just curious as to which program do people like the most or feel the most comfortable using. Personally, I like to use InDesign the most simply because I find the interface the most straightforward in what I want to do. For the other programs, mainly Photoshop and Illustrator, I feel as though I have to jump through a few more hoops to do a simple task. The funny thing is that I’ve been exposed to Photoshop longer than the other Adobe programs, but now it feels like the most foreign to me. The layering system in it throws me off since I am so used to the way layers are handled in InDesign and Illustrator. But I guess this is just me though. I am looking forward to hearing about other people’s experience with the various programs.
This Semester I took my last English prerequisite course! My English course was made up of all sorts of different majors. For one of our projects, we had to write an Undergraduate Scholarship Proposal. Each student chose a topic they were interested in that pertained to their major, developed a research question on the issue that they’d like answered, then proposed a project that attempted to answer that question. I am a Graphic Design major and found it difficult to find a specific subject matter that pertained to Graphic Design. This forced me to ponder: what questions did I have about Graphic Design and does this subject require data/research driven studies? Unlike Bio or Business, Graphic Design seemed to have very little subject matter.
Gunnar Swanson describes Graphic Design education as synthetic, “by synthetic [he means] that design does not have a subject matter of its own- it exists in practice only in relation to the requirements of given projects” so in short, it lacks a specific subject matter enabling for potential to connect to many disciplines.
I ultimately decided to do my research on the liberal arts curriculum needed for Graphic Design majors to obtain their BA or BFA at GMU. There are those who believe that general education courses (i.e.Western Civilization, English, Math, Social Science, etc) are necessary within an art curriculum to acquire knowledge outside of the specific major, but there are those who believe the liberal arts courses should be removed or more tailored to one’s specific major. I had read an article about ”parallel learning”: Mandatory core design and art related courses revolved around general education courses, so that all design projects had to do with the subject matter taught in the general education course. For example, if you were learning about cell anatomy in your general biology course, your design projects would be revolved around thoat. It would possibly make you more interested in what you were learning and compares to that of a real-world scenario where you’d have to create design solutions for that of a different discipline.
Do you think parallel learning could work with the design curriculum? Would you enjoy this kind of tailored learning?