The last few weeks have been busy with the completion of my dissertation, which in turn has had an impact on my TBI project. After completing my thesis I now have a few days to really focus on my project. I want to look at the editorial environment within social media to implement awareness content on our perception of social media and how we behave. I am really interested in how we act online and feel it would be a great thing to research and work on, as the internet is dramatically becoming a part of our everyday activity. From my research already I have learnt the issues social media brings such as smiling depression to our perceived ideology of the perfect lifestyle which is influenced by famous figures or simply our social media friends.
My direction and purpose of this project is to raise awareness to those who use social media activity about the way they do so. This could be done through interactive content/ advertisement. It could possibly reflect their own behaviour through a light-humoured cartoon style, with a deeper awareness which will make the target audience reflect. A possible direction could be that the user clicks through the daily activities a said character does which is a standard behaviour of an active social generation such as myself. The user would interactive with these still images or gif animations to extend the story. Between each transition there could be an informative note which raises the awareness of the dangers or issues caused by doing a said activity (such as checking a smart device at night, this can disrupt sleeping patterns which has a wider affect on a persons body such as insomnia, memory fatigue or anxiety) I really don’t want this project to become a metal health awareness campaign because that is not the case, instead I want to make the user aware of their ‘looping’ styled behaviour and try and influence a fresh approach to the way people use social media in an attempt to bring a healthy balance between their social life and actual lifestyle. I could possibly link this to the creative industry and how this can affect their creativity by limiting their imagination and idea generation.
I had a short tutorial with my tutor today to discuss possible direction. I discussed my concept and how I could target my desired audience and what I wanted to achieve from this. We talked about augmented reality and how companies such as Pepsi have implemented their advertisement into everyday situations.
All of us know bus stops have generalised advertisement posters on the sides for us to see while we wait for a bus, however more recently we are ignoring many ways of traditional advertisement which I discussed in my dissertation. Pepsi have taken a fresh approach to this by implementing augmented reality which uses a live feed of a pavement behind the bus-stop to turn the side into a ‘window’ where the audience can see others passing by and the same goes for the traffic. However, at different moments the screen introduces bizarre scenarios such as a UFO attack, meteor crash and even escaped animals running towards the bus stop. At a first glance the audience are drawn to the sudden movement from the sky or path which is moving towards them. After the audience is aware that the animation is projected onto the screen it transitions to a pepsi advertisement. This approach to grasping the target audience proved very affective with many of those who witnessed the projections, smiling and enjoying themselves.
While doing some research on our perception of social media, I came across these hard-hitting short films which perfectly capsulate what I would like to make others aware of. It is so easy to create a different lifestyle online to ‘fit’ into societies perception of an ideal lifestyle. Where in fact, many are spending so much time on social media their actual lifestyle is affected. I’ve seen many profiles where people strike for attention, followers and likes mean everything which is bizarre as social media is relatively new, given the public interest of Facebook in 2005 and Youtube later that year.
These videos capture the emotional distress on both parties through social media and how they comfort themselves through the interest of others ‘liking’ their activity. ‘What’s on your mind?’ has a slightly dark humour to it as he goes out of his way to make his life seem great, but in the process his emotional level is shown to affect his health as he turns to alcohol. At the end, he finally opens up with his life – soon to be blocked by others because of his negative approach. I have been guilty of doing this as there are a few people I have know to only post negative things on social media all day, every day. But seeing the bigger picture and their life behind the screen does have an impact on the way I think about those affected. I would really like to create a more light-humoured approach to the subject of social perception and nudge others to realise that they are falling into the same trap of trying to be similar to other people, which in turn may make them feel more alone or ‘unsociable’.
This morning we had our final presentation on our field project, The Big Idea. The past few weeks have been slow-moving in terms of exploration within my project. However, at this stage I am happy with the quality of my work and I am motivated and exited to finish my project. I will implement Parallax scrolling within my content pages which will engage the viewer within its visually animated graphics. I feel it will also be great to experiment with new forms of communication within my final projects to make it stand out in comparison to previous years. Below you will find my presentation along with a short clip of the header pages.
At the very start of this project, We had to chose our desired word which we would research and create our own direction and outcome based on what we discovered. I chose Perception and wanted to step away from distorted reality as this was seen everywhere. I looked at a range of different perceptions and found our perception of vision and strength compared to other living creatures very interesting. It was different and took a fresh approach to perception. It reminded me a lot of the David Attenborough documentaries. I thought it would be a fantastic opportunity to look at info graphs, visual animations and let me explore different ways of presenting information. My presentation is attached above and looks at the sensation, cognition and perception process of our thinking process and how we perceive information. This research was closely linked to Plato and Aristotle’s wok on vision and reason. My initial researched looked at the literal associated reasons behind perception of the human body and the senses we have.
‘Of all the senses, trust only the sense of sight’
Plato and Aristotle closely associated vision and reason.
I was inspired by this quote I came across during my research and it has a lot of sense behind it. Many of us may experience similar situations such as rain, watching the same program or a car ride but each persons individual account is very unique. This is because our genes and our jeans. To explain, we are all born with very similar yet very different genes which affect our perception of our individual senses from sight to smell to touch. One may see the colour green as blue and another could see that same colour as red but from birth we associate a seen colour as what we are brought up to know by its given name. And by jeans, I mean metaphorically for our experiences and choices we have previously made to get to that given point in time. Our emotions and experience of a situation can change the way we perceive an event, this can be from an emotional connection to a song, the memories of a specific smell as we make connection to past events.
A personal account of this is the drink, Fanta fruit twist. I have a strong memories of accidentally getting it into my eyes when I was very little and the smell has stayed with me, during the event I dropped the bottle in the process which rolled off a bridge onto a garden below. Many years later and that garden was taken over by the council and renovated into a modern cafe known as ‘The Mill’. Which I went on to work for many years later. Small encounters like this can have strong connections to events and locations.
I think it is really interesting to explore the psychology of perception and how we perceive things in connections to past experiences.
D&AD are a not for profit company. Any profit goes into the D&AD Foundation and New Blood program which help the next generation get the most out of their creative industry. The foundation itself help promote diversity an stimulates a more sustainable future.
There are three sections to D&AD, the awards, festival and academy.
The festival is a great way to meet people from the industry, there are big named judges and there is the chance for a ceremony to look and evaluate your creativity. If you are lucky enough to win one of their awards, D&AD will do their best to remain in contact with you and will assist you with interviews and mentor you as a creative to help you progress further in your chosen industry.
We looked at some of the available briefs given to us last Monday, firstly:
Monotype
Expressive communication through typography. I thought this would be relevant in response to the recent events in Paris and other countries where ISIS have caused terrorist activities. A possible approach would look at or express the negative behaviour from the minority towards muslims and other religions as a cause of terrorist behaviour from extremists groups who use religion as a fake front for their actions. However, this is a sensitive topic and can cause controversy over many ethic groups. This can also be a great way to express attitudes towards the Syrian Refugees whom are being housed within the UK. Positive expression and awareness could have beneficial factors to help and support the refugees and aid their settlement into the community.
The judging is completely anonymous and so if you have won an award it truly is because of your creative ability.
Criteria
Does it have a great creative idea?
Is it well executed
Is it on the brief
The idea is king – “Bake the idea before you ice the cake.” without an idea your designs fall flat and unrefined.
“A strong idea will always beat something that looks nice.”
Be bold
Treat technology with caution, with apps – what is the core insight, how does it connect people to the situation or task at hand?
Focus on the brief first not the technology you want to use
Do more than the brief
Surge – Powered by BBC – Gold Award winning D&AD Concept
After our lecture, we had workshop to analysis the D&AD’s own brief given to us. We were asked to look through the brief and highlight any important words and sentences that we felt structured the brief. We were asked to choose 16 words from the brief, then from this 8 words. In the end we ended up with 2 very important words which we felt best explained the brief.
In pairs we used these 2 words to create insights and an idea to pitch to the year group.
Our words were Courage and Industry
Our insights were Embrace Change & Comfort Zones
Here is our creative team’s concept:
C R E A T E H E R E
“A creative matching service to encourage long-lasting relationships between old and young professionals alike”
We drew on dating sites such as match.com, POF (Plenty of Fish) and Tinder to produce a creative-industry equivalent service where young and old professionals can meet and exchange experiences and tips with other local creatives. Refinements such as age range, gender, distance, experience in years and even a chosen industry.
For example
Simon (23) who is currently in his second year of Product Design uses the service to find a creative between the ages of (25-35) in Graphic Design with 3 years of professional experience to improve his industry networking and ask for guidance and feedback on any recent projects.
Application:
We felt that a Tinder-styled app that could display a short portfolio of one creative’s ability where another creative could swipe to match with potential networking associate, would be appropriate and could encourage the user to match based on the creatives work, not personal appearance. This procedure would maintain professionalism throughout and help creatives to find and discover local ability easily and efficiently.
From this quick exercise I feel our creative team worked well on the apps potential and I feel it would be a great project to experiment with during our spare time. Submission is March 2016 and so it is possible to get our concept into practice in time for submission.
Further note
“All the best ideas had a great insight” – Insight is import as it’s how a recipiant can relate and connect to your solution and outcome “All the best ideas had a great insight”
Share your ideas, don’t keep them to yourself, to get peoples views
Be original – Don’t rush into your first idea, usually others will have thought of it.
After researching different points of contact the consumer has with the product, I thought of traditional forms of communication and advertisement within a café. Often consumers buy food in cafés which may be accompanied by a unique UCC Coffee blend. This would be placed on a tray and then carried to the table. I was inspired by fast food restaurants, e.g. McDonalds – with their tray liner and decided to explore the possibilities of using this liner to advertise each unique blend UCC have to offer. I began by drawing out a basic layout and played with the hierarchy of text and image placement. I was excited to dive straight into digital exploration and initially designed four liner posters with high quality coffee-related stock images. Upon completion I really liked the outcome however I felt this did not respectfully contribute to the brief as it did not raise awareness to the ethical and fair-trade qualities off UCC Coffee. I redeveloped these liner posters with images of photos of coffee farmers from the origins of which the individual blend was harvested, e.g. Brazil & Peru.
Note: Sources of the images are credited at bottom of post.
The ethical aspect of these liner posters bring awareness to the people who work hard to make UCC Coffee possible. The layout of the text is set on the left side of each poster with the corresponding coffee farmer within the negative space. This information-free zone brings importance to the human aspect and quality of delivering fairer coffee beans to you, the consumer. These will be printed onto recycled materials with eco-friendly ink to help promote sustainability in the process.
These posters also have the possibility of bringing deals and statistics of ethical trade from UCC to again highlight the positive effects of drinking UCC Coffee.
We had a meeting with Wendy today to discuss where we were at, from this we felt that the creative group should focus more specifically towards students. This meant that we could engage with the target audience more efficiently and relate to the issues at hand. Using simple methods we mapped out our direction and looked at the major student-relatable climate change issues. Our creative team looked at energy usage, energy production and greenhouse gasses. We further researched into Wales Word Leaders in recycling whom are trying to cut emissions by 50%.
After our group meeting I went on to research good campaigns, what made them successful and how effective they were. I found a huge collection of relatable awareness campaigns which are listed below:
2012: Green Peace spoof Shell website which fooled millions. This subversive advert used the tagline “You can’t run your SUV on cute, Let’s go”. The background was a collection of polar bears. This anti-awareness campaign makes the viewer think about the situation of fuel consumption and how it affects them. This type of advertisement causes negative discussion towards the subversive message. However this is the correct response Green Peace wanted.
2009: A billbord on a newly refurbished building. “The are that cools your home heats up the world” the billboard itself had imagery of refugees fleeing from a flood in Asia. Ironically the billboard was disrupted with many air-con fans. This imagery suggests that there is an overwhelming demand for air-con, which is excessive energy consumption.
2010: Video of an iceberg by Green Peace, Germany. “In 30 years, the Arctic will be ice free in the summer” The video shows a single iceberg in the ocean until the camera pans under the surface revealing it as a dead polar bear floating. This suggests the knock on effect of melting polar caps as a result of climate change.
There are many more I researched such as the Fracking awareness campaign ‘Wrong Move – Not for Shale’, WWF – Shadow of a past tree & WWF – Brain Corals. These are all very eye-catching campaigns which successful highlight the importance of eco-regeneration within society.
I also looked at social campaigns and found a very intriguing photo series called ‘Broken India’. This series by Limitless captures the aesthetic of India through the popular app Instagram. However the artist captures the wider picture, outside of the cropped images to reveal the poverty and war-stricken towns. This imagery of playing on the wider picture would a great way to illustrate the knock-on effect for the demand of power consumption such as deforestation and industrialisation caused by power companies.
Each campaign engages the viewer by using words such as ‘our’ and ‘we’ as it puts the viewer within the picture and make them aware of their own actions. A few campaigns I looked at used subversive imagery to fool the audience. Others used hard hitting facts and play on metaphorical imagery for a light-hearted awareness with a strong sting at the correlating side-effects.
Most campaigns never blame the viewer but instead society or humans as one.
This short animation blew my mind! It uses the scenes from various films and mashes them together to create a thrilling hybrid between animation and motion pictures. Its overall purpose reinforces my dissertation area of technology and how it has become ubiquitous within society. It also plays on the issue of technology addiction. We witness a young boy who’s life has been dominated by technology and influenced by the films he watches. We first realise this when he becomes agitated when his device is taken away from him and he becomes aggressive. Within seconds his ordinary life is turned into a cinematic experience as he can no longer differentiate reality from fantasy, there are explosions and fast-paced scenes as he tries to escape. At the end the young boy jumps from a window, assuming he would be ok much like the actors in action films, only to he hospitalised.
Today, Matt did a workshop on building a digital portfolio and presence. We learnt the importance of having an online portfolio and what was expected of us within the portfolio. The purpose of an online presence is to present your work to potential employers and promote yourself within the community. It is also a useful way to collaborate with other users to get feedback on your work. Over the next few weeks I will improve my own digital presence by tightening my social account’s privacy and presenting myself in a professional manner. I will network with other users to improve my reputation and promote myself.
Questions to ask myself when creating an online presence:
Who am I? / How can I help you? / How did I get here ( Know what I know?) / Why can you trust me? / What do we share in common? It really does help to find a niche so that you can stand out and have a specific market that you can target.
It is very important to get testimonials from people you have worked with to support your reputation and experience with clients.
Your Portfolio website shouldn’t be:
Not a place to experiment with web design
Not a place to make claims that you can’t back up and can’t do
Don’t have a site under maintenance
Don’t leave it dead ( keep using it)
An archive for all your work (just finished best pieces)
Do not have a rant if you’re linked to twitter
Your Portfolio website should:
Have good quality images of your work
Have contact details easy to find
Be kept up to date
Make your skills clear
Links to social media
Include testimonials
Be concise when talking about work and yourself
Show your best stuff
Have a downloadable portfolio (PDF)
Sell yourself with your about me
Make sure you spell check
Have easy navigation over the site
Have a niche your aiming for
What should you consider having for an online presence
Responsive HTML for cross-platform devices
Link to twitter / social media – on going feed showing your passion for design
Use your site regularly or others will loose interest
Make sure pages are easy to bookmark and have universal layouts
Make sure the platform you use if easy to update
Think about having a personalised domain for ease of access and memorable
Ben Walton 
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