Study Task 3 - Visual Analysis

As part of study task 3 identifying images relating to the essays will be essential. This is because it will allow a further understanding of the ways in which a subject matter can be communicated through the use of graphic design. This will also help to focus on the choices that are made when producing these images, so that they can be perceived correctly by an audience. For example, focusing on the colour schemes and layout of an image will provide information on ways to effectively communicate our own ideas later on.

As the essay will focus primarily on the effects of consumerism and the ways in which it reinforces a certain image for society to aspire to, looking at images related to consumerism and body image were necessary.

The first image that I chose to analyse was from a magazine called Adbusters, which had mocked a 1950s Marlboro cigarette advertisement campaign. When first looking at the image we can see that the use of limited colours has helped the image to stay basic and straight forward for the viewers. In this way the text used is much clearer by using white with a darker backdrop. We can also see that the advertisement has used layout and fonts that would typically be seen in an old Marlboro advertisement or by another tobacco company. This advertisement seemed appropriate to use as it mocks the intentions of consumerism and the approaches that some companies will take in order to gain consumers.

The next image is of a magazine cover, for 'PAPER'. The advertisement became popular for its Kim Kardashian photoshoot, which primarily focuses on body image. This image seemed appropriate to use as it shows how companies can use celebrity status to boost their consumer base. By reinforcing the idea of ideal body image through celebrities such as Kim Kardashian, companies an a lot more likely to increase the sales of their product. From looking at the use of colour in this image we can see it has been limited to white, black and shades of brown. This way the magazine is able to bring focus to the images in the centre while maintaining a reminder of the colours used on basic paper. The title has also been placed outside of the central image frame so that it contrasts the white backdrop, while using the same colour as the image. By doing this it almost looks as though the letters has been cut out of the page. We can also tell that the magazine has focused on the central image more than anything else as it contains a lot less surrounding information, as you would typically find on magazines similar to this.

This image by Protein world had been heavily criticised online for its assumptions on what the ideal body type would be. As the campaign poster reads 'are you beach body ready?', it is implied that the image next to the text is an example of what a 'beach body' should look like. Had the advertisement not included a model of slim build, then the campaign may not have received backlash from the public. This advertisement was one example of how consumerism can go wrong and company ads can instead create a problem for themselves when communicating the wrong ideas to consumers.

With the use of bright yellow with grey text and imagery, it has been possible to create an advertisement that stood out among other ads of a similar nature. As the ad was placed in the London Underground stations, it meant that the use of bold text was necessary so it could be viewed from the platforms.

Here we can see that several campaigns have ways of challenging society's expectations. This photograph shows how men might be expected to have muscular bodies. In this case having abs is seen as the desirable image. This could also be in reference to way in which people are affected by repetitive images in mainstream media and furthermore, believe they need to achieve a certain image.

 This image is of a Barbie doll next to an artist's interpretation of what an average body Barbie doll would look like. The intention of this image was to show the ways in which society's toy manufacturers are targeting people at a very young age. By presenting the doll as having a slim tall build, young children will see this as the definition of visual beauty.

this image shows the ideas behind society's intentions. It also explains how people are affected by certain ideas of what it means to be beautiful. 

COP1: Chronologies: Type - Production & Distribution

• Definition of Typography
• The art and technique of printing with movable type.
• The composition of printed material from movable type.
• The arrangement and appearance of printed matter.

"Type is what language looks like" - Ellen Lupton, Thinking with type.

"Typography is the craft of endowing human language with a durable visual form" - Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style.

"The written word endures...the spoken word disappears" - Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death.

• The ancient Egyptians were one of the earliest civilisations to start using symbols as a means of communication through hieroglyphics.
• Mesopotamia (specifically, ancient Sumer) 3200 BCE
• To the west of Mesopotamia were occidental and to the east were oriental speaking countries.
• Trade and Communication - Pictograms lost their early form and became conventional signs. These signs could indicate an object or could be used for their phonetical value.
• One of the most influential finds in 1799 revealed Egyptian, Demotic and Greek text on the Rosetta Stone, which dates back to 196BC

The first true alphabet was the Greek Alphabet, which was adapted from the Phoenician. Latin, the most widely used alphabet today, is a further development of the Greek. 

• the Egyptian ox head symbol was adapted over time time to have the same meaning as the letter A. It went from Egyptian Apis, to Phoenician Aleph, to Greek Alpha to Roman A.
• "true alphabets consistently assign letters to both consonants and vowels on an equal basis"
• when looking at a paragraph of text were the letters in each word are in the wrong place, our brains can still understand what the intended words are that the writer is trying to communicate.

The origins of type and letterforms

• Johannes Gutenberg - 4783. The original first ever printing press was under construction in approximately 1436.
• 1870 - William Foster introduces the Elementary Education Act. This meant for the first time ever people would receive the education that had previously only been given to those of higher class or of the church.

Context of Practice 1 study task 2 - Triangulation & Referencing

Triangulation and referencing task sheet

Key parts from researched books

Consumer psychology in behavioural perspective (Gordan foxall, 1990)

What are called the causes of human behavior turn out to be the grounds or reasons for which a person initiates an action. Human beings, unlike purely physical process, are telic; that is they pursue ends and purposes, and can and do conceive of the notion of adapting a means to an end.

 Consumer culture, Identity and Well being: The search for the good life and the body perfect. (Helga Dittmar)

You only need to look at, and listen to, people around you, particularly children and adolescents, to appreciate that consumer culture has a powerful psychological impact. Celebrities, fashion models, media stars, even computer game heroes and toys, influence who they aspire to be and what they want to look like.

Having the “right” things has become vital, not so much because of the material goods themselves but because of hoped for psychological benefits: popularity, identity, happiness.

Leisure activities increasingly involve consuming, and shopping itself has become a leisure and lifestyle activity. Indeed, arguably, shopping malls have become centres of both socialising and socialisation. At a deeper level, consumer goods have come to play a stronger psychological role for us; we value and buy them as means of regulating emotions and gaining social status, and as ways of acquiring or expressing identity and aspiring to an “ideal self”.

This Boy Can: Brands , gender and the new masculinity (Suzy Bashford, 2016)

“We’re seeing a huge rise in eating and body image disorders among young men. We can’t isolate the cause. Advertising plays its part. A 13-year-old boy of average build in one class recently told me seeing an ad made him feel fat. He didn’t mean a bit out of shape. He meant everything that goes with that feeling such as seeing himself as lazy, unaccomplished and incapable.”

Module Resources

David Gauntlet - Media, gender and identity (Representations of gender today, page 83)
In advertising today, the representation of women and men isn't usually very conspicuously sexist. Sometimes it is, but then we sit up and comment. In the first edition of this book, in 2002, I noted that 'there are also a smallish number of cases where advertisers seem to have decided that it is OK to show women as housewives after all; and even in the twenty-first century, rather amazingly, the UK supermarket chain Iceland was still using the slogan 'That's why mum's go to Iceland"'. Even more incredibly, in 2007 they were still using it. Where the modern dad buys his groceries remain unclear. So, some advertising is unapologetically sexist, and is presumably used because it is felt that the message 'works' for the target audience, even if it might surprise and offend some others. The fact that this doesn't happen all the time does not necessarily show that advertisers take their social responsibilities very seriously, but probably does show that they have learned that it is not good business to offend their customers with sexist stereotypes.

Author	David Gauntlett
Year published:	2002
Book title:	Media, gender, and identity
City:	London
Publisher:	Routledge

David Gauntlett - Selling beauty chapter

sometimes it is unclear why gendered messages in advertising are singled out for particular attention by researchers - there are more publications on women in advertising than there are on women in TV programmes, for example - when TV series take up more of our time and attention that the ads which fly by every day. But he make-up adverts referred to above remind us of a concern uniquely applicable to advertising - that it is produced by capitalists who want to cultivate insecurities which they can then sell 'solutions' to. Germaine Greer put the case strongly in her book The Whole Woman (1999):

Every woman knows that, regardless of her other achievements she is a failure is she is not beautiful...The UK beauty industry takes £8.9 billion out of women's pockets. Magazines financed by the beauty industry teach little girls that they need make-up and train them to use it, so establishing their lifelong reliance on beauty products. Not content with showing pre-teens how to use foundations, powders, concealers, blushers, eye-shadows, eye-liners, lip-liners, lipstick, lip gloss, the magazines identify problems of dryness, flakiness, blackheads, shininess, dullness, blemishes, puffiness, oiliness, spots, greasiness, that little girls are meant to treat with moisturisers, fresheners, masks, packs, washes lotions, cleansers, toners, scrubs, astringents ... Pre-teen cosmetics are relatively cheap but within a few years more sophisticated marketing will have persuaded the most level headed woman to throw money away on alchemical preparations containing anything from silk to cashmere, pearls, proteins, royal jelly ... anything real or phoney that might fend off her imminent collapse into hideous decrepitude.

Author	Germaine Greer
Year published:	1999
Book title:	The whole woman
City:	New York
Publisher:	Anchor Books

A 20'000 year non-linear history of the image

Aims:
-To give you an idea of the broad range of visual communication from different cultures/context.
-To provide you with visual resources
-To demonstrate the theoretical and philisophical approaches to visual communication.

Lascaux Caves, France
Some of the very first instances of visual communication dates back to the era of cavemen. The Lascaux Caves in France are one example of how humans would create images of animals, magic and expressions of 'higher beings' on the walls of these caves.

Cy Twombly
An expressionism artist whos work portrays quick movements and 'primal' similarities to the caves in Lascaux.

Richard Long
Creates aboriginal inspired artwork using rocks and sand. Some of his pieces show how African tribal culture and their means of communication have heavily influenced his work.

Mark Rothko
The Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas showcases large paintings around the room that have been known to 'play on' the emotions of viewers at the gallery. In many instances these paintings are said to have made viewers feel upset and in some cases made the viewers cry.

Marcel Duchamp - 1919 / Banksy
'L.H.O.O.Q.' is a piece of artwork by Duchamp that recycles the image of the Mona Lisa, making him one of the first artists to recreate an interpretation of an image that is globally recognised. Following on from this is Banksy and the way that he also reconstructed images of the Mona Lisa giving it a new meaning to a different audience.

Jackson Pollock 1950
Jackson Pollock became an important figure in the world of art when he created giant paintings that displayed precise movements and rythms. Often he would create these pieces while listening to jazz music, as he found the rythm in the songs could be transfered onto his canvas. His work also became funded by the CIA as a form of 'cultural weaponry' against communism at the time. Vladamirski's 'Roses for Stalin' (1949) was one example of how communism tryed to bring back popularity of traditional painting as opposed to the western ideas of modern art at the time.

Alberto Korda 1960
This photographer captured an image of Ché Guevara during the revolution in Cuba. This image became iconic during the regime and eventually became widely known as a symbol of 'revolt/anarchism'. Over time this image has been recycled to portray different meanings and stears away from its original purpose to become something else.

Similar to this, the movie V for Vendetta  has influenced todays society through its use of Guy Fawkes masks. This is because the movie is about an uprising of anonymous people against the government, and today the mask is widely associated with protesters and anarchists who wear them.

COP Lecture - Visual Literacy

COP Lecture - Visual Literacy

Visual Communication is the process of using images and type to convey messages based on a level of shared understanding of objects, signs, gestures and symbols. Visual Communication is affected by the context in which it is placed, the method in which it is conveyed and the audience it is presented to.

Visual Literacy: constructing meaning from type and visual images while interpreting images of the present, past and a range of different cultures. Visual literacy is also the ability to produce images that effectively communicates a message to an audience.


Here is an example of Visual Communication through the use of a toilet sign in South Korea. Without knowing what the sign says we already know that it is a toilet as the objects included in the sign show a culturally shared meaning. Straight away we know the information being conveyed in this sign is an interpretation of a male on the left and a female on the right. In this way, the designer has been able to easily communicate  message that has become universally recognisable to the public.

'All that is necessary for any language to exist is an agreement amongst a group of people that one thing will stand for another'.


when asked what the top left symbol represents we immediately interpret it as a plus sign because it has been placed next to other symbols of mathematical meaning. However, when the symbol is on its own it can be interpreted as more than one meaning. For example, it could be a religious symbol or a sign for first aid.



'Being visually literate requires an awareness of the relationship between Visual Syntax and Visual Semantics.'  

Visual Syntax: The pictorial structure and visual organisation of elements. It represents the basic building blocks of an image that affect the way we 'read' it.

these elements are framing, format, scale, font, shape and composition to name a few.

Visual Semantics: This refers to the way images fit into the cultural process of communication. It includes the relationship between form and meaning and the way meaning is created through cultural references, iconic forms, social interaction, political ideas and experience etc.





Semiotics: this is the study of signs, their processes, indication, symbolism and communication etc.
Visual elements of semiotics include:
SYMBOL, SIGN, SIGNIFIER, METAPHOR, METONYM AND SYNECHDOCHE.

Context of Practice 1 - Finding research sources

LCA Library: 

1. Consumer culture, identity and well being: The search for the god life and the body perfect. (Helga Digmar, 2010)
2. Subculture: The meaning of style (Dick Hebdige, 1979)
3. Cool Brands: an insight into some of Britain's coolest brands (Karen Dugdale, 2007)

 Google Books (Preview)

1. Consumer Psychology in Behavioural Perspective (Gordon Foxall, 1990)
2. Market Impact of a Consumption Subculture: The Harley Davidson Mystique (John W. Shouten, 1993)
3. Brands: A marketing game (Randall G. Chapman, 1992)

Google Scholar

1. Brand: The logos of the global economy (Celia Lury, 2004)
2. 'Hard and Heavy': Gender and Power in a heavy metal subculture (Leigh Krenske & Jim McKay, 2000)
3. Straightedge Subculture, Music, and the Internet (J. Patrick Williams, 2006)

Websites

1. Journal of Consumer Psychology www.journals.elsevier.com (Amna Kirmani)
2. Cracking the Code of Consumer Psychology www.forbes.com (Dorie Clark, 2013)
3. This Boy Can: Brands, Gender and the new Masculinity www.thedrum.com (Suzy Bashford, 2016)

JStor 

1. The Social Organisation of Sexuality and Gender in Alternative Hard Rock: An Analysis of Intersectionality (Mimi Schippers, 2000)
2. The German Gothic Subculture (Gabriele Eckart, 2005)
3. The Rise and Decline of a subculture

Context of Practice 1 - CoP Theme: Society

For the Context of Practice task 1 we were to choose a quote that we thought would be best to write about for a small 1'000 word essay. The themes of the quotes were society, politics, culture, history, technology or aesthetics.

Quote: society

Jansson-Boyd, C (2010) Consumer Psychology. New York: McGraw Hill Education
'Many studies have found that both women and men do not believe that their current body form is attractive...Research has repeatedly found that physically attractive individuals are perceived by most to be socially more desirable than those that are perceived as being unattractive, something that is likely to have been reinforced by consumer societies.'

Key words: Physically attractive individuals, socially more desirable, societies, brands, logos, subculture, music, gender representations/expectations, the media, advertisements, gender relations.

Using these key points I had a starting point for my research into what books would be most helpful to this task.