Dissertation Categories... Seminars

Dissertation

- Needs to be 8,000 words generally with 4 chapters, each 1,500 each, plus introduction and conclusion. Go for 4 different angles on the topic, and highlight these in your proposal

- Need a methodology, can blend more than one methodology (such as feminism)

- Primary research - interviews, designers, texts/things that you are analysing, experiment to gain answers (Evidence gained through observations), study archives

- Secondary research - books, films etc.

• Start a literature search when decided on topic
• Questionnaires need to be sent to mass groups, of different ages/backgrounds, and the questions need to be not directed to get fair accurate results

Here are my notes from the seminars that I attended, giving me new things to consider and research to help me set my proposal up.

Design and Social Change

- Look at Laura Mulvey

- Design activism - wanting to change something political

- L. Baldwin 'visual communication from theory to practice'

• Act of branding always supports one side of society as it supports consumerism. There are issues behind every act of design
• Relations of production - the methodology is ‘dialectal materialism’ 
• Society is composed on base and superstructure (base = forces of production, economic reality, balance of power)
• All ideologies are produced and relate to the balance of power of the base
• Dominance of one group in society over another, e.g. men largely have control over mass media in patriarchal society, so the things produced reflect mens control. e.g. page 3 models in paper, the way women are portrayed in films. As these things are produced over and over again they seem to become acceptable
• All design makes a choice to disrupt or go with the base and superstructure cycle
• Social change disrupts the cycle
• Ideology (find a critical definition)
• A personal political ideology
• A system of believes that becomes dominant, produced by the dominant class, then cements itself as the culture of everyone, even though its not. (look at false consciousness - marxist theory)
• N. Klein ‘No Logo’ - summary of USA consumption.
• We are the 99%, reminds people of their position in the base
• Adbusters - culture jammers - intervening cycle
• Think about the society that produces a design you are looking at, understand the dominant ideologies and its aim. Who is the audience? Design for the masses or a niche? Look into audience theory genre.
• Consider the historical context of period, what are the dominant ideologies of the time, and look into communication theory
• Subculture (oppressed) / culture (dominant forces) - what are the differences?
• Victor Papanek - Design for the real world
• Social tithe - designers should spend 10% of their time working on saving the world somehow through design
• Our advertising culture emerges from already exploitative society
• Pick a designer, use them as a case to ask lots of questions through

Design and Accessibility

• Negotiation of meaning between designer and audience
• How the designer considers the audience when designing and do the audience understand what is being communicated?
• The linear model is one way A->B
• Shannon & Weaver - information source goes to encoder which goes to channel -> decoder -> destination
• Communication goes two ways and there is a social context to communication, A->B->A->B - this is semiotics
• Communication is dependent on political social context, needs scope for feedback, the role of the audience is the creator of meaning
• Audience theory - the message thats decoded depends on gender, age, background of audience
• Designers tend to think of audience as a mass, where audience theory seeks to differ this
• There are different categories for marketing to audiences - supposed to talk to them in different ways, but all categories are problematic
• Social context creates communication
• Frankfurt school (Adorno) - reduces society to 1 mass of people without difference - the effects model. The hypodermic syringe injects mass audience with the same ideas
• People have different readings of TV shows etc..
• Reception theory shows how meaning is created at the point of reception by the individual
• David Morley [1980] Preferred reading is if you adhere to the dominant message that the advertiser wanted you to, e.g. you a see a product and want it, and believe in it because of an advert
• Oppositional vs negotiated
• Uses and gratifications model - extension on reception theory - people use media for own ends
• Complexity of communication
• The death of the author / creator of meaning / birth of the reader
• Research media studies texts
• Bauhaus wanted to create design for everyone
• Modernism - equal, universal design language regardless of culture, gender, etc, however, now a step backwards with postmodernism

Design and Consumerism

• Brand theory - critical texts around how brands operate
• Anti-capitalist movement - negative view of consumerism: occupy movement
• How does an exploitive advert work? Communication theory.
• How is a super brand constructed? How is the idea of it communicated?
• Anti branding theory - Wally Ollins - Naomi Klein - how brands work from a political viewpoint
• Adam Curtins 'Century of the self' documentary - Marx and Freud
• Development of Western Consumerism. Belief you can achieve satisfaction through consumption
• Bernays - founder of PR
• Consumption controls the masses
• Conspicuous consumption
• T. Veblen - we buy to gain status
• Baudrillard - consumer culture - symbolic value of commodity
• Marx commodity concept
• Fetish commodities
• What is social context?
• Case study of popular brand?
• Ethical question: design as wage labourer
• Simmel - trickle down theory - upper classes buy high fashion to show status. Normal people aspire to have same status as elite. e.g. buying burberry. Then upper class move on to a new brand as they don't want to be associated.
• Trickle up effect - Nike mixing underclass fashion, such as from the Bronx, with clothes for middle class
• Consider celebrity endorsements

My Dissertation Ideas - (things I want to answer)

• The best graphic designers are seen to be men, find examples of women
• Do a survey to find others favourite female designers, as many can name lots of men but few women
• Make a document promoting female designers to link it in to DP
• Graphic design by women for women - what do women really want to see?
• What do men think that women want to see?
• Adverts that work the other way around, objectifying men, what do these achieve?
• How has the portrayal of women changed in recent years, is it better or worse?
• Relate back to the base and the superstructure
• 60’s and 70’s boom for feminism seems to have gone backwards
• Look into international women’s day, and magazines promoting and campaigning for female equality such as Stylist
• Need to chose an area of graphic design to focus an example on
• Look at designs aimed at both genders, design by men for women, and design by women for women
• Focus on a particular commodity or area of design
• Men and women want different things so adverts are targeted to them, e.g. mens moisturiser is given a different name to make it more appealing to men
• Does the capitalist society depend on women's insecurities which are shown through adverts designed by men?
• How does graphic design designed by men as compared to that designed by women make women consume products?