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?
