COMD3504 - D063
In this project I explore Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s “The Future Manifesto ” idea of how speed was the ultimate goal to achieve greatness is represented in the design of today’s UPC barcode, bringing speed to the world of commerce and also into the avant-garde art movement.
This is my revised Final report outline with annotated bibliography
Design is the only universal way that we as designers can express the message we are trying to get across. communicate to people the information they need in the right way. It is also used to entertain and create cultural movements etc, and this is why it is so important that it is carefully carried out. Design should always be innovative and should be always evolving to adapt to the modern ways we are living in. The manifestos Ken Garland from 1964-2020 refer to similar ideas about using design to help the world be a better place and to further inform and create ways to communicate messages to the public. They also talk about how design should not be used for personal gain and is against the moral code of design. it should be to benefit the world not to gain profit from it by using the design capability to design harmful things for others for self-gain.
The manifesto that caught my attention the most was the 2020 one because it talks about the ways design has evolved and how it is affecting the field and what a big impact it is having on the world. We see how they talk about the way designers have been so wrapped up in this world of fast and speed design for commercial companies that we are forgetting the core values of what design should be. This is similar to one of the manifestos we read in class about how speed was the ultimate goal in order to become a new world. Because of this, we are harming the world and our society. The way we are designing is not being taken into consideration and this is dangerous for our future as a society and as a whole world.
Postmodernism officially began on March 16, 1972, at 3 p.m. Modernism had failed, at least according to the postmodernists. Modernists worked for most of the twentieth century to create a better world based on science and universal truths. They believed that less was more. Less was a burden for postmodernists. They felt that we needed as many references as possible in order to get our own subjective conclusions.
Postmodernists were unimpressed. They believed in a variety of methods and styles. Collage, chance, anarchy, and repetition. These were a thousand times more fascinating. The goal of postmodernists was to provoke listeners into thinking and asking questions. The blandness of the previous era was challenged by post-modern architecture. Postmodernism, like any other trend, has its opponents who objected to excessive decoration.
The rise of mainstream media truly contributed to the postmodernism take off. The world had never been more connected. For many, postmodernism was freeing, providing a dynamic, often unsettling voice for creative expression. Postmodern cinema continues to confuses, amaze, and thrill us. We’re still confused by postmodernist performers. We can’t get enough of weird postmodern art, either. In terms of politics, philosophy, and creativity, the postmodern revolution has proven to be a powerful force. Like a massive social push, it forces society to consider why things are the way they are, and why they aren’t. Still today we live in a postmodernist world where every day we see more and more of what confuses us and also amazes us.
Writing in my research journal has been pretty helpful because I can go back and look at my notes and thoughts for when I’m writing my papers so I can refresh my memory of the topics we read in the past. It keeps every reading responses organize and it is pretty helpful overall.
It’s OKAY To Look
the ad I choose is an ad from the company easy Streets. The ad is from a 2020 campaign done by Sam Pratt, it is a very detailed exposing advertisement and I wanted to decode the meaning and the linguistics behind it.
When we see McLuhan talk about “the medium is the message” we get a sense of how important the form of the medium is when communicating a message. the medium is the message because it is the way we choose to communicate a message and this plays a big role because we can alternate the meaning of the message by simply using different fonts or instead of a letter we can send a video. this alternates the way we perceive the message. As designers, we need to try to put out the best medium possible so the viewers don’t have a hard time trying to understand the message you are trying to communicate.
Technology has allowed for many new mediums to be produced to communicate messages. sometimes it might even be worrisome because there is so an extent to which we can produce a medium that it can be possible to manipulate this and even use it as a political or propaganda weapon. This new type of design needs to be carefully crafted before is put out into the world.
Designers have the power and the technology to choose to create different mediums to communicate and change the world, but it is only in their hands if they choose how they would use it and if this would be a good or bad thing for society. we as designers play one of the most important roles in shaping our society because we have the knowledge and the power to create to such an extent and be able to gain from it in any way. such power combined with the new technology can sometimes be threatening and this is why we must try to always choose the right way to communicate a message so we don’t alter or cause any change or destruction in our society.
The topic for my final report would be about the way technology has been taking control over our lives whiteout we even notice and is now impossible to disconnect from it, even if we try at a very young age with kids.
OUTLINE –
In the readings, we see how paul rand explores what culture jamming is and how the mainstream industry competes with the underground. Culture jamming refers to the creation of images or practices that force viewers to question the status quo. When designers do this they make us think about the products or things we consume from a totally different perspective. This method challenges mainstream corporate advertisement into showing the true side behind the curtain of what their products or services are really doing to consumers. Culture gaming is being used today in one of the biggest food chain industries, Macdonald’s. Many designers have played around with the words and logo of the company, going from flipping the famous M logo, upside down and making it look like a W, and then using it to write “Weight”. They have also played with their famous slang, “I’m loving it” changing it to “I’m gaining it”. This starts a social disruption and it starts making people question the status quote and what they are consuming. Paul Rand also talks about the ways advertisement has been changing and evolving. He says” What has always kept the designer and client at odds is the same thing that has kept them in accord. For the former, design is a means for invention and experiment, for the latter, a means of achieving economic, political, or social ends. This shows the difference between mainstream vs. underground because old designer thinks of design as a way to invent and innovate but nowadays the mainstream thinks about how they can make money or make a political change. We’ve been experiencing this for the longest now from political cartoons to biased news media streams, design has become a way to manipulate and change people’s points of view and it has lost the meaningful power that design has, and that is to make and innovate into a better society. A lot of companies nowadays think that design is only to create advertisements and propaganda and this is taking away the fundamental value that designers like Paul Rand have left us with
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In the first article Celebrating the African-American Practitioners Absent From Way Too Many Classroom Lectures by Madeleine Morley, we can see and understand the main reason why African-Americans are so absent in the history of graphic design. She explains and analysis some of the reasons for this too had happened. Back when graphic design and art itself was becoming more and more popular African Americans were kept away from it and with the passing years, this still kept happening. White folks had the advantage to go to art schools and explore the arts and crafts without having to worry about anything because they had the wealth and the social class to do so. This prevented African American and another large minority to be absent from the books of the history of graphic design. Only white European folks were the ones being future and portrayed on these books and I think this somewhat might affect future graphic designers and artists by influencing the idea that they might not be Successful because there is one that sounds or looks like them on this history books. I believe we must start to change history and not only teach it the past but also teach the present so our students understand that there are people like them right now out there in the world thriving. We must push aside the history of suppression and choose diversity.
In the second reading Typography as a Radical Act in an Industry Ever-dominated by White Men by Silas Munro, we explore how dominant white folks were back in the days in the design and typographic industry. Silas talks about how Holmes-Miller a newly born designer of color, happened to have noticed the same things as Maurice Cherry another person of color in this field, that designers of color like him were almost non-existent and they’ve been noticing this for years. Back then it was really hard for African Americans to obtain a degree in the arts and not having many or any, in this case, didn’t help them integrate into the industry at all. This was a major step back for designers of color to be part of graphic design history. She also talks about the plan Seal had to create a new movement that would include people of color and diverse backgrounds working in the typography field. I think this was a great thing that happen because this give a platform for people of color to express themselves to the world and create their own type of faces that resemble their history. This was a step further into portraying and pushing more artists of color into the industry making them be seen by the majority.
In the third reading, Design Gets More Diverse by Alice Rawsthorn, we explore how people of color have to work ten times harder than the other majority. People of color don’t often have the chance to fail and start again or stop and continue later. they are not given the chance but white folks have the money and power to do so. this is why people of color have to work and go to school or have to work 10 times harder to be able to keep that scholarship. There aren’t many designers of color out in the industry nowadays and I feel this is because at the beginning of this era they were being kept away from reaching the industry by preventing them to hired in companies because of the color of their skin or background. I believe that more and more artists and designers of color are emerging due to these new technologies that have been evolving over the years. Technology has been allowing more and more people of color to start creating at their own comfort without being judged or limited and the internet giving them access to show the world their work.
Emmanuel Mena
In my paper, I discuss the creation of the UPC BarCode system back in 1974, and how it reflects some of the theories and ideas we have read and discussed during our classes. The UPC BarCode is something we interact with every day in our lives and the way it was designed would have you shocked.
In Bauhaus’s text, we can see how he explained that the academy didn’t produce artists, that this only give false hopes to people. the techniques and methods they were applying weren’t giving the future artist enough practice or knowledge. I feel like this was one of the reasons why a lot of people wanted to modernize life once and for all back in the day. They didn’t really try to make an effort into making classes or workshops to teach accordingly what art really was. The academy build this system of failure so people would divert from wanting to be artists and lean towards the more futuristic ideas they had in mind. He, later on, explains the way we have to interpret work and this is by using our brain and hands, by touching and analyzing. This is very important because it is the only way to know how we connect with the work we do, we have to see it and try it to understand it.
In the other second and third readings, we explore how this new method called type photo was typed and images are combined together. This new technology reinvented the way we looked at typed and photography back in the day. these two play so a big role in the artistic world that without them we wouldn’t be where we are at today. It is used to send messages across and it makes us understand and perceive things in very different ways and this is why typography is so strong.
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