Jonathan Valero – May 5

• Comparing video game advertisments over the decades
• Comparing crash bandicoot advertiment from the 90’s to now
• The changes in advertisments for Video games in and out of the game
• Use of video games for advertisments in our modern age

Duran, H.B. “Then Vs. Now: The Evolution Of Videogame Commercials.” AList, 29 Dec. 2016, www.alistdaily.com/media/then-vs-now-the-evolution-of-videogame-commercials/.

“Videogame Advertisements from the 1980’s to 2010.” Mega Cat Studios, megacatstudios.com/blogs/press/videogame-advertisements-from-the-1980-s-to-2010.

McCarthy, Caty. “Let’s Remember the Wacky Crash Bandicoot Commercials from the 1990s.” USgamer.net, USG, 30 June 2017, www.usgamer.net/articles/lets-remember-the-wacky-crash-bandicoot-commercials-from-the-1990s.

Push Square. “Crash Bandicoot Is Back with 90s Style N. Sane Trilogy Ads.” Push Square, 19 June 2017, www.pushsquare.com/news/2017/06/crash_bandicoot_is_back_with_90s_style_n_sane_trilogy_ads.

Barnes, Martin, and Felix Parr. Trendjackers, 11 July 2019, trendjackers.com/the-past-present-future-of-advertising-within-video-games/.

Jonathan Valero – March 24

This is an ad for Huda Beauty foundation showing the diversity of skin tones that their shades are available in. It also has women and men in the ad to show inclusivity of their product.

 

This is an older ad for the for the white variant of the PSP, playstation’s portable system, the issue is very apparent with a white person standing over and holding on to a black person the idea is that the white is superior to the black which for the system itself is fine but the execution had very obvious racial insensitivity.

 

This is an ad for the video game call of duty black ops that shows a gun fight showing people of all kinds of occupations genders and races to give the idea that anybody can play this game and have fun also shown in the title “There’s a solider in all of us”.

Jonathan Valero – March 17

Media and technology have been an extension for humans since the beginning of humanity itself cave men used spears as tools for hunting food and ancient wall painting were probably used to try and immortalize what they saw during that day or as a story telling tool. this is no different then us using a gun to hunt for food or for one of us to post on social media to talk about our recent vacation. The major difference between then and now is the scope of reach that technology now gives. Technology was only good for this that had it near them, a cave painting could be seen by maybe a handful of people but a photo taken to day and uploaded could be seen not only by hundreds if not thousands of people but now anyone on the planet could also see it. Technology has evolved to be able to spread and improve without borders.

This is however a double edged sword the main issue with technology that can work without laws and borders is that it works without law and borders. Not everything that gets shared should be shared, people have become accustom to having any information in the world in the palm of their hand that many have developed a sense of entitlement or lack of social awareness and lack of empathy online this also isn’t help by the fact its really easy to be anonymous and be able to simply avoid any consequences for actions.

Thankfully I feel the ones who can best use technology are those who can get attention and inspire those who look at their work artists are always putting up their work and that work is influenced  by older artists, so its basically a cycle that’s infinitely repeating but an issue with this is that it’s easy to lose track of who inspired who and have someone steal work and try to get profit and attention from someone else’s success so it comes to the community to keep itself in check and watch out for itself.

 

Jonathan Valero – March 10th

How should we design? well according to Tschichold in The New Type with the idea of “Clarity above all. Early typography had the freedom to be experimental and expressive because we didn’t have any rules for what makes good design. All that was known was that is the text is large and attention grabbing we can catch a larger audience.In this modern age however we like to have out things small,efficient and clear gone are the days of large serif fonts or fancy italics today we got for curved san serifs fonts for maximum readability.

If you asked Joseph Muller then he would tell you that you should design with mathematical precision in mind with the “Grid” as a blueprint. Design being almost the opposite of Art with Art being a persons self expression design is a calculation and researched piece that is created with a very specific intention in mind. On top of intention it’s also created to be a piece of the environment its created form, designs are creations made to be very modern very “now” they are not made to reinvent the wheel instead they are made to make the wheel more appealing and more appealing to modern audiences.

My opinion of how we should design is a combination of both of these ideas. I feel like design should revolve around the client more then anyone else we as designers work to create the vision of those who use our services so because of this we need to be able to be calculative to create anything that’s asked of us but to be able to try to make it as modern as possible to make sure it has wide appeal to anyone who would observe it.

Jonathan Valero – February 25

When people think of going to school they usually think of being taught the skills that they’ll need to function and thrive in the real world but that’s the traditional way of doing education. One of the major differences that we as design students face is that we are taught not just skills and fundamentals for creating good design but are also taught that we should break the rules to create these designs. This however conflicts with traditional education because we are also taught that we should always follow “the academy” as stated in  “Walter Gropius; The Theory and Organization of the Bauhaus (1923)

“But lately the artist has been mislead but the fatal and arrogant fallacy, fostered by the state that art is a profession which can be mastered by study.Schooling alone can never produce art!”

This is still as relevant today in the year 2020 as it was back in the year of 1923 there are some classes that feel like grades matter more then the art itself, the issue with this is that art is not something that should be standardized it should be an expression unique to the artist. That is what creates new groundbreaking work in out modern age creating based on new unique ideas and not just following premade conventions that have been done multiple times with no variations.

Jonathan Valero – February 18

In the readings the shared idea was that technology would come to improve designs in multiple ways including efficiency and our ability to evolve already made creations which shows that these designers had incredible foresight for their time. In the modern day every thing we have now is an evolution of what we had before. Firsts there are Tv’s before that radios and before that books ect. just as they predicted but not everything that they discussed remained true. in the reading “El Lissitzky, Our Book (1926)”  he discusses how books are an invention with no evolution and will always stay the same as everything around it changes and evolves but the reality is that books have seen some of the most evolution of anything man made creation. There are now books made entirely of pictures, audio books and even digital books I feel like maybe Lissitzky’s definition of a book prevented him from seeing what a book could actually become.

A points of discussion that end up happening into the modern day was in  “Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism (1909)” where Filippo discussed the use of  technology for the advancement of military power which is more prevalent now then it’s ever been in modern day U.S our military retrieves some of the most funding in the country and other major national superpowers simply paling in comparison to us. I feel if we spent in other parts of the country as much as we do in the military there’d have been more major breakthroughs in departments like health and education.

With this knowledge that’s shown to us in these readings it’s surprising that we don’t look at them as ways to direct how we making development in technology and instead simply look at them as discussion points for what ideas people have had. I feel if more people with power looked at these through a more critical lens then perhaps more advancements would be made to help people instead of just evolving for the sake of commercialization and profit.

Jonathan Valero- February 11

Signs and symbols now have multiple uses in our everyday language one that a lot of people are familiar with are emojis. Today in modern context emojis are used to express the emotion a text is meant to be read and some people can see a text without emojis as upsetting or malicious depending on the context.  They’ve become an extension of expression for the younger generation but its not the only way we use signs in everyday life symbols are also shown everywhere for driving we use them as non verbal instructions and warning for people to know of any up coming dangers or instructions on how to get to destinations.

Signs/Signifiers are used in general communication to assist in how people can read and understand information. In this reading Course in General Linguistics Ferdinand uses diagrams to visually show some of the concepts that readers might not understand by simply reading them.

language,graphic,communication and visual arts share a lot of similarities to one another in that they are all forms of expressing ideas.These could be for social reasons like to communication to one another or it could also be for commercial reasons like ads. some of the main differences  among these is how they are supposed to capture our attention for example language is all based on our sense of hearing and so have a more direct impact on us because its more personal in the way we are exposed to it. The others instead are more visual so they have to work to convince us to feel the way they want us to with the use of images colors and fonts.

Jonathan Valero – February 4th

After having read both of the texts I was able to gain insight on inspirations old designers had and how they incorporated old ideas into their modern works.  Before I get into that I have to say when I was reading Helen Armstrong, Introduction: Revisiting the Avant-Garde from Graphic Design Theory: Readings from the Field, all I could think was wow this is pretentious after reading it over 2-4 times I was able to understand it. An example of this is during this quote:

“Out of this recent push toward authorship, new collective voices hearken
ing back to the avant-garde are emerging. As a result of technology, content generation by individuals has never been easier. (Consider the popularity of
the diy and the “Free Culture” movements.) As more and more designers,along with the rest of the general population, become initiators and producers of content, a leveling is occurring. A new kind of collective voice, more anonymous than individual, is beginning to emerge.”

This is a lot just to say technology makes it easy for anyone to easily and anonymously create content I know that authors probably have to be very articulate to please their publishers but I feel like the overcompliacation of the writing would turn off a more casual reader who might be interested in the topics being discussed  , alright rant over.

To answer one of the questions given contemporary designers should always keep a close eye to archaic techniques because nothing in design in original everything is stolen unless you were the one to create it. All design finds its roots in not just inspiration but taking what’s inspired you and expanding on it and making it your own. We can look at the font styling of Counting Sheep in the text, images are put as a visual for the reader to better understand their use as a numerical value which i’m sure the original designers of the symbols or tallies did not plan for them to be used this way but that’s what happens when we incorporated whats already been made into our modern works.

The visuals in Counting Sheep are not only aesthetically interesting from a designs stand point but also just as eye candy while reading the passage itself. When I was reading both the passages Counting Sheep was much easier to read despite being longer because it has those symbols as little distractions to break the long blocks of text. They served not only as an aesthetic distraction but a functional one this is an advantage of using archaic techniques they can always be reworked and reused to solve modern problems, not all problems need new answers to resolve them some are just hidden in plain sight.