A visual explanation of The Medium is the Massage while verbally explaining the Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.

If we simplify what is language, we see it as a structured set of written characters or sounds, representing things in our natural world. We can look at the past for examples of this, shown by Egyptian hieroglyphics or cave drawings by our ancient ancestors. While both are not only different in a visual sense, both are also different in age. However, they both were born for the same purpose; to tell a story. If you think about this a little deeper, you realize that if the purpose of language is to tell a story, then language must be how the story is told. Better said, language is the tool we use to communicate with one another.

What distinguishes language from other forms of communication is that it follows a certain set of rules in order to effectively communicate with one another.

Symbols and icons are related to language because they stand in place of words, representing an idea or thing while communicating through a drawing. Society has attached meaning to symbols and while symbols aren’t a language, they are equivalent to words within a language.

I believe language has shaped design historically in the sense that it has encouraged us to ask ourselves if we can boil words down to graphic images and furthermore, simplify an entire language into graphic elements. However, culture is what really shaped design more than language. A symbol can mean two very different things to different people depending on their society’s interpretation.

On another note, I wouldn’t say there things language can’t communicate, however, I think in ways design can communicate more effectively. The reason for that is because images can sometimes be a lot more impactful, communicating a variety of messages at a quick glance, instead of a slower process that you must know and work to understand.

According to Munari, design and practicality should be intertwined with each other. He says “there should be no such thing as art divorced from life, with beautiful things to look at and ugly things to use.” They should be one. I agree with his statement, however, I think l understand why it isn’t. That is because an object doesn’t necessarily need to be designed aesthetically pleasing for it to still be useful. That is also what distinguishes it from other creative occupations.

Where art is made to be either aesthetically pleasing, emotionally provoking, or both, design is not. Design is a marriage between art and practicality. Design is used as a solution to a problem in communication. According to Munari, a designer “responds to the human needs of his time, and helps people to solve certain problems without the stylistic preconceptions or fake notions of artistic dignity derived from the schism of the arts.”

In the reading, Lupton says that graphic designers should concern themselves with theory because it’s a necessary reflection on us. It is a way to reflect on ourselves, our work, and ideologies. The questions raised in theory, whether they are philosophical, political, or aesthetic have inspired the work of their authors and also the work of the people around them. Thus, it is certain that theory can do the same for us in present time.

However, while theory can be inspirational, I don’t think graphic designers should concern themselves with it very much. The particular reason for this is that theory typically isn’t a piece of knowledge that is actionable. It provides you with something to think about, that can inspire a certain technique or style of design, but not the technique itself. While it can be valuable, I personally haven’t found theory to be useful in design. When I read about Avant-Garde, I view it as a piece of history with no direct application to pieces of work. It tells me why some designs or artworks are styled a certain way, but it doesn’t tell me how to replicate them or apply the knowledge.

Message Windmill

The Windmill is made with 4 blades, depicted by the different impacts of messages that we get exposed to everyday. The center of the windmill is an eye, and the base of the windmill is a beam that washes the eye with a creative splash of messages designed to convince us that we want or care about something. Messages come in different mediums such as TV’s, social media, video games, books, etc., but there are also many subliminal messages that occur on different occasions such as the owl on the dollar bill.

inspiration:

According to what McLuhan wrote in chapter one in “Understanding Media”, McLuhan pointed out that a medium is always under another medium. The example that he gave was “a contenting of writing can be a speech, a written word is the content of print and print is the content of telegraph”. It’s because there are a lot of ways to spread ideas and information under the technologies that we have. Also note that there are a lot of mediums, and ways of medium shows. This process sharpens the gaps between generations.

Ageism became a problem in our society. The media is more important than the content itself. It’s because under the medium that information locates, it can filter who can read the information. For example having printed versions of newspapers, mainly elder would buy and read through it when they are on the subway or bus. On the other hand, if the news was an online version, then more young people would get this information on their phones compared to the elderly.

Moreover, the time and the packaging of the information are the keys to spread information. For example, watching a newscast isn’t as emotional and conversational as a TV show that broadcast the same crime or event. People would likely talk about it, more people would bring up the problem. And this message would be on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and all kinds of social media. It’s great that we have all this information online and easily get it. Although we can get information quickly and easily we wouldn’t know or make sure that what we are looking for is the truth or the whole story. Often we lose the truth from what we are looking at online, and the phenomenon turns out what we often say today “fake news”.

Ever since our generations have evolved and adapted with technology, it has shaped our future, our society, our media and more. That is called the ‘medium’ of our time, it reshapes and alters patterns of social communications and personal lifestyle or habits. A brief example, compared to how students attend class, we now use technology at its best to connect to ‘zoom’, before the pandemic many students would have to physically attend to school or campus. Going through this adaptation has impacted many students to function with technology that many of the old generations such as parents or elders are unable to cooperate with because they find it to be complicated. How technology influences our generation and society leads to a concerning question for how are we going to shape our future. 

Media, today’s essential tool that reshapes the pattern of communication, where we most spend on the internet for entertainment purposes, informational research, publishing, broadcasting and more. Even today, celebrities communicate their fans through social media such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and more. It is a convenient method for people to be connected with the media, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are just a follower, the media can be shifted in any form and function, it could be for business use, personal use (possibly growth), and more. Media is another way of creating communities, where many people can join based on their preferences, interests and more. 

For how the media has shaped our society depends on how people deliver in their communities. Media can be used in any way people desire to do so, but sometimes it can be put in the wrong hands. For instance, cyber bullying is one of the common issues among adolescents, releasing false information that causes conflicts through debates, hijacking private information, and more. That is just the interior issues about the media but if we think about ourselves outside the media, think about how we are so drawn to technology that we tend to forget about reality and society itself. We must not forget that we as human beings have a responsibility on our own, our family, our community, and so on. Yes, technology can also benefit people to stay connected from anywhere and whenever possible. 

If the ‘medium’ was interpreted as a message for most designers, I think this message designates for most designers and artists in our present to realize that our technology has evolved to its capability to adapt to our creativity, our ambition and our connection to our community. There are many designers in the media competing to reach their ultimate goals but most of the work of designers are subordinate to the media, designers aren’t meant to be famed for what they do, apparently designers are only credited by their work but would never be recognized by the audience. 

In McLuhan’s and Quentin Fiore’s The Medium is the Massage they focus on sharing with us how did the new media changed the world and still changing it, I think by new media he meant Tv and radio, which made information travel so fast that they described the modern living room at that time as a voting booth, This is an example of how media extends humanity, another example is the comparison they made in the book between the times of George Washington when he once said that Benj. Franklin was In Paris for a year and he hadn’t heard from him so he would send him a letter which compared to our times or the time of the author is crazy now you can reach anybody anywhere multiple times a day.

According to the reading the author believes the technological progress brings despair and anxiety, this is pretty evident throughout the book by the author’s words, and it is also referred to in the second spread by the quote “The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur.” A.N. Whitehead, I do not agree with the author’s point of view maybe I do not understand it right, but I think he was pointing at the cause the people are trying to approach new problems with old tools, so the problem is in the people, not the technology. Also, today media is an extension of the human body, how many people do you see around that done to have a phone hmmm 0.

Artists and designers can use the media to always change the world for the better, I agree with the author that media can Influence everything in a person’s life so If we control this media, we better make it change humans for the better. I believe a designer’s work is subordinate to the media that transfer it because the media play the role of the container of the work if the work does not fit it doesn’t matter what that piece of work was it would achieve its goal.

In this text, McLuhan focuses on the transition of human interaction with the technological world and the alteration of perception that it brings with it. He describes technology and media as an extension of man for the evolving aspect of society that it provokes and its behavioral changes. He calls it the “age of anxiety” because the transition has been continuously fast that people still try to do today’s task with yesterday tools and concepts refusing adaptation or not considering the need for a new perspective, leading to an overwhelming feeling of why things are going in this direction. That happened with the printing technology as well, where people had to switch totally the behavior as media was used and adapt to a faster pace of data circulation.

This is also a generational issue because the youth understood or had an easier transition to such mediums, but for the older generation, it has always been a problem which means that they would have fewer opportunities available in society for not having the capacity to handle the technology required. In the education aspect, McLuhan remarks that the youth wasn’t or should not be allowed to be exposed to old methods and behaviors in order to have the right perception of the actual mediums being used at the time.

The switch of the medium is the message regardless of its negative aspects toward a generation has a great influence on designers and the distribution of information. It has allowed designers to persuade and influence society’s behavior by spreading information through the right medium. This means that the message is the essence of the medium, has a faster response and result than it was before where a letter could take a year to arrive or even get lost in the process. Having that in mind we can come to the conclusion that technology-enhanced information has influenced and changed behaviors in the whole world for the effectiveness of its design and message, leading to faster development of electronic data consumption and information process.