influence technology has had on the graphic design industry.

influence technology has had on the graphic design industry.



Just something I came across whilst researching journals and reports on Technology and The Graphic Design Industry.

DESIGN INDUSTRY & PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE

Today I have tasked myself with undertaking an experiment with 4 3rd year students on the BA in Graphic Design at The University of Salford.

The aim of the experiment is to gauge the effect technology has had on graphic designers and the thought processes.

I have devised the brief and a short questionnaire to hopefully answer or at least make it a little clearer as to what the outcome will be.

I have an hour to kill as I have just chosen my guinea pigs and I am waiting in the soft pod in the BA Art building as they are actually having a lecture at the moment.

I will update this post later today with some of the findings.

As Danny has already stated this is also my least favourite module (Design Industry & Professional Practice) and as such putting a slight twist on it has given the project a little more meaning and makes it more relevant to me. It is really interesting to see how students of today can adapt to different situations. When I first set out in the Graphic Design Industry I started work on a drawing board and it was only 12-18 months later that the mac was introduced as a tool to aid in the design process.

I remember, at least for the first 3 or 4 months just using the mac as a glorified typesetting machine, still using the drawing board, darkroom, pmt machine and CS10 as the main tools of my trade. It was only after experimenting with the mac and chatting with other designers that the penny eventually dropped and realised that you could do pretty much everything to compose an advert or printed piece of literature on it.

This brought me to the reasoning behind my question - does technology effect the way that designers (graphic) design and more importantly impact on the thought process. I often wonder if it is true that if a designer is not confident within a software package and it is the only tool available to them that they distort their design ideas to accommodate this fact?

I am really looking forward to seeing the results this afternoon.

































After collating all the information from this afternoons experiment and interviews I have now had a chance to post up 3 of the 4 results from the exercise. It was really interesting to look and read through the results. A really interesting issue was that one of the students had produced a really nice design on the computer and just as he was finishing it off his computer crashed and lost all the work he had done. Fortunately he had the idea of photographing the frozen screen image on his iphone before restarting the computer. I will post this design up as and when I receive it on the email.














































Richard Lewis - The student who's work was lost due to a computer crash sent me through his screen grabs last night. It is a shame that the designs where not fully presented as his logo identity looks really strong. One of the pitfalls of modern technology I suppose - If you don't save your work on a regular basis you can leave yourself open to hours of stress and heartache.

MORE READING MATERIAL

After meeting up with Danny last Friday he explained that he had recently been in to a charity shop and stumbled upon 2 great design books and paid the small sum of £1.00 for each of them. When I looked at them it really struck a cord for the project I am undertaking in my "Design Industry for Professional Practice" lectures.

These books where published in 1974 and 1978 and shows techniques and tools/equipment that was available to help and aid designers around that time. Everything just looks oversized and clumsy when you read through the books but without them we wouldn't have progressed to where we are today I suppose?

The information within both books will remind me of how design used to be! Before the advent of a little computer called a Mac that revolutionised the industry that we know and love today.

I had to grab a shot of them and post them on here just to mark the fact that Danny is a jammy sod for finding such books at such a giveaway price! - They have great reference info and images to help move forward with this project and also help me with the major project on memory and film.

Virtual Worlds Project

I am at the last hurdle in producing the first deliverable for one of the smaller modules on my MA course.

This is a statement of intent/sketch/reference book to help produce a final outcome of a 3D model in 3DS MAX.

I have chosen to design a prototype mountain bike based loosely around the original motocross motorbike.

It has been an interesting journey so far with lots of research into both the motorbike and the key elements that go into producing a full suspension mountain bike.

I have just taken a snap shot of the "work in progress" I hope to be collating all the information together tomorrow once the elements have all been brought together and printed out.

I have used natural materials as part of this brief to answer the eco and carbon foot print issues that go with any mass produced product in todays "green" world.

THE KUCHAR BROTHERS

Bright Lights Film Journal :: The Day the Bronx Invaded Earth: The Life and Cinema of the Brothers Kuchar


Born in Manhattan in 1942, the brothers moved to the Bronx at an early age. There the tenement blocks, TV-antenna-studded rooftops, bleak blue winters, and littered streets of New York City’s northernmost borough would become their familiar world. A world that they, like most adolescents, wanted to escape. Failing that, they would remake it, colorize it, drape it in cheap tinsel and leopard skins.
The nearby Bronx Park and the Bronx Botanical Gardens offered temporary refuge from the hostile city streets. George would take long, solitary walks in the wilder, more remote areas of the park, to discover idyllic waterfalls and fast-running streams splashing over rocks.

Semester 2 Main Project Logo Ident

Following on from some of the research I have been doing into cine film and memory I have combined the 2 and created an identity to tie all the information, research and findings together.

Below is the rough version of this work in progress logo.

This logo is based on the spools that I received back from the developing company that processed my first super 8 films - I quiet like the inner forms that are created from the holders and drilled down into the carousel's basic form to create the icons above the simple "Gill Sans" text beneath it.

From the lecture with Tash this week the original logo (quiet rightly) was thought to be a little flat and the text didn't represent memory and ageing. We discussed and it was decided that it needed to be a little more distressed but not computer generated. I am in the process of printing a simple typeface onto acitate and then I am going to leave it out to weather with the elements, it will also be in a position were shoes and car tyres will be walking and driving over it to give it a real worn look and feel to.

Memory:

It could be said that memory makes us who we are.
Memories give us our sense of time ands place,
Can reduce us to tears or bring about a smile.
But memory is elusive and plays games with us too,
shifting with time and confusing the facts.

Photographs and moving pictures (film) have long been used to help us remember.
As a physical reminder of past events,
we invest them with meaning and importance.
We all keep photos and film that mean something special,
from a treasured holiday to a missed family member or friend.

All pictures and film have their own particular life histories.
Some were once treasured personal possessions,
and some commemorate historic events.
Others evoke memories of a past way of life.


The explanation above is helping me to make more sense of my project on memory - I needed to write this to fully understand my direction for this project. I can now focus on an outcome more clearly having undergone this process.

The fact that I have chosen cine film as a medium to record moments in time is very apt for this project.

Looking on Danny's blog this morning - he summed it up quiet nicely:

"obsolete technology as we both felt that the history of hardware hasn't been documented properly due to the haste to constantly upgrade. Okay, people might snigger or indulge in some retro fetishism for an old Atari or Sinclair, but then there has been a mountain of other electronic machinery integral to a lot of industries that - despite probably having the combined memory of one current mobile phone - actually tells us a lot about how things used to be produced. And maybe by acknowledging that development we would be less inclined to take for granted the ease of current digital production".

(Daniel Cookney)

The above extract from Danny's blog has lead me to think about other things that keep us holding onto memories and one thing in particular that is personal to me is that fact that I have kept a large collection of my vinyl records and not one record player at my disposal to play them on.

This is a small part of me holding onto my youth and the memories I have of my favourite bands - long may they continue!!