Dissertation Tutorial 2

Dissertation Tutorial 1

Task Six

This is a logo I designed for a brief at the end of last year. It began as a summer brief where I was asked to research 'What Is Good'. I picked three topics and researched them, when the new term began in September, using our chosen 'What Is Good' we were to write our own brief. I chose vintage shops and from here, I had noticed the problem of how the shops were not easy to shop in if you were looking for something in particular. In response to this, I proposed a chain of vintage shops that were categorised by each decade, making it easier for the customer to shop in.

For the logo I went with a fifties style, as the word vintage made me think, Marilyn Monroe. The font was important too, and I noticed a lot of fifties design had quite a used a font that was scripted and quite feminine. The shape around the text, has a feminine feel too, I kept it very simple with a small amount of decoration to show a subtle element of contemporary coming through.
The design of the fifties took a turning point this was the beginning of the post-war period, and the term 'blue skies design' was coined by an American, signifying an optimistic future.

Vintage is a popular word in fashion nowadays, especially among students, I found in research. The styles from 20's through to 90's are back in shops again, and the popularity of vintage fairs are on the increase. It's much more rewarding to rummage through the vintage furniture and find a one off scarf than to walk straight into Topshop and pick one up visible from the back of the shop, and find every man and his dog wearing it.

And with the clothing follows other vintage items, accessories, photos, cameras, computers... Absolutely everything. Even events, cake sales and tea parties are becoming more popular, especially in Leeds, I have noticed a few posters up and around the university area, with the hand scripted feminine font, with the fifties style drawings of a woman. I definitely didn't want to use that in my logo, as it seemed too obvious, and I wanted to use the simplicity to create a feeling of elegance.

Similar to the way the Dymo tape machine is back, this time for children, but in the eighties was used to create the punk text. The dymo tape machine also produced stickers for the work place, which because of its raised strong lettering, meant it was more durable than a normal sticker. The lettering was associated with working class revolt.

Task Five

1. How is sustainability defined in the text?
2. What are the main characteristics or tendencies of Capitalism
3. Define a 'crisis of Capitalism'. Offer an example.
4. What solutions have been offered to the sustainability question? Are these successful or realistic? - If not why are they flawed?
5. Is the concept of sustainability compatible with Capitalism?

Sustainability is described as the response to environmental crisis, such as climate change, natural resource depletion, species extinction as an ideology is defined as a communal concept, however, in practice, it is down to technology and the individual to engage in a sustainable lifestyle, which in turn isolates those who cannot afford this way of life.

The most common definition, referred to in the text is from the Brundtland Commission, ‘sustainable development is the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’

Capitalism is a system that has to expand and constantly find new products to commodify to avoid stagnation. It is not a straight forward system, it is a diverse web that continuously grows and traps things, sometimes causing a crisis.

A crisis of capitalism may appear after material and financial expression and it seems the capitalisation has reached its limit, but with reinvention and a constant push for new ideas and technologies, it can push past these limitations, ‘deferring the apocalypse for yet another day’.

A physical solution to sustainability is bio-diesel which is a clean alternative to normal diesel; the bio fuel is designed to run in normal diesel engines. The diesel is made up from vegetable and animal fats, this is regarded as sustainable as it reuses animal and vegetable residue. The main source is from corn plants, which have a short life cycle so the bio-diesel is also considered as renewable, compared to the current sources of fuel which are non-renewable. The emissions from bio-diesel are also much lower than normal diesel, making it clean and less damaging to the environment. Currently it is quite expensive due to the limited production and the shipping involved, however, it is predicted the price will decrease over time.

BIOX Corporation is the largest advocate of bio-diesel, and it may seem that they represent ecological integrity and economic prosperity it comes with a sacrifice, which is social equality. A BIOX plant was constructed in the North End of Hamilton (Ontario), the site was cheap, but it was the community’s only bit of ‘green space’, and was built opposite a residential area. After the plant had been built, the conditions of living for residents in the surrounding area became unpleasant as the constant tremors resulted in structural damage to the houses. It was also highly dangerous, as there were highly flammable chemicals in storage just a hundred feet from housing.

Currently, capitalism and sustainability are not compatible, and this is how the term ‘greenwashing’ came about, as companies such as McDonalds, an icon of capitalism, claim to be ‘sustainable’ and ‘eco-friendly’, but in reality they have no green credentials whatsoever, but by trying to tap into the market it brings about ‘appeal’ over other fast-food chains. McDonalds changed their brand identity from red and yellow to green and yellow in an attempt to show they had gone green, so far, the colour change is the only green thing about them. For a green planet, capitalism must be overthrown.

Lecture 6... Globalisation

- Definitions of globalisation:

- Socialist: The process of transformation of local or regional phenomena into global ones. It can be described as a process by which the people of the world are unified into a single society and function together. This process is a combination of economic, technological, sociocultural and political forces.

- Capitalist: The elimination of state-enforced restrictions on exchanges across borders and the increasingly integrated and complex global system of production and exchange that has emerged as a result.

- Globalisation: Covering a wide range of distinct political, economic, and cultural trends, fashionable buzzword. Synonym for the following - the pursuit of classical liberal (or free market), policies in the world economy (economic

liberalization), the growing dominance of western (or even American)

forms of political, economic, and cultural life (westernization or Americanization), the proliferation of new information technologies (the

Internet Revolution), as well as the notion that humanity stands at the

threshold of realizing one single unified community in which major

sources of social conflict have vanished (global integration)’.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/globalization/

- George Ritzer: ‘McDonaldization’ describes wide ranging sociocultural processes by which the principles of fast-food restaurants are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American societies as well as the rest of the world.

- Staff: Limited skills.

- Menu: Limited, cheap, fast.

- Marshall McLuhan: from sixties.

- Electric technology – humanity will be more conscious – world like a village, everyone cares.

- Everyone will work together – seeing what’s going on.

- ‘Electric technology…would seem to render individualism obsolete and corporate interdependence mandatory’. – images make humans desensitised e.g. 9/11.

- Technological determinism – assumption that technology will make world a better place: Global village.

- In world: Centripetal forces, pushing globalisation.

- Centrifugal forces- splitting world, wars etc.

- Mark Juergensmeyer – growth of secularisation – a ‘new cold war’ between religion and secular state.

- Cultural imperialism – Global village is run with a set of values then it would not be so much an integrated community as an assimilated one.

- Media conglomerates operate as oligopolies e.g. Timewarner: AOL, HBO, New Line Cinema.

- Propoganda: views of individual transferred.

- News corporate – Market interest

1. North America

2. W. Europe, Japan and Australia.

3. Developing economies and regular producers (India, China, Brazil, E. Europe)

4. Rest of world.

- US Media Power: New form of imperialism

- Local cultures destroyed in this process and new forms of cultural dependency shapes, mirroring old school colonialism.

- Schiller – dominance of US driven commercial media forces US model of broadcasting onto the rest of world but also inculcates US style consumerism in societies that can ill afford it!

- India – great seller of skin whitening cream.

- Chomsky and Herman (1998) ‘Manufacturing Consent’

- 5 Basic Filters: Ownership, Funding, Sourcing, Flak, Anti-communist ideology.

- Ownership – Rupert Murdoch

- News of the World

- The Sun

- The Sunday Times

- The Times

- NY Post

- BSkyB

- Fox TV

- News = business

- Needs money to operate.

- Only as good as it needs to be.

- Funding – controls content – from sponsors, pleasing paymasters.

- Flak = controls content

- Slant on stories.

- Media pressure group – forces stories on news agencies.

- Anti ideologies – makes agree by making others seem ridiculous.

- Film: An Inconvenient Truth

- Retreat of glaciers

- Since 1880, temperature increased.

- Keeling curve, carbon dioxide rising.

- America = cause.

- Flat Earthers

- Jim Inhofe – Global warming, biggest hoax ever.

- To make a green planet: overthrow capitalism.

- Greenwashing: No green credentials, but trying to tap into green market e.g. McDonalds is green, but nothing has changed.

Task Four

Use Shannon & Weaver's model of the communication process to write a 300-400 word analysis of a work of Graphic Design. Comment on the ways in which the piece of Graphic Design attempts to communicate to a specific audience, using techniques of redundancy, entropy or noise.



This piece of Graphic Design is a Topshop advertisement, and works with the Shannon and Weaver model of communication theory, in terms of the poster communicating a message. The information source in this case is the client, who may have come up with the idea/concept for the piece, the next step in communication is the transmitter, a designer or design studio is responsible for this step, as is it their job to transmit the information from the source. This transmission is transferred to the receiver which in the case of Graphics means to transfer on to a medium, there is a large variety of ways this can be done, print, screen, and signage. Finally is destination, this message is received by the audience, who could be a potential or existing customer or a traveller.

There are problems with communication in Graphics that can occur sometimes. Noise can alter the effectiveness of the message; noise is anything added between the transmitter and receiver. Redundancy is the repetition of the message, this is not necessarily a bad thing, as it can help to clarify the message. Finally, there is entropy, which is uncertainty in the message. Redundancy can make the message more long winded but it can help to reduce entropy.

In this case, the message is quite straight forward, ‘these clothes are from Topshop’, and without the type it would just be a photo. However, without the photo, it is still an advert, for the shop, and not those exact clothes. So, it could be argued that the photo is redundancy, but it is acting as clarification.
Noise could really affect the way the destination receives the message, as this image is not in context, it is not certain whether this is a bus stop advert, or a magazine advert, and the two places receive different audiences, a bus stop will receive males and females of all ages, gender, ethnicity and background, but if it is a Vogue advert, then only a certain demographic will be receiving that message.
Relating to this is the external noise, what surrounds the advert, if it is next to a Benetton campaign about sweatshops, the advert might not be so warmly welcomed due to the many accusations of Topshop using child labour.
Visual noise will have an effect too, the colours surrounding the advert, and lighting, if it is in a dimly lit corridor, it may not be so noticeable, however if it is on a lightboard, it would stand out much more.

Reading List For Essay...

Some texts which will be useful to me for my essay:

Johnson, P (2009) British Board of Film Classification in: Papadopoulos, Dr. L. (2010) Sexualisation of Young People: Review, http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100418065544/http:/homeoffice.gov.uk/documents/Sexualisation-of-young-people.html

This is a printed document in the library, and looks into how today's images and messages are extremely sexualised and the effect that this has on the young people of today. This will be really helpful in assessing the younger generation of females today.

Meehan, D M (1983): Ladies of the Evening: Women Characters of Prime-Time Television. Metuchen, NJ, Scarecrow.

In my Sociology A-Level we briefly covered Meehan's work on soaps, and the list of stereotypes she came up with that featured in each soap, this will be useful in assessing the accuracy of representation of women in the media.

Wolf, N. (1991) The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women, Vintage, UK.

Naomi Wolf's work will be essential to my essay, The Beauty Myth looks at beauty as a social construct, which is an idea constructed by society, and again will be good in backing up the representation of women.

Livingstone, S. (2007) From Family Television to Bedroom Culture: Young Peoples Media at Home. In Devereux, E. Media Studies: Key Issues and Debates, Sage, London.

Another work covered in my Sociology qualification, which looks at the growth of the media which correlates with today's youth spend more time in 'bedrooms' than playing outdoors.