Collide Digital Outcome

For the digital aspect of the Collide brief I was initially unsure of what to produce as being a graphic designer, my focus is mainly on print design and I am still learning in terms of animation and motion graphics. 

Looking at 'The New Aesthetic' made informed my design outcome and I wanted to try something I hadn't done before in terms of the animating. The overall outcome is quite simplistic, but that is the look I wanted to create, and to reflect the retro 8-bit form. 

Here is my final outcome:




Collide Digital from Libby Howker on Vimeo.




If there was something I would change it would perhaps be the speed at which the footage plays at, also the repetitiveness of the animation maybe could have a negative impact when viewing but overall I feel this digital outcome would 'evoke happiness' as the brief asked, with the colourful graphics and artwork.

Collide Research & Development

Ycn Research & Development

Keetra Dean Dixon

I came across Dixon's work online and then rediscovered it while reading 'Participate: Designing with User-Generated Content'.

The thing I like most is Dixon's aesthetic and her focus on process as part of the design, the documentation becomes the design. 





I really like this piece of work called 'Amazing Mistake' which reads 'Embrace the Amazing Mistake' and where the word 'Mistake' has been used to make the word 'Amazing'. 





http://fromkeetra.com/amazing-mistake/   

Wolff Olins

I really liked this work by Wolff Olins, that I discovered while reading Participate: Designing with User-Generated Content  . The design shows the identities of New York and it's inhabitants through the revealing letter-forms and represents the multifaceted nature of the city.

Participate: Designing with User-Generated Content by Helen Armstrong, Zvezdana Stojmirovic and Ellen Lupton

I decided to read this book from the recommended reading list as it raises ideas that have been spoke about in the theory lectures that I thought would be good to look at deeper as well as perspectives from designers I have not come across before. Throughout reading the text I highlighted parts that stood out to me and parts that I felt were key in the concepts being put across to enable understanding. 

At the start of the text the question of what participatory design is is explored:

"Digital tools and social media have exposed many creative industries to public interaction, causing a simultaneous valuing and devaluing of artistic expertise."

"Graphic design is often about control— controlling what the audience sees, controlling the typography of a piece, controlling its concept. This interpretation of design stems from a modernist understanding of authorship. Closed and complete, a finished work delivers a specific message to a targeted audience. Participatory design turns this idea on its head."

The book is split in to four different categories; Community, Modularity, Flexibility, Technology.  Within these four sections interviews with different types of industry creatives take place alongside visual examples of participatory design and actual instruction guides for the reader to take part in, and be part of their own participatory design.

"Without viewer response, the piece is meaningless. Such physical artifacts emphasize that, although technology has pushed users toward a more active role, participatory projects do not have to be complex digital pieces."

One example of a participatory design project mentioned in the book is 'The Sketchbook project', set up by Arthouse Co-op, founded by Shane Zucker and Steven Peterman. The project was that participants, for a small fee, would receive a sketchbook and a theme to fill in their book. All the resulting sketchbooks tour the country in an exhibition.  I found the idea of this quite inspiring, and something that is covered in the book is the idea of shared ownership, and how in these participatory design projects the designer isn't just letting others do the work, but instigating a seed and rules for other to follow and create something as part of a community. 

"Co-creation flattens hierarchical orders, as participants both within and outside companies join in problem solving. Ownership is often distributed across the project to everyone involved."

"Throughout most of the twentieth century, graphic designers provided set results to clients. 2 They created, for example, a poster, a publication, a package, an identity. Modularity can break apart such fixed deliverables, replacing them with more open-ended solutions."

"As noted by Nina Simon in her recent book about participatory culture and the museum, “The best participatory experiences are not wide open. They are scaffolded to help people feel comfortable engaging in the activity.”"

"Professionals benefit as they establish new niche roles as creative leaders of large decentralized forces, or as they develop previously untapped resources for creative networks, social capital, and larger meaning in their work. Amateur participants benefit from micropayments, public exposure, the establishment of their own creative networks, and the sheer joy of being part of a larger collaborative endeavor. This more open source approach benefits society at large as it promotes a general democratization of communication."

"If other people are supplying the content, what are you doing as an artist? I’ve heard people compare my process to that of the Fluxus artists— creating a series of rules and instructions followed by others. Ultimately, it’s creating a system, an algorithm executed in part by technology and in part by humans. I’m conducting an interplay between components, managing perceptions, requests, constraints, and assembly."

I completed one of the tasks in the book, which can be seen below, with the instruction to choose a colour for the things you disliked (I chose light brown) 
and shade in the boxes of the things you didn't like with this, then the same for the things you liked (I chose a peachy pink), then if you had no feelings you left the box blank, or for mixed feelings you mixed the colours together. Another instruction was to add our like or dislikes to the boxes with the dotted line.

Identity Signage Template

my completed scanned in sign:

Flexibility

"The words corporate branding bring to mind solid unwavering marks, accompanied by fat imperious style guides. Participatory culture disassembles such elite singular logos, giving them over to a new breed of designers who revel in the fluctuating, unpredictable form of the flexible mark. Using modules and templates, they build identity systems that empower users, overturning top-down hierarchies long reinforced by modernist design principles."

"In the 1960s poststructuralists emphasized the slippery nature of meaning, proclaiming that a single controlled message constructed by an author was impossible. All works, all texts, suggested theorists such as Roland Barthes and Umberto Eco, are “open.” Users experience a piece differently with each reading."

"Can you talk more about what participatory culture means for your work? Participatory culture is a defining condition in which we exist. We cannot sit in our office and come up with the thing that millions or even billions of customers are going to love. If we are not plugged into what people are doing right now, we are going to get it wrong."  
                                                                         - Ije Nwokorie

* *

"An understanding of code can push designers toward more process-driven approaches fed by user content and serendipity. For the last one hundred years, designers have worked to transform complexity and chaos into clarity and simplicity. Generative design turns this modernist ethos upside-down. Through process-driven approaches designers mimic the natural world by building complex systems and messaging out of simple steps."

"An algorithm, by its very nature, is based on input of certain data, which is then output— transformed into something else. 2 This translational motion provides the crux of generative participatory design projects. Designers develop algorithmic structures, users feed those structures with content, and out of the process emerges something entirely new and, sometimes, unforeseen."

"The Body 

While the digital realm drives this shift from finished product to process, the fundamental concept of developing a generative system and then opening it to outside input manifests both inside and outside of the Internet. Some generative designers invite an influx of human labor as the random element of their systems. The human hand disrupts the control of algorithms, adding life to the work."

Your work incorporates both technology and craft, impersonal code merging and colliding with human touch. Can you speak to the tension between technology and the human body?
I love the phrasing of this question because it reflects the general viewpoint of coding. I understood coding as impersonal myself, until I began partnering with coders. Then I started to understand how technology is an extension of the human effort to make things happen. All tools are technology. Code is a language. It becomes an extension of whoever is offering it, so everybody’s code is a unique voice.

                                                                                            - Keetra Dean Dixon

What advice do you have for young designers today? 

The outcome is not important. With our workshops, we try to do small experiments. Whether it’s right or wrong, it doesn’t matter. It’s not possible to fail. Everything should be more like sketching, not this polished, finished thing. I could do my fungus project again, tweak it a little bit, but it’s all one process of developing. The other thing I try to teach my students is to look for what is interesting to them, rather than fulfilling an assignment or the needs of a client. Find out where your own fascinations lie and bring that into your working method. That is how you build ownership as a designer.

                                                                                                   - Luna Maurer

Overall from reading this book I feel as though I have a better understanding of what 'participatory design' actually is and also feel I understand Umberto Eco's 'Openworks' text more now, when he talks about an 'open' work I originally assumed it meant open in terms of interpretation or an unfinished work, which it could, but now I understand it refers also to a design that is 'open' to all, the participants in the design decide the outcome, and lead the way through a concept mentioned a lot within this book, of a 'democratisation of communication and design' and how modularity encourages more 'open' ended solutions. 

Marian Bantjes

Marian Bantjes is a designer, typographer, writer and illustrator. On Bantjes' website her work is described as 'crossing boundaries of time, style and technology. She is known for her detailed and lovingly precise vector art, her obsessive hand work, her patterning and ornament. Marian’s work has an underlying structure and formality that frames its organic, fluid nature.'

One thing which I have started to think about recently, due to the lecture series' and also the industry guest lectures, is women in the design industry and how their work and contributions in the industry aren't usually as well known as their male counterparts, or aren't as well documented/represented, even though there are lots of women illustrators/ designers/ typographers creating impressive works. For instance Marian Bantjes, whose work although just as impressive as Stefan Sagmeister's, for example, doesn't seem to be half as celebrated which I think is disappointing. 

These three pieces of work show Bantjes' distinctive typographic style and demonstrate both 2d and 3d typography works. I resonate with Marian Bantjes highly detailed hand-work and visual ornamentation as something that I often try to incorporate in my own work.

'Made You Look' Documentary

As part of the research for my essay, I watched the graphic arts documentary 'Made You Look'. The director Anthony Peters describes the film as "a documentary which sets out to explore the landscape of the commercial arts in the 21st Century. It’s a film that gives an insight into how modern creative people feel about the challenges and triumphs of living in a hyper digital age."

I found the documentary to be interesting to me personally and for my essay as it offered insights in to the boom over the past 15 years within the graphic arts and illustration industry, focusing on the emergence of a DIY scene prospering alongside the new and affordable technology of today. 

The documentary is comprised of interviews with many different creatives in the industry sharing their views on the design industry today and why they think hand crafted processes are making a come back. I found it interesting to hear their views and also hear them describe their processes, with almost all saying they think that drawing is an important part of process which shouldn't be dismissed in favour of doing everything on a screen. 

It was quite inspiring to see the different analogue processes being used by the different designers/artists interviewed in the documentary, in particular the work of Hattie Stewart stood out for its originality, as well as Kate Moross' colourful typography. Also to hear the people interviewed talk about how today disciplines often overlap and how you don't just have to define yourself as one thing like a 'graphic designer' or 'illustrator' or 'typographer' you can incorporate all disciplines, was interesting and encouraging.

Lev Manovich - Software Takes Command

* First 'theorisation' of After Effects (2013)

Manovich is a technological determinist 
- believes the technology that we produce determines our culture -responsible for collapse of disciplines

- software-centric not like others who focus on hardware and machinery.

Soft Evolution

- software = media - turning algorithms over data
- Hybrid media vs multimedia
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multimedia juxtaposition everything, kept separate , interfaces sectioned off

hybrid media intermingling/integration - aesthetic of work - to do with combinatory approach

-Software simulates the media and the techniques for its manipulation
 - data structures (simularity)    - enables a kind of hybridity e.g. zoom out applied to a book
-Array - sound/video/text 
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'softwarisation' all hardware techniques are moved in to software 'plug ins' (plug ins allow new algorithms to be applied) define new ways of manipulating data - many physical mediums can be combined in to one kind of data structure - different tools have different 'biases' but they also support opposing data types 
-bitmap - vector - photoshop -illustrator


- the idea of disciplines ignores the common features of all media and cultural production being done today which are the result of their reliance on the same technology. A small number of basic data structures (or formats) which are the foundation of all modern media software.*** - algorithms 'operate' on these structures - e.e. cut/copy/paste - some are 'native' to particular types - blur and bitmap, media specific commands - these produce very different aesthetic styles. 

- The implementation of media - independent techniques are structurally similar to various aesthetic systems in art that were not limited to a a particular medium: for instance, baroque, neo-classicism, constructivism, post-modernism, remix as well as vernacular aesthetics and professional/commercial aesthetics. Each system manifested itself across media. Thus, baroque aesthetics can be found in architecture, sculpture, painting and music, constructivism was applied to product design, graphic design, clothing, theater and film. 


***  parametric design - specify diversity in how something appears

the idea of this comes from software manipulation according to Manovich. Styles influenced by architecture, examples being the work of Zaha Hadid.

One parametric design - fluid distortion as something changes over time

Wittenstein - 'family resemblance' 

is parametric universal design? modernism?

Is computer 'meta-medium' - overarching
               or ' collection of simulated ....'
               or 'mono-medium'

Think in terms of ecosystems of bitmap, vector, etc. After Effects as ecosystem.

Media Design (software in action)

- "We shape our tools and there after our tools shape us" - Marshall McLuhan, (1964)

Languages of design, cinematography, painting, animations, typography, all meet within the computer. After Effects was introduced in 1993 at center of this transformation. After Effects characterised by 'deep remixability' 

- visual, spatial, temporal - diversity of new forms

- all of history open for pilfering but through vernacular means - vimeo, youtube

- 1960 -'Motion Graphics' term coined in company name (John Whitney)
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focus on animated typography and type/abstract image integration .

-Evolution comparative to Velvet Revolution; not a big bomb going off but an insidious, underground effect. 
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result of Velvet Revolution is a new hybrid of visual language of moving images in general. This language is not confined to particular media forms. Present in both narrative and figurative sequences and films. 

-move away from realism ( contra to early CGI)  move from time based to composition based. 

Louise Bourgeois

- Taken up with Feminist historians.
- 'Femme Maison' - 1947
- Work on paper always been as important as sculptures
- She writes as well as draws
'He disappeared in to complete silence'
- Surrealist text

'The Insomnia Drawings' 1994 - 1995
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Considered keystone of her work, not doodles, kind of conscious 



turns insomnia in to art, doesn't drown in insomnia