Design Studies 3: Changes and Conflict - Lecture Notes

Design Studies 3: Changes and Conflict- Lecture Notes 

30 August, 2018 - 10 December, 2018 (Week 1 - Week 14)

Jesslyn Fabryando (0332213)

Design Studies 3: Changes and Conflict

Lecture 1: Introduction to Design studies 3

30 August, 2018 (Week 1)

On the first week of class, Ms. Anis briefed us about the module outline. In this semester 3, we were introduced to "FLIP" classroom where we are giving the lecture instead of Ms. Anis.

For the first assignment, Ms. Anis brief us about an individual project which is making a poster based on the problems we faced on campus that affected us a lot. Before we do the poster, we should do our research and reflective observation.

Not to mention, Ms. Anis introduced us new thing about Guerrilla Marketing. She wanted us to find more about it. I did some research and find it interesting.

Fig. 1. Guerilla Marketing Poater

Problems that I faced in campus are the toilets such as wet floors, no tissue, cannot be flushed, the toilet bowls are full of remaining urine/ there's blood. These things bother me so much. Aside from that is the campus wifi where some of the websites are blocked. This happens to annoy me because of that, I can't do any research or references for my assignments in the campus.

---

Lecture 2: Ethics in Design

6 September, 2018 (Week 2)

On the second week of class, we have a lecture about ethics in design.  We learnt about ethics where it is a set of principles of right conduct and the rules or standards governing the conduct or members of profession. There are 3 types of ethics:

• legalities—the rules that govern the profession—copyright law, piracy, plagiarism, fair use, photo manipulation
• integrity—principles of right conduct—spec work, crowdsourcing, responsibility to clients and contracts
• morality—the general nature of moral choices to be made by a person—sustainability, social responsibility, cultural influence

In this ethics of design, Culture plays an important part where it has become the key in interconnected world, which is made up so many ethnically diverse societies, but also riddled by conflicts associated with religion, ethnicity, ethical beliefs, and, essentially, the elements which make up culture. So, in order to produce an effective visual design where it can bridge barriers of language and culture is to think about the viewers first, their expectations, culture and languages they use to speak and write.

Basic practices to effective visual design:

• Reduce the size and number of editions of documents
• Reduce translation
• Ease learning
• Improve Comprehension

Design Considerations:

• Reading habits
• Study artistic expectations
• Allow for different learning styles
• Suppress unimportant details

On the middle of the discussion, Ms. Anis gave a group activity where we need to find one example that has a universal sign that everyone can understand. Our group came up with Origami instructions where the instruction given is an effective visual design.

Fig. 2. Group Exercise - 1 example  of visual interaction that utilizes all of the design considerations effectively

Ms. Anis told us to play safe when designing something. We need to avoid some of the elements so that we won't offend the people. Seven things we should avoid which are:

1. Initial and punctuation marks - May result misinterpretation
2. Puns and verbal analogies - Verbal puns rely on objects whose name sounds like that of the concept. (E.g. Mouse for laptop may be interpreted as an animal mouse)
3. Mythological and religious symbols - It is a sensitive context to be brought up unless it is generally viewed, understood and accepted. (Symbol e.g. moon, cross)
4. Animals - Different animals has different meaning and beliefs
5. National emblems - May result misinterpretation if the design fails to deliver. (E.g. flag, currency, coat of arms)
6. Colors - symbolic meaning of color varies from culture to culture, ignorance about this may cause miscommunications. Colors have significant role in cultural associations that come from religion, literature and graphic arts.
1. Safest Steps in designing when choosing colors
• Black and white first, then add color
• Use color in technical and business documents where the context does not trigger a symbolic interpretation
• Clearly define your color scheme and make color codes explicit
• Test with typical viewers and revise to remove misinterpretation
7. People - Avoid cultural stereotypes and overt gender roles. Body languages also played a role in delivering message, so it is best to consider the arrangement of poses and avoid using hand gestures unless the hand icon is used to demonstrate an action.

Fig. 3. Design Checklist

Tutorial 2: Selecting and discussing the topics for First Individual Project

6 September, 2018 (Week 2)

During the tutorial time, We were asked to pick a topic for our first assignment already and we need to tell her the problems we faced around campus and discuss the solution for it. For a better understanding about the poster that we should design, Ms. Anis showed us some of the examples done by our seniors.  For my topic, at first I chose toilet hygiene however, someone took it already so at that moment I instantly change to my backup topics which is "Recycling Papers". The problem that I found around campus is that, people do print their assignments and sometimes they made mistake, then all of the sudden that paper is crumbled and thrown into the trash, which makes me so uneasy. Instead of throwing that paper away, it's better to make use of it. As for this problem, I came up with the solution of putting a box beside the printing station and has a poster leading them to put all the unwanted paper inside the box. This poster is intended to make the students aware to save the tree, making them instead of throwing to the trash bin, they could just put it in a box for reuse. It was approved by Ms. Anis so she wanted me to start doing research already about this issue.

---

Lecture 3: Social class transformation

13 September, 2018 (Week 3)

On the third week of class, we have a lecture about Social Classification.

Social Classification: A division of a society based on social and economic status.

Four common social classes informally recognized in many societies are:

1. Upper class
2. Middle class
3. Working class
4. Lower class

The social class: Determine the position of a person or groups in society,  criteria to predict or examine the thinking and behaviour patterns which can help researchers to understand these areas of how:

1. To examine the ways in which changes in the class structure impact on the process of social change
2. The ways in which the consciousness of different segments of the population is influenced by class position
3. How class consciousness translates into political action and leads to social transformation

The most common way to observe how social class evolves is to look at how the group of people function together in an economic setting - WORK - Based on the observation of Karl Marx there are two classes of people who earn income through different means:

Proletarian - People who work but do not own the means of production
Capitalist - People who own the means of productions like land, factories, businesses etc.

The social class transformation:

Before the rise of industrial capitalism, pre-industrial societies’ practiced predominant methods of subsistence based on skills, location and period of time

1. Hunting and gathering - as part of the survival process
2. Horticulture - Utilize gardening skills to grow food, besides hunting and gathering
3. Agrarian - wide scale farming to generate more food, hunting and gathering grew less
4. Industrial - agriculture now includes manufacturing, services and skilled experts

Now living in an economy powered by human creativity where the ability to create meaningful new forms is now the decisive source of competitive advantage.

Before class ended, we were given an activity where we need to analyze who would experience a greater change if we take a man from the year 1900 and drop him to 1950s and a man from 1950's and take him to the present day 2018.

Question Given

My group answered the man from 1900 that is brought to 1950 experience a greater change, however, the real fact is that the man from 1950 who was brought to the present time will experience the greater change where they might experience the shocking trend that is happening in the present time.

COMPARISON 1900 MAN IS DROP TO THE 1950S

COMPARISON 1950s MAN IS DROP TO THE PRESENT TIME

Tutorial 3: Selecting and discussing the topics for First Individual Project

13 September, 2018 (Week 3)

During the tutorial time, We were asked to come out with the ideas, concept, mood boards and some rough sketches for our first assignment. During the consultation with Ms. Anis, I came up with a concept of having  piles of papers and tree stumps in the poster to strike the attention of the people raising awareness of what is happening to the trees. I also make use of arrow signs to let them know where to put the unwanted paper. My concept and ideas are good to go and she reminded me to make sure that the poster strike the attention of those people who are printing forcing them to put the unwanted papers into the box provided. She also suggested to direct the message, don't put a lot of information since they won't be reading it if it's too long.

---

Lecture and Tutorial 4: Rise & Effects to design culture

20 September, 2018 (Week 4)

The key factor to the driving force for human society is the rise of the creativity in economy where we value the ingenuity and cultivate on it intensely. We are now living in an economy with a high potential of human creativity where the ability to create meaningful new forms is now the decisive source of competitive advantage. 

We start to value creativity as a commodity during 1997 - 2000. This is when internet is evolving and there is opportunity to make use of the technology by introducing design. In today's economy, creativity is evasive and ongoing where we constantly revive and enhance product, process and activity imaginable and try to fit them together in new ways.

Traditional social classification often classify people on the basis of their habits, lifestyle choices or by their income level.

But in this new world, people who are driven by the creative ethos are classified as a whole new cluster altogether due to its unlikely nature from

• Social interactions
• Geographical meltdowns
• High usage of technological advancement

Which resulted people who share a common interest and tend to think, feel and behave similarly (establishment of culture).

The creative class is the norm setting class of our time in many different manners -

• Individuality
• Self expression
• Openness to differences

As a group activity, we need to find 5 famous designs, illustrations and photographs from each era (1950s - 2000s). We need to identify it's iconic design from different era.

---

ssss