Context of Practice: Studio brief 3: ISSUU planning

Your research question / focus

What role does graphic design play in shaping popular culture?

popular culture: culture based on the tastes of ordinary people rather than an educated elite

culture: the way of life, especially the general customs and beliefs, of a particular group of people at a particular time

250 word reflection of CoP1 and rationale for CoP 2

CoP 1 has allowed me to understand the importance of contextual knowledge in order to develop successful design treatments. The lecture programme on visual communication was a topic I engaged particularly with as it allowed me to see what my role as a graphic designer is within society and the amount of impact the work can have.

I found the triangulation something hard to understand and apply to my essay. I think it was the area that initially weakened my essay, so when revisiting the draft, I had to spend a lot more time working on what points I was trying to discuss in the essay.

Feedback was something that I realised the importance of too late into the module – time management needs improving. If I had asked for feedback on my ideas sooner, I could have started the development work with a lot more ease and understanding of my aims for the final outcomes. I do think that the concept of concentrating on the feelings that clothes provide has successfully fulfilled the needs of the brief and the client.

In CoP 2, I would like to choose a topic not focusing on one design style, as I found that by only concentrating on advertising I was very limited as to what I could produce. I found CoP 1 engaging as it was a topic that I felt strongly about and also enjoyed discovering in detail the impact that the advertising of the particular style could have within society. Allowing myself more time to research into and read around the chosen topic will allow the potential for more variety of concepts at the initial idea generation stages – enabling feedback to influence more so.

5 relevant/related subjects

Cave paintings in Lascaux Caves, France were the first recorded medium of ‘visual communication
Music artwork, promotional materials and album covers
Art for the upper class now changed to all people as gothic design took fine art and made it relatable to many people and lowered the tone
Iconography
Graphic design allows for information to be published in large quantities in a powerful way

5 relevant quotes

"Be culturally literate, because if you don't have any understanding of the world you live in and the culture you live in, you're not going to express anything to anybody else" - Paula Scher

"The future is not really the future. It's just a present that looks good." - Steven Heller

“Pop culture is often maligned as fleeting, but history shows that sometimes what is pop in one culture has time-honored resonance in later ones ... culture, especially as seen through the lenses of design, illustration, satiric and political art (and other things), is integral to a broader understanding of who we are and where we are going.” - Steven Heller

"It is through all the various post-punk subcultures in which we were involved (as kids growing up in the 80s) that we became interested in graphic design in the first place. - Experimental Jetset

5 relevant books

Design Culture: An anthology of writing from the AIGA journal of Graphic Design
Marie Finamore, Steven Heller

This book has 78 essays, interviews which all examine the coming age of graphic design as a profession and its role in shaping our culture. Some of the chapter headings that I find interesting are Love, Money, Power; Understanding Media; and Future Shocks.

POP: How Graphic Design shapes popular culture
Steven Heller

This book offers an insightful exploration of how graphic design has shaped popular culture, and how popular culture has influence graphic design. I think the questioning of whether or not pop culture also influences graphic design will be interesting to read and make comparisons from. I would like to read the essays which focus on popular iconography and also advertising and art.

People of Print: Innovative, Independent design and Illustration
Marcroy Smith and Andy Cooke

This book shows how screen-based graphics and digital design dominates the mainstream and gathers a community of independent designers that have embrace printmaking techniques instead. The use of traditional methods are becoming part of popular culture, it seems to be a phase that is popular within in society currently. This book will be interesting to read as it would be interesting to find out if promoters find the traditionally printed publication as easy and efficient to distribute as the digitally made ones, and if the audience prefers the traditional or digital prints more.

The Graphic Language
Neville Brody

This book will be good to read as the second volume shows the large change in technology use and the development of it since the late 1980s. The book shows Brody's record covers, posters and magazine designs of the 1980s and then the more experimental works of the 1990s. The shape of communication in the future is discussed and this may unveil some of the impacts that design has had on pop culture.

Visual Impact: Creative dissent in the 21st century
Liz McQuiston

This book explores how art and design have driven major social and political change in the 21st century. I thought it would be interesting to look at the different ways in which the works influence people and how strongly the different messages are portrayed.

5 relevant websites

http://www.trendlist.org

http://www.itsnicethat.com/features/experimental-jetset-interview-280616

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/warhols-pop-politics-89185734/

https://www.fastcodesign.com/1671117/9-big-ideas-that-changed-the-face-of-graphic-design

http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/news/graphic-design/julien-britnic-wonderful-pop-culture-book-covers-modern-german-literary-classics/#1

5 relevant images