Message and Delivery - Research

Having a vested interest in the topic of burglary, I chose to base my research on an article from Daily Express, about a 19 year old thief wh admitted to breaking in and burgling 278 separate homes between 2005 and 2011.

I looked further into youth crimes and found many similar articles about remorseless teenagers, many of whom were said to have possessed very arrogant attitudes when spoken to about their crimes. One article that stood out to me was the one below from last year, about a teenager who wrote a letter to the victims of his burglary claiming he was "not bothered" and that the whole ordeal was "their fault anyway".

The short letter he wrote reads as follows:

"Dear Victim, I don’t know why I am writing a letter to you! I have been forced to write this letter by ISSP.

“To be honest I’m not bothered or sorry about the fact that I ­burgled your house. Basically it was your own fault anyway. I’m going to run you through the dumb mistakes you made. Firstly you didn’t draw your curtains which most people know to do before they go to sleep.

“Secondly you're dumb you live in Stainburns a high risk ­burglary area and you're thick enough to leave your downstairs kitchen window open. I wouldn’t do that in a million years.

“But anyway I don’t feel sorry for you and I'm not going to show any sympathy or remorse.”

I began researching the sort of crimes people aged 10-17 are involved in, and found that while the rate of violent crime committed by juveniles had been decreasing since 1994, they account for a disproportionately large percentage of property arrests, with their percentage of robberies sitting at around 35%. The graph below shows the 12 most common non-violent crime, and the percentage of which youths are responsible in 1999.

To get a broader sense of more recent happenings as oppose to stats from over 10 years ago, I began researching into burglaries specifically. I found that an impressive percentage of violent crimes happen as a result of a burglar being interrupted, which surprised me because to my knowledge I thought a burglar would be as scared of the victim as the victim is of them.

While I believe that victims of burglary aren't in anyway deserving of what happens to them or are to blame at all, I do not believe that all victims can be faultless. Often in shared housing, people become careless, perhaps under the impression that someone else will take care of locking up the house. I looked up some information about opportunist burglars, those who will literally walk past a house, see lights off and an open window and make their way in, and in a lot of cases doors are left unlocked and occasionally completely open, allowing burglars to literally let themselves in. A large percentage of burglars will come through a front or back door, some a bottom floor window, and surprisingly, some will manage to enter through the basement.

I also found that a majority of burglars will return to the house they robbed some weeks or months later, taking the replacement laptops, cameras, phones, house keys etc., bought in place of those that were last taken and, given the amount of times I have found that this has happened, victims of burglaries aren't taking the necessary precautions to ensure it wouldn't happen again.

Graphic Design and Modernism

Context of Practice - Task 3

While both these images are seemingly patriotic, one depicting an ‘American Dream’ type of scene, the other a successful British family, this is one of the few qualities they share. The subtler example is the man sitting with his two children being asked about the Great War designed in 1915, and is designed to persuade young men to join the army and fight for their country, with the caption “Daddy, what did you do in the great war?” showing admiration from his children.

The image ‘Uncle Sam’s Range’ is more obvious in it’s patriotism but less in it’s advertisement of the oven, the main focus being the family having dinner with what is supposed to be the rest of the world. This image seems to be intended to ignite pride in its viewer, shown in the repeated stars and stripes of the American flag and the vibrant use of its colours.

Similarly the first image does indicate a feeling of pride but it’s delivered more as a reward than an initial emotion. The fathers stare out of the image instead of at either of his children is captivating the viewer, an combined with the capitalisation and underlining of ‘you’ gives the impression that the reader is being spoken to directly and almost being guilted into it, implying that they will be made a hero if they signed up, and their children will be ashamed of them if they don’t. The father’s stance and attire, well-furnished house and happy well dressed children oozes success, especially given the admiration his children have for him.

However, the this image would not be unseen today, whereas the second would be widely considered inappropriate now, namely the black slave serving the food from the oven being advertised, the woman serving the food and the mocking nature of the ‘rest of the world’. The whole image insinuates wealth and hierarchy and isn’t very approachable.

Overall, while both these images radiate patriotism, their differences highlight the differences between British and American culture at the time, the British side seeming much more subtle, the symbolism in the Tudor rose a the backdrop not as overpowering as the array of stars and stripes and red and white in the American image. However, despite the differences each image is fitting to it’s purpose. The oven advertisement is effectively persuasive considering the time at which it was designed in its use of Uncle Sam, a mascot of the US, and it’s reference to American independence, and the campaign poster has the allowance to be subtler given that it is not selling a product. It is captivating in the confrontation of the fathers stare and the insinuating guilt is successfully executed.

Postmodernism Lecture

Things that had previously been seen as high culture had become warped and blurred due to popular culture becoming involved with it.

Modernism - 1860-1960

Postmodernism - 1960-today

Modernism was brought about as an optimistic coping mechanism post WW1 when improvements were made to technology which would supposedly improve life, whereas Postmodernism was brought about as a backlash to 'rules' and parodies previous ideologies.

Postmodernism -

- allows for styles and approaches to vary more

- shows juxtaposition to Modernism, and keeps it ironic

- questions previous traditions and possible limitations

- contributed to ethnic minorities and women having a bigger place in society

Las Vegas epitomised Postmodernity in creating a fantasy similar to that of Disneyland.

Pompidou Centre in Paris received a shocked reaction in its structure alone, more about the concept than the aesthetics of the building itself.

- Postmodern design made the function the main focus of the design, developing a personality in function that would fit into a consumer society -

- Postmodern fashion was designed as a response to modernism eg. Vivienne Westwood's sex boutique in 1975. Punk styles were introduced to change what was acceptable in society, and it threw together a lot of styles in order to shock - 

- Postmodernism fine art started off with pop art in response to the rise of consumerism, see Andy Warhol, Damien Hurst, Marchel Duchamp, Tracy Emin, Sarah Lucas -

- Postmodern advertising became about focussing on the unexpected eg Volkswagen "think small" in 1959 -

Postmodern Graphic Design

Magazine set up became more about appearance than content, and used the content to determine the appearance and redefined the rules of Graphic Design > David Carson

"Don't mistake legibility for communication."

Postmodernism had an attitude of questioning conventions, particularly those associated with Modernism, and shifted thoughts and theories on those conventions

See plato.stanford.edu/entries/postmodernism/

Revolutionary Design In Russia

Visual Research for Alphabet Soup Part 2

Work by Suzie's favourite designer, Peter Saville

The work i was producing was starting to resemble that of 70's and 80's rock band logo's so I looked more into that:

Modernity and Modernism Lecture

Below are some modernist examples of graphic design

Examples of post-modernist graphic design:

LCA Prospectus Analysis

In groups we analysed and gave our critique of the LCA Prospectus from a Graphic Design point of view. My group members an I thought that the front page should set the tone for the rest of the prospectus, but found that while the cover is bold and demanding, the rest of the prospectus lacks creativity.

A frequent occurrence throughout the prospectus is a layout which possesses no structure or balance, with the photo in the centre of the page, a photo which is neither interesting nor captivating. Since the prospectus is aimed at potential students, the images are far from inspiring, don't document anything about the college and are basically completely irrelevant.

The more text based pages still lack personality and seem pretty random. There is little context given about what the content is explaining making it pointless to include. The text is all black and white, which would be fine if it actually had something to say, but given that it doesn't it could benefit hugely from a subtle infusion of colour or a heavily structured layout. Similarly, the text is broken up into subcategories, but with no huge divisions, and this too is struggling to structure the readers mind, just giving them a lot of facts and not doing much to convince them to apply. There are random quotations from staff members, which haven't been identified as quotations at all, sometimes just a sentence erratically placed on a page.

The whole prospectus in fact, needs a complete structural overhaul. What mildly interesting images they do use are scattered about the page randomly, vary completely in size and often don't possess any similar qualities when thrown on a page together. While the content may have some notable things to say, they are lost beneath all the pointless dribble.

Alphabet Soup

A type face by Alvin Mendoza

A still from 'Snow White and the Hunstman'

http://www.watchthetitles.com/articles/00241-Snow_White_And_The_Huntsman

An image by Leandro Rafael