Week 16 - Workshop 3

15/02/18

Visual Design and the Art of Persuasion

This lesson we learnt about the hidden meanings behind media campaigns and adverts. We can understand the use of these through the theories from many theorists including Ferdinand de Saussure and Roland Barthes.

Persuasion and Semiotics
Companies use persuasion within their adverts to help promote their products and their ideals, they do this through several tactics and by following theories.

Ferdinand de Saussure - Signified and Signifier Theory
The signified and signifier theory is related to semiotics, which is defined as "the study of signs and symbols and their use of interpretation". The theory states that when there is a 'sign' it signifies something to the viewer. We as an audience see it constantly within our daily lives through social media, speech and advertisements. For an example: a 'star' can reference the bright light in the night sky caused from a faraway sun in another galaxy, whereas it can also mean a celebrity.

signifier = signified 

star = a bright thing in space

star = a celebrity

'Language is a system of signs that express ideas" - a course in general linguistics (1966)

Roland Barthes - Denotation and Connotation
The denotation of a visual image is what all viewers from any culture and at any time would recognise the image being depicted. This theory was created by French theorist Roland Barthes, it links heavily Saussure's theory of the signifiers and signified.

Denotation - what the media explicitly says/shows

Connotation - what the media suggests

Persuasion
The process of steering someone's beliefs or attitudes towards a particular idea or set of ideas. Persuasion is used in adverts for charities and prevention notices, they tend to have a similar nature of being harsh and thought provoking.

Prevention adverts showcase this style of persuasion perfectly. The image below is an advert for fire prevention. It shows a used matchstick in a spotlight, drawing attention to it, refusing to be ignored. At the end of the matchstick there is a skull blackened by soot, this is a shocking image that causes the viewer to become more absorbed in the image and the message behind it. At the top in white, bold capital letters that contrast against the dark background it reads "Protect your child from it.". This can be connoted that the advert is against children playing with matches hence the skull and the text above it. The image is simple yet it creates a strong impact on the audience who if they have children are more likely to make sure their matches are kept out of reach.
Colour

Advertisers use colour in their work to capture attention of the audience. However not only advertisers use colour to gain attention from the public, public health warnings as well use them. Throughout our lives we have seen different colour signify meanings. Even if we don't recognise it consciously, but we have learned that blue is mandatory, yellow is hazard, red is prohibited and green is safety. Through this subconscious learning we know what to do in daily situations when we see the colour on a sign.

Suggestion through Typography
"Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable, appealing when displayed."

Verbal language and visual language overlap and create typography. The font of text and the size of it alter the meaning of the image.

"The visual component of text is an independently organised and structured message, connected with the verbal text, but in no way dependent on it and similarly the other way round." -Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design

The Signs and Signifiers of a Film Poster

The Gestalt Theory

“The whole is other than the sum of the parts” - Kurt Koffka, a Gestalt psychologist .

The quote above summarises the theory simply. An indepth description is 'the human eye and brain perceive a unified shape in a different way to the way they perceive the individual parts of those shapes. This global whole is a separate entity that is not necessarily formed by the sum of its parts'

Gestalt Law 1: Similarity

The human eye tends to build a relationship between similar elements within a design. Similarity can be achieved using basic elements such as shapes, colors, and size.

Gestalt Law 2: Proximity
Simple shapes arranged together can create a more complex image.

Gestalt Law 3: Continuity
The human eye follows the paths, lines, and curves of a design, and prefers to see a continuous flow of visual elements rather than separated objects.

Gestalt Law 4: Closure
The human eye prefers to see complete shapes. If the visual elements are not complete, the user can perceive a complete shape by filling in missing visual information.

Gestalt Law 5: Figure and Ground
The human eye isolates shapes from backgrounds.


For the activity for today's session we had to prototype a poster advertisement for a brand/product of our choice and use a Gestalt approach to utilise within it. This activity is the one where I will be working on it further and having it as my main product so I chose to create my own brand/product. I have chosen to create a singer's promotional poster for a new album.

This workshop has helped me learn about the theory behind design, the hidden meanings in the image as well as Gestalt Law and how it helps the marketing of a products by looking at human psychology.

Week 15 - Workshop 2

01/02/18

In digital practice this week we learnt about narratology which is the art of telling and receiving stories, the classic story structures we see in society today and typical character archetypes. There are many ways to receive these stories but one is visual, which we are focusing on in this lesson.

In general we find stories everywhere, they come in different styles and forms featuring in myths and legends, everyday conversations, television programs and adverts, social media and many more. Stories are a part of human nature, something we have learn from our ancestors. One of the most famous early stories told by Neanderthals shows a hunting scene. Found in the Chauvet Caves in southern France they are dated from 32,000 to 30,000 years ago.

There are several reasons why stories have been told through the ages, the reason for the one above is most likely to be for survival, entertainment and for the artist to remember. However there are many other reasons for stories in modern day society they can be to help people to heal, to sell products, to aide in explanation and many others.

Whilst some stories are long and lengthy and take the audience on a journey of emotions which cause them to invest in characters, there is also the genre of short stories. Now while both take the reader on a journey short stories need to be more precise down to the limited amount of words to describe the scene and plot. This difficulty is exaggerated for the sub genre of 'six word stories' which as the name suggest can only contain six words and have to tell a story.

A popular six word story is:

"For Sale: baby shoes, never worn" - Anonymous, some believe the author to be Ernest Hemingway.

This length of story causes the viewer to think, allowing them to create a backstory to the sentence and therefore emote to it. The story above implies that the seller was going to give the shoes to a baby but now does not have the need to, as they were "never worn". This can be due to a few reasons but as a reader I viewed the hidden meaning to be that the voice of the character was a woman who had a miscarriage and lost her baby quite late on in the pregnancy. 

I wrote three of my own six word stories:

"Beautiful roses discarded on the floor."
"He drove away, no destination needed."
"Tears filled her eyes, regret also."

Bryan Alexander, a known writer and creator, said "For a given audience, a story is a sentence of content, anchored on a problem, which engages that audience with emotion and meaning."

The Pixar prompt is modelled off the companies classic story structure where it begins as a "once upon a time" story then progresses to "and everyday" then "until one day" and then "and because of that" where it ends as "until finally". By using the structure it helps story tellers configure a story which the masses will easily follow and understand. I used this structure to create a story, featured below.

The Pixar Prompt

Once upon a time... a little girl's birthday came around, she was turning seven
....and everyday... her excitement grew...
...until one day... she handed out her birthday party invitations but they had the wrong day...
...and because of that... no one came to her birthday...
...and because of that... she cried and cried because she was so lonely...
...until finally, the next day... there was a knock on the door, it was her friends wishing her a happy birthday.

The theorist Vladimir Propp, states that there are several characters which are continuously used in classic stories they are: the hero, villain, donor, helper, princess, dispatcher and false hero. Depending on the style of story it can be suspenseful or surprising, as said by Alfred Hitchcock, by addressing the threat at the beginning of the tale it creates suspense for the reader as they wait for the threat to emerge. Whereas with a surprising story the author keeps the threat hidden luring the reader into a false sense of security so when the threat emerges the reader is surprised.

Visual Storytelling 

With visual storytelling in images our brains fight to generate a link between them, urging us to find a correlation so we can create a story. If the creator doesn't establish a link between the images the audience do it themselves, this is where we find different types of reading: preferred/dominant is the link which the author wants the reader to make, oppositional where the audience reject the preferred/ dominant reading and create a reading themselves, then there is negotiated reading where the audience acknowledge the preferred/dominant reading however modify it to suit their own values and opinions. We were tasked to create a story using visual elements with sixty minutes, below is the basic storyline we created.

An affair

Two people waking up, clearly love each other
Them saying goodbye, the other staying home
Boy on phone
Mistress arrives
Them in the room
Girlfriend heads back, left her phone
Mistress in bed with boy
Laughing
Shauna heading up stairs
Hand on door handle
Over shoulder, mistress and boyfriend in background.

In this workshop I learned more about the art of storytelling and how I can affect the readers view on the storyline by including or leaving out certain aspects of the plot. The workshop helped because when I am creating a story I can decide what view I wanted the audience to have on it and how I want the end result to be.