Assignment 2D

This was again continuing on from the previous part of the assignment. What we had to do here was to choose one of the stories that we got and add a fourth image and ask other people to once again connect the now four images together. The fourth image I added was to get people to think about singing but not a famous singer in any way as this would contradict the girl in the previous picture. This is what I got:

1. Young girl is enjoying a summers day in the country side. As she runs, and jumps in a field of hay stacks she can see birds over head. The tweeting of the birds encourages her to sing!

Female 1988 waitress

2. A country girl grows up on a farm in the american mid-west. She trys her best to break free from her small community and make it as a professional singer. She eventually has her break through single about a bird.

Male 1980 bar staff

3. There is a young girl who likes to dance to the sound of birds. Her dance studio is in the middle of nowhere in a farm as she has nowhere else to go to do the thing she loves he most. Then one day someone found out about the girl and she became a star.

Female 1985 Receptionist

4. A girl is dancing in a sun lit field singing away to her favourite song as a glass eyed bird watches from a distance in a weathered tree.

Male 30 cleaner

5. A girl is dancing and singing around and over a hay stack, she hears a bird is also singing then starts to sing to the birds tune.

Female Waitress 25

6. A bird is sitting in a tree minding its own business when it notices that a girl is singing and jumping over a hay stack.

Male 21 Student

7. When a girl is playing about a hay stack she sees a bird on a low branch singing, she skips over to it and starts to sing with it.

Female 20 Student

From these stories I can see that most of them are similar to the original that I chose. I have had trouble trying to understand this a bit as it does become a bit more obvious what the story is going to be when you add the fourth image. Not all of the are the same, but similar. I will now go on for the next part by adding a word of text.

Assignment 2C

After I had collected my three images I was then to go out and talk to people, show them the pictures and let them connect the three together in the form of a small story. As short paragraphs. All I did was ask the following people to connect what they see, this was the only question I asked, the rest was left to them. These are the stories that were made:

1. Today I saw the funniest thing ever, a very small bird pecked at a hay stack and it started to roll. What was funny was that it was a hill and the hay stack was basically chasing a girl as she ran and jumped to get away.

This was done by a male student, born on the 9/6/1990 making him 20 years old.

2. A girl who was playing in a field jumped over a massive hay stack and landed on a bird. The girl feeling so bad wrapped the bird up in some hay and took it back to hers to look after.

Again done by a male, this time an electrician born on the 12/10/1979 making him 30.

3. There was a little girl rolling and jumping about a hay stack when suddenly a bird pooped on her and she ran away crying.

By a boy in secondary school born 10/9/1995.

4. A girl was jumping and frolicking in a field with hay stacks and flowers and the birds sang to her as she played.

A female sales assistant born 8/6/1990.

5. While cutting grass for the hay, the young women scared a nest of blackbirds and the parents never came back. She looked after the chicks, feeling responsible for the loss of their parents. And once those chicks were grown, they lived in the apple tree at the bottom of her garden.

This one is by a female aged 21, and is a hairdresser.

6. A young girl is very carefree running over hay stacks while scaring the birds.

A short one by another female born 2/6/1988 and works as sales assistant.

Now that I have done this part of the task I find it very interesting that the stories were all similar but also different at the same time, all had the same connections but told in different ways. I found this quite difficult to understand at first but found it interesting to see the results people came up with.

Assignment 2B

Here are the 3 pictures that I have chosen.

Assignment 1D

Here is the final part of the photo analysis where we had to tell the other person on we thought of each other from the photographs, I was actually surprised at how accurate Kyle was about me, He said such things as:

"From the way you've taken the photos, too me it seems clear you are extremely into your 'things' such as books and DVDs. you seem very organized and neat. i think you like to know where everything is at all times. Which then might be transferred into your personality as well? (I'm just thinking out loud here.) For example you might be a very organized person when you go traveling and know exactly how the trip is going to be and where you will go, and know the things you will see. Also could mean you are good with time management and planning. You seem to have a wide range in movies which might mean you appreciate movies of all kinds. maybe you are into something else other than just the outline of the story. e.g directing/acting/editing. and you might think of DVDs as books as a collection of yours. so they might be pretty important items.

Also seen you have a few games consoles out, neatly as well. And also having more than one controller. maybe you find the best way to socialize with people is through games/movies?

Although at the same time. i don't know if it seems you spend a lot of time in your room? unless you are just extremely neat, there doesn't seem to be a lot of signs of things happening. no plates, nothing left out from something you might of been doing. so maybe you are pretty busy at the moment and haven't had a lot of time to be in your room just relaxing?"

This is mostly true, except for that fact that I am not at home a lot of the time. I do however like to be organized so I have control over things such as projects and yes I know exactly what to do when I go on holiday or on a trip, this means I can relax as soon as when I get to a destination.

I am a really big movie fan, I would say half of my DVD collection is mainly Christmas and birthday presents, but if I see something I like that's a decent price I will buy it.

I would say that the consoles are out neatly but this is mainly due to me not playing them lately and would say this is because of uni work and also because I have been doing a lot of overtime at work as well.

From my analysis of Kyle he said I was pretty much spot on, this is what he said about my analysis:

most of that is correct. obviously I'm really into music. sadly. i forgot to take photos of my graphic novel collection. so only thing missed was the part about the books. since i only showed you the ones to do with the course.
I am really into having my own space. and doing work there and relaxing there. i think i would prefer to live on my own as well.

And yeah! I have tried to explain that too everyone when they comment on my mess in my room. and they say something like 'how can you find anything in this mess' and I'm like, 'easy, cause this is how i want it to be and i know where everything is.' or like, when i was living at home and my sister/mom got tired of my mess. they would clean it up a bit. but then i just got confused, since i couldn't find anything... even though they were a lot more organized then before.

I think this was a good part of the assignment overall as it gave an insight of what other people outside of our friend zone would think of our personality type.

Assignment 1A

This assignment involved us having to read chapter 4 of the book, The Culture of Design by Guy Julier. This I have to admit is one of the annoying books I have ever read, I don't mean this as though it is not a good book as it raises a lot of good points, but feel that it is just so hard to take in, it took a few attempts re-reading the same chapter over and over before it even started to sink in. So many apologies in case this is a bit of a rant and doesn't make any sense as I have tried to understand it the best that I could.

So on chapter 4 the consumption of design. There were a few theories in this that I found very interesting but one that caught my eye the most and made more sense to me and this was the section Passive or Sovereign Consumers? This was a section that was all about the manipulation of branding and consumer demand, companies try to give their own products an edge so that consumers will stay within that brand when upgrading, this allows the steady sale of products keeping the company at high profits and ahead of it competitors within the same range of products.

This relates to designers in advertising and I can relate to this as well as a student as it would be my job to help promote the products, it is a designers job to increase product demand as well as keep sales steady. By doing this would require proper promotion of the products that have the typical trademark of the company. This would be done through t.v advertising, and also within a products packaging, this itself would also need to have the quality that the company has kept with in the past allowing consumers to keep the trust they have with them and recognize anything they produce if and whenever an item is upgraded.

The manipulation theory sort of explains that advertising helps brand loyalty so that consumers buy within the range of products produced by the same manufacturer, but if it is done in the wrong way people would abandon this current brand and choose another more reliable manufacture who has a reliable quality of products. This is known as a 'brand ladder'.

The writer also states that at the opposite end of the manipulation theory is the notion of 'consumer sovereignty' which basically flips the theory around and that companies must meet the standards of the consumer rather than the consumer meeting the standards of the product. What the consumer doesn't like the consumer will not buy, so there is a high demand for companies in a designer to keep up to date and ahead of others to produce something the consumer expects from the company. J.K. Galbraith is basically saying that over producing is creating a service that is not required and has nothing to do with the product through advertising.

Assignment 1B and 1C

For this assignment we were told before the Christmas holidays to take photographs of either our lives growing up or of our home so for this I ended up taking pictures of my room as this is the place where I do of my work and is the place that is my own and personal, unlike the rest of the house which is obviously my parents home and this would not best describe who I am and what I am like. The person I swapped with was Kyle who like me had taken photographs of his room and with these I had to analyze his interests, influences, possessions and environment.

What I saw from Kyle from looking at all of the items in his room was,

A passion for music

Organized in his own way

Into film and t.v

Nostalgic

Cluttered

Likes to relax by himself

Doesn't care what people would think of him

Collector

Prefers to think alone away from others

Sense of humour

Doesn't like to show off

Has a great interest in course

Doesn't feel the need to express himself

Is reliable

Prefers to keep out of others way

Maybe a little bit lazy

Proud of things he has achieved

Has a contrast between fact and fiction

Possession

Kyle is really into his music as seen by the turntable he has along with his guitar, hi fi and old records in his room and has a really good taste bands from the posters on his wall suggesting that he may have gone to some concerts and brought them back to a memorabilia or may have also just seen them while shopping and just picked them up, the type of music I would say kyle is into is more rock and possibly alternative rock but also think that he may just respect most types of music.

Looking at his shelves I saw a few Dragonball Z action figures still in the box so this could suggest that he is a bit of a collector and keeps things that would remind him of his childhood and things that he was really into, this also shows that he maybe a slight geek ( I say that in a very nice way as I am the same) as well as some of the films and books he has which tell me that he likes fictional films that have special effects, action and comedy but in books he reads they are more on factual topics for his course and may not like to read fantasy books.

Influences

From the book Kyle has I say that people who have influenced him the most for his course is mainly Stephan Sagmeister, but because I did not see any photo's in his room that he possibly may have been influenced in his course as he found it more interesting and followed in something that he alone found enjoyable.

When looking at the room again I saw that there was a plate and glasses in his room which could say that he prefers to work on his own away from everyone so that he can think and reflect without anyone there to say anything, so this could also say that he influences himself as well.

The DCA bag that is on the floor can also mean that he likes to go to places where he knows he can find inspiration and find out more of what he prefers to look at telling himself the kind of person he is.

Environment

His room is slightly cluttered, this could mostly be due to the size of his room as it is quite small and the bed takes up most of the room, but his desk area says that yes it is cluttered but he knows where everything is, this could be because he may be slightly lazy but has things left about for a purpose so he will not loose anything and is simpler for him to pick things up when he needs it right there and then.

This could also be that Kyle is a very relaxed person, his laptop is on his bed could mean this is where he prefers to work, he can just lie back, work on projects, listen to music and not have to move around a lot.

Other things I have noticed about Kyle are that from the clutter in his room he does like to spend time on his own, he may well go out with his friends but at times just prefers to stay in and have some alone time and let the world pass by where he can do things that he wants to do instead.

I think that when Kyle speaks to people the main topic may be about music or film etc rather than politics or events that have happened on the news, maybe does keep to himself but may prefer this as he doesn't care about what people think about him, what you see is what you get is what he may be to other people.

I think Kyle wants to do well but would rather do it all on his own instead of asking or accepting help, this could be to prove to himself that he can do it, he may also find that what he does at university enjoyable otherwise he may of changed subject, he may well be doing it because it is something he thinks will be more of a passion than a job one day.

Terry Pratchett: Living With Alzheimer's

During the Christmas holidays on one of the really bad days of snow we had, and there was no chance of me going outside for any reason at all, decided to spend the day watching t.v which is something I have not done since I was about 13. I think it was just after lunch when I was looking through the Sky Anytime shows that I saw the two-part documentary, Terry Pratchett: Living With Alzheimer's. This was a program that documented how Terry Pratchett has been dealing with Alzheimer's disease, his preparations for the future as well as him finding out about the disease.

It began with him six months after he was diagnosed with it and throughout the show said just how much it had changed his life, it was here that I realised just how very little about Alzheimer's that I actually knew of, just how he explained it all started off a small tiny things such as forgetting where you put your car keys and in his case he mentioned that he hates misspelling, and never really needed to use the spell checker on his computer and then gradually he got worse and worse up till the point where he was using it all the time, and after a certain amount of time gets his assistant to type for him instead as you really saw him struggle with it.

There were two thing that made me really think about just how this can be very frustrating especially when Terry Pratchett took about 8 attempts to do his tie up and you really saw him struggle with his, this was no act, you saw just how embarrassed he looked and how frustrated he became at both himself and the disease. The next was when he visited a support group where he met other people who suffer from it, this was where he saw just the beginning of how bad it was going to get, but when he spoke to a retired professor of science who has dealt with this for a few years now so just how much strength he had gained from it, even through all the frustrating and forgetting times he sought strength from his family and friends.

I admittedly say that I barely knew anything about Alzheimer's until I saw this program, obviously I knew what it was and what it did but I never really knew what it really did to a person, juts how much it subtly affected their lives, how you forget the simplest of things, how when a person is reading they can actually see the next line jump up to the next. The feelings that people who suffer from this disease are all things I will never and hopefully will never understand, to know that you will only get worse and then one day not knowing and remembering anything such as who your family is or even who you are.

Did you even know that a person can suffer from this for 10 years before it becomes noticeable that they have it, there would be no signs for years then one day it decides to show up.

There has also been some debate recently due to the author's thoughts on assisted suicide, even though many people would disagree with it they have to understand and respect a persons decision to take this course of action as no one would like to know that they would live one day without a clue of who anyone was, this is something that I do not know whether I am with or against it, I would really need to think about it but I do however understand why a person would want to do it.