OUIL501 Feedback from plan

We had a feedback session on what we had for our essay to see if it's juicy enough to write an essay from. I found this session useful, as it made me reassure myself that what I'm doing is a good idea and that my plan was good!(enough anyway). It also helped me to think about what I'm missing and still need to do for my essay. I think now I'm at a good place, and feel confident with what I'm doing.

OUIL501 Study task 4

1. These texts all draw to similar conclusions of being how the modern consumer has changed how we as designers work. Due to their demand, graphic designers (used in both the 'First things first' manifestos) must work to please this consumer. This renders the graphic designers abilities, being only useful for the wanting of appealing chocolate bar wrappers. Also, they all carry the same aggressive tone, putting forward one meaning of thinking without admitting that there could be other factors that are altering the creative world.

2. 
Maybe this image by Matt Kenyon might not specifically show how designers abilities have been driven into advertising, but how we as consumers have become slaves to the system. As it says in 'Fuck Committees',  "By now, virtually all media, architecture, product and graphic design have been freed from ideas, individual passion, and have been relegated to a role of corporate servitude" meaning how we've all lost our individuality. This image reflects this, by loosing our individual flare, we have part of the sheep system of abiding by our inner consumer needs.

3. 'Fuck Committees' puts together this idea that creative people now work for the 'bottom line', working to what us consumers want. Thus making anything that used to made with a designers brain now boring and samey, shown in the sentence "All cars look the same. Architectural decisions are made by accountants. Ads are stupid. Theater is dead." The short snappy sentences coming across quite  bitter, and using words such as 'stupid' giving the article quite a childish voice. It sounds like the author of this article has had a bad experience being a designer and wants to blame the worlds for their problems in a child tantrum like manner.

OUIL501 Essay Plan/Research Study Task 3

I was really struggling with my essay. The sessions had helped me with how to analyse texts and how to write, which was useful. But I was still a bit stuck. I knew I wanted to do it on Starbucks, but not really sure how I'm going to go about it or what themes/important pieces of information that I should include. So I thought I really need to sit myself down just me and google to have a look at what I could do, and surprisingly, managed to get my ideas together...

I am a lot more confident now with how I am with my work, as I feel like I'm in a better place with my plan than last year. I think that (hopefully) this essay WILL run more smoothly




OUIL501 Exploration through drawing

I have my subject for my essay, but I'm still not sure what direction I'm going to go in. So instead of just doing nothing, I thought I should start putting pen to paper, literally drawing anything that came to my head that was relevant.
Of course the first thing was the Starbucks logo itself, so I thought I should draw her a few times just to get that out the way. This then, for some reason, turned into creating made up campaigns. I had seen an advert for Starbucks...

It made me think how scarily aggressive their campaign is, threatening other coffee businesses with brash bold lettering. So I thought I should do something similar just to see where it takes me (shown on issuu) I think that maybe this is something that I could do for my publication? Maybe creating a series of made up adverts for Starbucks and similar big corporations. Although I am still a bit stuck on my essay, this has got my creativity flowing slightly

Starbucks - Develop ideas

STARBUCKS AND CONSUMERISM 

Research -

Adding humour to it - taking the piss out of the stigma 

Social stigma of Starbucks - By 'M' Nov 25 2014 - https://ceruleanmemes.wordpress.com/2014/11/25/the-social-stigma-associated-with-starbucks/

'Basic white girl' emerging from Starbucks - Alexis Price Oct 7th 2014 - https://thebutlercollegian.com/?p=17810

I asked several Butler students, “When does something become ‘basic’?” And many responses could be summed up in what freshman Blake Dreihaus stated.

“I feel like overuse makes something ‘basic,’” Dreihaus said. “When it’s no longer exciting.”

The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism - Thomas Frank (BOOK)

Matt Stabile - May 2014 - http://www.theexpeditioner.com/travel-philosophy/Slavoj-Zizek-On-Starbucks-And-The-Hidden-Price-Of-Consumerism/

Cop - Task 2

Task 2 - 16th October

I found this session quite difficult. Solely because I had no initial idea what to do for my essay apart from that I wanted to do something political or social. Although, I think we should have had a task before this to have us think about what we wanted to do for our essay, as I know a lot of others hadn't thought about what to do yet. I think we should have been told to have something ready for the session so it could flow better and more ideas would have been generated.

But anyway, being in a group I found really useful. You all bounce ideas off each other and spot common interests. They helped me come to the point of HYPE from politics - media portrayal - hype.

Then we were told to walk around and spot things that linked to your theme/subject. I found this task quite hard, especially as we only had half an hour and were in an environment that didn't necessarily suit people's needs. Although for me this is where I got an idea for my theme. Being in the canteen and spotting a coke can - coca cola being a massive hyped brand, you can't go down a road without seeing someone drinking a can, or it laying dead on the floor, or big and boldly printed on a billboard. This made me think of what other brands are a massive hype, what's the biggest brand that everyone must have/do/eat/wear… Starbucks?

So, for my essay I want to explore consumerism and Starbucks, why must everyone drink this? Why is it seen to be cool to Instagram your pumpkin spiced latte? And also why does it have this 'White girl' stigma? I want to try and find what others have said about this, and see if there's any illustrations or images that reflect this. 

Death of an Author

Death of an Author - Text Analysis 

What is Barthes trying to say?

• You base all the work on the author rather than the text itself - prejudgements 
• People assume the book is part of them, their lifestyle "father to his child"
• In modern life we all have different interpretations to text - no specific meaning
• "None of them original, blend and clash" - no new original ideas anymore - ideas are created from already existing ones mixed together. 
• Modern day - people don't care about the origin of work anymore, just the work itself. 

Impact on Illustration?

• Taking the style of an Illustrator - then mass producing that style
• People go straight to their own interpretation instead of the actual origin of the piece - does this make your research of beforehand useless?
• Originality dying
• Judge the work if you already think of the artist in a certain way.

Impact on my theme? - Social/Politics

• Judging a speaker/leader before listening to what they have to say 
• 'None of them original, blend and clash' - politicians ideas blend together - people don't know who to vote for anymore - one big mix. 
• 'Only language acts 'performs' and not 'me' - hiding behind words

SARA FANELLI

Sara Fanelli was the first name that came to my head when relating to the idea authorship. As you can see, her work is very stylised and oozes with charm. But, as her work isn't something particularly challenging to copy, her years of hard work got stollen and mass produced. This in turn ruined her career, the death of an illustrator. As an aspiring illustrator myself, the thought of this happening to my own work is quite terrifying. But instead of living the rest of my life being scared of style thieves, this has made me realise that my own work has to have a challenging edge so people wouldn't be tempted to copy. Or I also thought, why should I have a style? My work doesn't have one now and I don't think that it's always necessary, I feel like I'm more free for experimentation. 

 Barthes says that original ideas are dying 'None of them original, blend and clash', does this mean that Fanelli's work wasn't original in the first place? She must have other artists that inspire her to make her create the work that she produces (I did try to research what work inspires her but was not successful). Does it mean that people have to steal other artist's ideas because originality is dead anyway?  I think that this idea is quite depressing, Barthes makes me feel like we can't produce anything with any originality which makes me feel a bit brain dead. Like we're all robot sheep made to churn out previous ideas mix and matched together. But seeing as this is what happened to Sara Fanelli, it pains me to say that he's kind of right. 

'The text is henceforth made and read in such a way that at all its levels the author is absent' - My own interpretation of this statement is that the audience looks at a piece without thinking about the illustrator themselves - solely the artwork. Making the illustrator dead. I think because of this, it makes it easier for people to steal people's styles. As you don't think about the illustrator, you just see the style, like it, then take it. The same way as people eat meat because they don't see the actual animal being killed so they don't feel bad - but maybe I'm going off topic. 

Study Task - Definitions

STUDY TASK

Cultural

1.

the quality in a person or society that arises from a concern for whatis regarded as excellent in arts, letters, manners, scholarly pursuits,etc.

2.

that which is excellent in the arts, manners, etc.

3.

a particular form or stage of civilization, as that of a certain nation orperiod:

Greek culture.

4.

development or improvement of the mind by education or training.

5.

the behaviors and beliefs characteristic of a particular social, ethnic,or age group:the youth culture; the drug culture.

Political

1.

the science or art of political government.

2.     the practice or profession of conducting political affairs. 

Historical 

1.

the branch of knowledge dealing with past events.

Social 

1.

pertaining to, devoted to, or characterized by friendly companionshipor relations:a social club.

2.

seeking or enjoying the companionship of others; friendly; sociable;gregarious.

3.

of, pertaining to, connected with, or suited to polite or fashionablesociety:

a social event.

4.

living or disposed to live in companionship with others or in acommunity, rather than in isolation:People are social beings.

5.

of or relating to human society, especially as a body divided intoclasses according to status:social 

rank.

6.

involved in many social activities:We're so busy working, we have to be a little less social now.

7.

of or relating to the life, welfare, and relations of human beings in acommunity:

social problems.

Technological 

1.

the branch of knowledge that deals with the creation and use of technical means and their interrelation with life, society, and the environment, drawing upon such subjects as industrial arts,engineering, 

applied science, and pure science.

Choose 1 word from the 5 - Social 

Quotes - 

• Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals. Oscar Wilde
• The most violent element in society is ignorance. Emma Goldman
• There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children. Nelson Mandela 

Images - 

Photos - 

                      

OUIL401 COP EVALUATION

VISUAL DIAGRAM - Development and final product

VISUAL DIAGRAM - The making of

>So I knew what I wanted to say for my poster but I had no idea how to show it. I thought I could do it like an exclusive club where only rich people were allowed in but I think i'm massively overthinking it and I just don't think it'll work. My problem is that I just need to strip it back and show what I want to say very basically so everyone can understand. 

>I keep drawing these faces which I really like. Very quick loose sketches showing fancy people with bushy eyebrows and big teeth. I think that these work well and maybe I should just stick to using faces and displaying character and personality rather than trying to create this whole scene of people. 

>From my previous sketchbook work, I really liked the gouache painting I did with Mark Francis that simply said 'Darling' underneath it. It worked so well because you instantly know who it is by enhancing their well known features and the little comment enhances that further. I think I should take this success and use it for my final piece, because I already know that it works so I'd be an idiot not to do it. Plus I love working in gouache, because it's a great tool to create characters with flat cold shapes. 

>I've decided to do all the characters faces with a statement underneath it. Orderly like Tom Gauld's work.

>When I actually started to out the faces and words together on photoshop, it looked a bit wrong. The words were just disappearing into the faces and no longer jumping out. So this made me think of doing speech bubbles to make sure you can read everything! It also brings the faces more together to being like a crowd of characters than an orderly line. I think compositionally, it works a lot better. 

>I knew after I did my research that I wanted the words coming out of their mouths to be the honest truth behind each character. As the media seems to sugar coat the fact that most of them are lying cheating human beings. We shouldn't be getting so self absorbed by these characters and the lifestyles they lead, we need to be shown the actual reality behind it all. 

Final Poster

>I'm pretty pleased with my final poster. I really like my choice of material, as I'm comfortable with gouache and is great doing characters in a non realistic flat colour way. Although I wish I had abstracted the faces a bit more, really emphasising certain characteristics. But I really struggled with actually making them look like the character that they're representing, so my plan of abstracting the faces kind of jumped out the window. I then wish that I had abstracted the colours a bit more, using bright pink for the faces instead of sticking to the normal skin tone. I think this would have made the poster pop a bit more, making you want to go and look at it. Although I am quite pleased with the colour scheme, as the blue goes well with the pinks of the faces. Also blue being a royal colour, I thought that it fit the theme quite well.

>But overall I think it conveys the point I was initially making about satirising the characters so we don't take the program so seriously to the extent that we genuinely think people from that area are actually like that. I actually like how my posters a bit different, as it seems from other peoples topics that they're quite serious and world changing, and, as much as I would like to change the world, I think it's important to also have a bit of fun and do something that no one else would really think of doing.

VISUAL DIAGRAM - Further research

VISUAL DIAGRAM - Further research 

>From my feedback from the presentation, I knew I had to do some more research before I started doing work for my poster. 

>I decided to look at two different groups of people, people my age and then people who have written articles and more deeper thinkers.

>I asked friends and family on their opinion of the lifestyle of made in chelsea and got a lot negative comments saying how these people have more money than sense and egotistic and pretentious and narcissistic and arrogant and self indulgent etc etc. I think most of the comments had swearing in it...

I kind of already knew this was the response that I was going to get, because it's pretty obvious that these posh toffs are incredibly self centred. Although it does show that I'm not the only one that has this idea about them which is reassuring. But this is still one group of people that I'm friends with, so of course they're going to have similar views to me or I wouldn't be friends with them.... I then hit the internet to see what else I could find on people's views of Made in Chelsea.

>I found an article talking about 'Geordie Shore' and 'Made in Chelsea' and how people are starting to believe that people that are from that area are genuinely like that, and that it's creating this north and south divide. I thought this was quite interesting, especially as I'm from London and my boyfriends from Newcastle. I think it's crazy how reality tv has seem to brainwash people to actually start making them believe that people from that certain area are all like that. I definitely know that I don't have this stuck up lazy money drenched lifestyle that Made in Chelsea depicts a Londoner to have. She also says that London is typically a working class area, so has Made in Chelsea made people start to totally forget all about that and make them think it's now this upper and upper middle class lifestyle? I personally know that it's not, but for people that never really go to London is this what they now believe?

I'll stop rambling 

>I found another more wordy article about society and Made in Chelsea. How the media gets to decide that viewpoints they want to show to sway our views. This leads back to my initial essay on how the media effected rebellion and youth culture, which is interesting. It just shows again how the media love to worm their way into every crevasse and control what they want us to believe. Even using symbolism, as the crown shown in the Made in Chelsea logo makes the audience have this idea that these people are majestic and superior to us. It's brainwashing you without even realising. CRAZY.

WHY IS THE WORLD LIKE THIS?????

AHHHHHHH

>Okay so I need to make a poster to strip all of the power from these people. The media has imposed this fake lifestyle which people seem to be soaking up and I feel like I should show what these people are really like, I refuse to be brainwashed.

PECHA KUCHA PRESENTATION

PECHA KUCHA 
With notes

SLIDE 1 - From my map of understanding looking at subcultures, I landed here with 'Rah' culture. A brand new culture for the new generation. Specifically I'm going to focus on made in chelsea and what impact it has on us and for our society. But first I'll explain what 'Rah' culture is. Initially I found it hard to get my information...

SLIDE 2 - This is what comes up when I googled 'Rah' culture.. but with further investigation I found out that this new subculture consists of upper and upper middle class in the UK aged around 18/25. The word 'Rah' itself deriving from the onomatopoeic reference to the way they talk.

SLIDE 3 - The stereotypes of 'Rah' consist of..

-Attending a russell group uni

-Taking a gap year to somewhere edgy like Africa and talk about how much it changed you

-Wearing Jack Wills & Hunter wellies

- Playing fancy sports such as polo and clay pigeon shooting

SLIDE 4 - The two most important things that give you the 'Rah' title is to never claim to be posh - you are rich not posh. The other is to enjoy the party lifestyle to the max, with the financial help from mummy and daddy.

SLIDE 5 - This subculture may be more recognised to you in programs and videos such as:

>'Gap Yah' Sketch - which shows an over exaggeration of the culture

>And the more 'realistic' programs such as 'Life is Toff' and the most well known 'Made in Chelsea'

SLIDE 6 - Made in Chelsea if none of you have heard of this program is basically a 'reality' show about a group of friends in their early 20s that sponge off their parents to pretty much party and sleep with everyone - but don't make it look tacky by wearing fancy clothes and eating caviar. 

SLIDE 7 - I decided to watch a couple of episodes so I could analyse their behaviour further - a bit like watching how animals behave in a zoo. I then recorded what I saw by taking notes and drawing. I focused on how they interact with each other on a social basis and what activities they partake in. 

SLIDE 8 - I then put my notes together and picked out elements with the highest frequency:

>Going to cool indie gigs with bands that no ones heard of 

>Many incestual friendship group relationships

>Drinking an excessive amount of champagne alongside an excessive amount of bitchiness

>And it's all put together with a cool indie soundtrack and orange camera filter so it makes you feel all nice

SLIDE 9 - After I watched these episodes I actually found myself feeling a bit depressed and a bit angry. It's just full of cat fights and people cheating on each other? It's extremely repetitive. But on the bright side, it makes me glad that my life is actually nothing like this.

SLIDE 10 - Good or bad? I found it a bit scary... is this how young people are being represented? If someone had seen this program for the first time with no idea what a youth of my generation was like is this what they get to see instead of those who actually work hard to earn money and look after themself. 

SLIDE 11 - My opinion - I think that this is giving people our age a 'I want I get' kind of mentality which isn't healthy. It's actually quite upsetting. This program makes it seem like this kind of attitude is okay and look how fun it is! It's a shame because a few years ago this would never really of happened. 

SLIDE 12 - My opinion 2 - Unfortunately, there's nothing we can really do, as these guys aren't a fictional subculture. So what I decided to do instead of complaining and getting wound up, that I should just see the funny side and turn it into a mockery. 

SLIDE 13 - So I decided to experiment with a whole range of materials to see what would work best to show satire, but at the same time be something that I am quite familiar in using.

SLIDE 14 - Where am I going? - For my visual diagram I want to create something similar to the format of Andrew Groves and Ian Whadcock. Making a tool kit or set of instructions, of either 'how to survive an episode of Made in Chelsea' or 'how to live in the life of Made in Chelsea. It will include a lot of smaller illustrations put together to make a large poster. 

SLIDE 15 - What do I want to say? - Well my intention is to satirise the life of Made in Chelsea, as I feel that that is the only way we should really look at it. It's something that we should really be taking light heartedly. Plus they seem to take themselves far too seriously having this aura of importance. 

SLIDE 16 - Style? - For the kind of style I wanted to work in, I thought my loose gouache painting would be best because they show a lot more character than that of a well studied portrait. So I'm going to use a quicker more loose approach in my style of work. 

SLIDE 17 - Other artists - I also liked the works of Tom Gauld and Josh Cochren. I want to use the same kind of layout that Gauld uses with the storytelling element that Cochran has. I really like the way that both of these artists  compose their work. Gauld being very neat using frames and Cochran filling each space with character. 

SLIDE 18 - Layout - This is the kind of layout that I want to do for my visual diagram. Similar to the artists work I just showed. I want the whole page to be busy yet organised - like Tom Gauld's sketchbook shown on the right. 

SLIDE 19 - Materials and colour - From the success of previous tasks, I want to use gouache or collage as my materials for the final diagram. I found that both of these methods are great for showing personality and character. I also want to use a limited colour palette of about 2/3 colours so my diagram doesn't become too overwhelming. 

SLIDE 20 - To summarise - my intention is to use humour to produce a guide/tool kit to either survive an episode or how to live in the life of Made in Chelsea.

FEEDBACK

>I think I was aware of what I was doing wrong whilst presenting. I knew I had no way near as much information and stats to give compared to what everyone else was dishing out. I really need to get looking on other people's opinion on this, both informally and formally so I get a better grasp of what angle I should go from. 

>I'm aware of a problem, I just need back up. - WHAT IS IT DOING TO OUR SOCIETY?