Design Studies: I Propose To Look To The Future

Why

For the last leg, we had to combine our efforts throughout the year including the research itself, the methods learnt through the likes of service design tools, the science of ethnography and our investigation into semiotics as designers, and create a final research proposal; thus creating a miniature version of the journey taken when writing such papers as a dissertation. I have to say, it's not half as bad as I would of expected, and have actually enjoyed several aspects of it, particularly ethnography and semiotics. Both help develop your approach as a designer be it from any discipline, as the principle remains the same - thoughtful design makes good design, and these are the things that help you engage with the user. I have learnt so much from this perspective, and as silly as it sounds I had previously not considered the consumer and or user half as important as they are. This ironically lead me to understand that understanding in itself is absolute key when designing for anybody other than yourself.

So, throughout this academic year I have been looking at how to engage the user in terms of advertisement. As I have previously stated, I have been asked to derive a research proposal from this, with specific regards to our individual disciplines. Advertising however, is an across the board topic, so I shall take a more personal outlook on the following, rather than a generalised I&ED outlook. I have linked in my previous posting throughout, as well as at the end of each category (although renamed the postings to fit the context).

Related Posts:
Design Studies: Service Design Tools
Design Studies: Ethnography
Design Studies: Semiotics
Design Studies: Final on Viral Advertising

Who

I would seek to explore what exactly it is that gets a graduate into practise other than their qualification(s) - as due to our current economic climate, employment is becoming increasingly difficult for inexperienced designers to successfully pursue. It is common knowledge that it is extremely difficult to land an internship during their academic years, and post-graduation it is becoming exponentially difficult to achieve employment with little or indeed no experience what so ever. Practices and companies are cutting back budgets, making already employed people redundant, let alone creating new positions for inexperienced yet professional designers. So my question is, how can you combine viral advertisement and innovative marketing strategies with the lengthly task of seeking graduate employment?

During one of our lectures this year, Lauren Currie (known in the realms of the internet as @RedJotter) suggested something that has stuck in my mind. She suggested that those seeking internships should not call a practise they were interested in, but rather actively go in and ask. She proposed we ask one of the members of staff out for coffee, and be that person who goes and enthusiastically requests experience. Her outlook was to be forward about these things, and not to back down if you were shown the door.

Related Posts:

Design Studies: What is Viral Advertisement 

Design Studies: Lauren Currie

What

But what else can be done? Surely there is more to this than hopelessly doing the rounds of companies in a lottery type fashion, hoping one day your numbers might just come up. Starting off small with things such as a "blog flyer" is all very well, but I would like to investigate into what makes a person memorable, what you can do to create a stir, and how can you become your own viral advert "epidemic"? I recently did a post on innovative CV ideas, which could be an aspect incorporated into your very own guerrilla marketing technique. How do you sell yourself as a new brand that everyone needs? Similar to as described in Gladwell's The Tipping Point, how do you make yourself sticky?

The BBC reported that only 13% of creative arts graduates found employment within the first six months of graduation.  The Guardian also reports on employment statistics for 2010. How do you ensure you fall into the right category within those statistics? In order to tackle such a never ending issue for graduates around the world from multiple industries, but more specifically those within the design sector, how would I propose I investigate this?

This is a real issue and unfortunately has real consequences, with The BBC unfortunately also reporting that design has one of the lowest employment rates, showing graduate unemployment at a 17 year "high".

Related Posts:
Design Studies: Blog Flyer
Design Studies: What Makes A Person Memorable
Design Studies: Creating A Stir
Design Studies: Creating Your Own Viral Ads
Design Studies: Innovative CVs

How

How do you extract the reasons one graduate is employed, while a similarly qualified, aged, and experienced graduate may not quite cut it? What is it that propels yourself from run of the mill nobody, into sought after fresh meat on the market? I propose that in order to find this out, studies would have to be created to analyse successful candidates qualities versus all applicants qualities, along with sought after free lance designers that provoke employers to come to them. Further to my previous research that suggests irrelevant stunt like attention seeking marketing strategies may work well, I would like to examine wether or not this would be appropriate for self supported viral marketing strategies, or if a strong brand ethic is required prior to tackling the irrelevant viral advert market. I propose that a ethnographic based survey be taken, paying particular attention to the trends seen on the likes of such social networks as Twitter.

If a selection of newly graduated design students were to be followed for the crucial first 6 months after graduation, would those who actively use their Twitter to make new connections be the first to be employed?

If all current fourth year I&ED students were to be followed for the initial period after graduation, who would be employed first and by what means?

I would also propose to contact design practises and actively seek the answers as to how they tackle the process of selecting a new employee, and the ways they instantly cut down applications from everything to the "select few". For example, Think Vitamin explains why they hired a new designer.

Design Studies: Summer Reading Material & Other Plans

Part of our last assignment for the year with regards to Design Studies is to identify 5 books I will read as a result of this module, 5 things I want to do to my blog etc. and 5 people I will make contact with.

These include (and have already purchased some):

- Blink - a book by Malcolm Gladwell, the author of first semesters read "The Tipping Point".

- Semiotics: A Graphic Guide by Paul Cobley, as I found semiotics very interesting.

- Designing Infographics by Eric Meyer, I have become increasingly interested in infographics and data visualisations as a result of several paths during Design Studies and would like to learn how to incorporate this clean presentation style into my future projects.

- I plan on investing in several of the books in the series for my course anyway, however Basics Design offer one called Design Thinking, which is something I need to consider more deeply, namely the user and the effect a design can have on it's surroundings as often we get caught up on the aesthetics only (stemming from reading about ethnography).

- Wordpress for Dummies by Lisa Sabin-Wilson. This sort of leads me into my next top 5 catagory of what I plan to do over summer, and as you tell, regards moving over to Wordpress very slowly but surely.

All of these are available on www.amazon.co.uk.

The 5 things I plan to do over summer are:

As I am already an avid blogger and tweeter, I have not added these to my list as it is something I already regularly do.

- I do plan however, to move from Blogger to Wordpress over summer, and archive my posts.

- Finances permitting, I'd also like to take a short trip to The Netherlands to visit, along with visiting Norway (which is already booked), allowing me to visit their Architecture & Design Museum, as well as possibly visiting a Jewellery exhibition as I plan to travel with JMD student(s).

- Complete my LinkedIn profile and begin to use this more thoroughly.

- Organise my Flickr account into a more manageable system, along with updating it with recent albums.

- And finally, StumbleUpon more things every day - and as a result try to blog about a new find at least once weekly.

Finally, 5 people I would like to make contact with:

- HKU Utrecht if I am lucky enough to be invited to apply directly to them for an exchange opportunity.

- Continue to follow people on Twitter, while always looking for new companies and designers to follow. (I currently already follow most guest lecturers from this year's lectures etc.)

- Although it would not be a new connection, I plan on staying in contact with our current 4th years, keeping up to date with their job prospects and life as IED graduates, hopefully giving me an insight into life after DJCAD.

- Aim to get published by finding an amateur online design magazine, and make contact about perhaps submitting an article.

- Get, and start using Skype - as suggested by Lauren Currie (@RedJotter) some weeks ago.

Design Studies: Asking the questions

First we had to create consent forms in order to publish the information we gathered from our interviews.

After gaining our participants permission, we continued on with the questions. I won't go into detail with regards to individual answers and information collected, but the following were our generalised finds, along with patterns we began to spot.

The first question, asking if the participant recognised how many, if any of a selection of adverts was an example of a viral ad, got mixed results. A third of participants however, recognised that the "Visit California" advert was in fact not viral. Others recognised the advert, although were unable to determine which were viral and which were not.

The second question was in regards to Cadburys recent and currently ongoing viral campaign. After asking how they felt after seeing a selection of them, we found that the general response was that they were confused. Often they were unsure as to how the content relates to selling a product, although all recognised the videos themselves.

Thirdly, we asked why they think companies would chose to use seemingly irrelevant content in adverts, to which the general response was to make their product more fun, memorable or enjoyable.

On asking what music was used during a selection of mobile phone service providers adverts, we were left with an interesting array of answers. Although it was a bit of a trick question due to the fact that only one contained music, it was interesting to find that sost could not remember much about the content for Orange or O2 at all (the two with no music at all), however nearly all knew that a) T-Mobile was based around music and b) could name songs used (albeit not necessarily the ones used for the specific advert we had muted). It was interesting to find that a connection was made between the audio and memory.

We then went on to ask which provider each participant used, to which half of our participants use T-Mobile. This may just be co-insidence, but speculation may be drawn on this as to why, in comparison to the other main providers (namely Orange, O2, Vodaphone and 3) had such dwindling numbers in comparison.

Next, we asked if any of the people involved in our interviews could remember what the series of adverts was, or indeed the tag line used throughout for the new Windows 7 operating system. Although a few had no idea, a few of the male participants knew selected bits of them. Some knew the tagline was "I'm a PC and.." and some other knew they were short snappy ads. Here are the actual ads we were referring to:



There are several others available on YouTube from the same series.

It was interesting to find that more males than females remembered this type of advertisement. It's hard to say wether it is because of the quick delivery of the adverts that entices males over females, or if it is the content relating to computers, as computers are commonly regarded as being more interesting to males than females.

Lastly, we played only the audio of an advert, and asked if they could tell us what it was for within the first few seconds - being careful not to reveal the product name that is mentioned towards the beginning. Nearly all of them instantly named it, with the remaining one who did not name it being unable to put their finger on the exact product, although said they did recognise it.

This was the advert we used:

The conclusion we drew from our answers was that the reasons viral advertisements are successful is because in most cases, people remember the content and as a connected result, remember the brand. When a continuous style of unrelated content is used, a style is created, thus becoming part of the brand itself. An example of this is the continuous use of purple throughout Cadbury's adverts, the bright colourful fun extraordinary things that happen throughout Sony's Bravia adverts, or Honda's intellectual use of sound. As this becomes the standard for a brand, the products themselves are less and less important as by now the viewer knows that Cadbury's make chocolate, and Sony makes technological products. It's far beyond that stage. 

Basically, the theory behind it is to make you remember them, and from our findings - most of these adverts do just that.

Design Studies: Creating The Questions

For our second last design studies assignment of the year (*tear*) we had the pretty cringy task of interviewing people.

Dealing with drunk strangers from the other side of the bar at work - no problem. Asking for assistance in a shop - no problem. Phoning up a call centre about something (albeit a tedious task) - is also no problem. Standing in the street like some sort of person you'd expect to be wearing a bib with "Greenpeace" or "Amnesty International" on it, no so easy. Watch as the people avoid you like you are some kind of Moses, parting the seas of people by your mere existence. Embarrassing.

So, myself and Kirsty from Jewellery (JMD) decided to tackle this assignment together, as we had both derived similar topics from The Tipping Point in first semester. I had covered a derivative of the Airwalk Case Study, where alternative advertising was discussed, and Kirsty had researched semiotics in advertising from The Stickiness Factor. As we had slightly different areas covered, we aimed to do two things: create a set of questions that suited both of our needs, as well as educate each other about the slightly different path from our own. Win, win really.

Below is the mind map we created in order to generate our questions. We were careful not to create closed questions - a question that can be answered by a simple "yes" or "no" - as less can be learnt from these. We tried to consider how to reveal the questions to the participant, so that there was a mix of content shown before an answer and vice versa where an answer to the question was given, then the content be shown.

click to enlarge

Our final questions are as follows:

General topic to pursue: "Does alternative advertising increase your knowledge of a product, and/or make it more memorable? Does this then lead to possible purchase of said product?"

Tell the participants the following:

Viral advertising is when a product is advertised through a “gimmick” that may or may not be related to the product itself. These are often released online, but can also be seen on TV. 

Questions for Assignment 4

1. Below are three adverts. How many, if any, are successful “viral” adverts?

2. After seeing the following popular advert(s), how were you left feeling?

3. Why do you think companies chose to use adverts that do not seem to connect with the product? 

4. Can you remember what music is used in any of the following adverts? 

5. Who is your mobile phone service provider?

6. Can you summarise what the advert(s) for Windows 7 are? Can you also tell me the tagline used throughout?

7. Listening to the short sound clip only, can you tell me what product this advert was for?

After creating our list of questions, we created our consent form for

participants to sign prior to interview. These allowed us to use their information during our write up.

Finally, we had a set of questions to use. As our questions required video footage, we decided to use Kirsty's iPad for this, to make it simple and easy for participants. 

And also cause I wanted to play with it.

Wire Semiotics

I recently came across "Still Life: Bent Objects" - a collection of photographs of objects that have been altered with wire, putting them into a new context and creating comical scenarios. These assignments must of been successful, as the first thing I thought of is how they are an example of semiotics, just replacing the use of text with wire to create context.

Enjoy!

The Curriculum Vitae & Semiotics

I was surfing the abyss that is the interwebs when I came across a few sites that listed interesting resume ideas. This got me thinking - what will I chose to do to attract attention when it comes to looking for a job that doesn't involve serving drinks to drunk students?

Here are a few of my favourites:

The Origami CV

I like this one because it is simple and unusual. Imagine receiving something like this via post - it would certainly make me smile, especially if it was in a more interesting shape that you have to unfold. Takes folding paper to fit envelopes to a whole new level!

The T-Shirt CV

This is a cool idea as again it makes for an interesting delivery, but the only problem I can see with this is if you have never met who would be reading it - you may insult them by sending a size far too small or vice versa.

That aside though - I like this idea of printing on something other than paper, which leads me to what else could you print on?

The Infographic CV

For those of you who have read some of my recent postings - this one excites me a lot!

It's simple, efficient, and interesting without being cluttered up with a lot of writing. The initial impact of seeing it makes it a very successful way to display your stats and traits.

 The Compact CV

This one is similar in a way to the origami one shown above, although is very compact. If you were to send this in a very very small box then it would be surprising to get in your in tray.

It's simple and clean, and a way of sprucing up a simple text based CV, but keeping a traditional format inside.

Probably good for those who are will to try a more ambitious CV style but not willing to risk a crazy graphic design style.

 The Whole Package CV

This one is good, although it is a lot of work.

Receiving a well thought out pack with miniature flyers, brochure of work, contact detail cards and a poster is a nice thought, and reminds me of a pull out in The Guardian or The National Geographic etc.

It's a nice idea, but as I say - it's a job in itself to make it all. I guess it depends how long you have been out of work, and how much time you have to make all of this!

The Comic Book CV

This one has a lot of impact. I like the simplicity, and the fact that you can get text on it without it being irritating - although how much text you need I guess is something I could tell you if I read more into semiotics.

The limited colours also mean it doesn't get cluttered as easily - something I'm sure employers like. Surely there is nothing worse than trawling through hundreds (and in this climate probably thousands) of applications for a single position, and being bombarded with busy sheets and a lot of pointless text. Although as these are all for creative positions and I myself hope to also be applying to something in the creative industry - you'd hope applicants would have a sense about this given their field. You never know though - they might just be the ones without a job.



I think I would write my website address on 50 bananas and send them in a basket to whoever I wanted a job with. Overwhelm them with fruity madness!

If that didn't work, I think I would perhaps make a box of teabags - but replace all the information on the box with my information - but fill it with some nice fruity tea bags and send them to an employer. Who doesn't like tea, right?

Design Studies: Polysemy, Trolling and Lolcats

I hate trollers.

For those of you who do not know what trolling is - it's the act of leaving online comments on blogs, forums, websites and articles that aim to take the wrong meaning and cause an argument. A good example of endless trolling is YouTube. They aim to antagonise readers, and provoke unrest, irritation and ultimately, an argument.

Polysemy is the study of meaning in signs - and the conclusions that may be derived from it. Text confirms a specific meaning, and on the flip side, a stand alone image may result in several possible meanings to be interpreted.

So, trollers aim to purposely derive a meaning from a post, but purposely take the wrong meaning from the topic in hand - thus causing the aforementioned friction. They ask stupid questions, hoping to lure people into an argument. They are basically petty people who have nothing better to do than sit online causing fights and continuing to be deficient in vitamin D.

I found a fantastic blog post on this from via Flowing Data by Courtney Stanton, an interactive media and video games producer from Boston, MA. She documents the troller comments left on her blog, and has some good examples of how the meanings get crossed - through the use of mind maps, generated using Many Eyes.

world map of trolling comments

An article in The New York Times explains exactly what trolls do, and how it all began. Take a look - but it's quite disturbing, and frankly, extremely sad.

This then leads us to the internet meme. A good explanation of this can be found on thedailymeme.com. As it states, a meme can evolve - thus meaning it is an example of polysemy, where an image has over time developed a new meaning. The popular site icanhazcheeseburger.com is the home to the popular internet phenomenon the "Lolcat", where images of cats doing things are interpreted by overlaying text. Without the text - it is merely an image, with quite probably a reasonable explanation as to why the scenario has occurred. With the added text however - a new aspect is brought to the image, giving the viewer a different context to perceive the situation. This is an example of predicate transfer, by which assumptions are made due to a sentence, that may not in fact be true.

Of course this cat is not actually editing Wikipedia - however if you imagine this photo without any text, it is merely a photo of a cat near a laptop, however with the text - you instantly have a sense of a "personality" and get the general scenario that is insinuated by the text. 

Design Studies: Does a picture tell a thousand words, or do you sometimes need them?

Our latest assignment was based around semiotics.

The dictionary describes this as the following:

"semiotics

plural noun [treated as sing. ]

the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation."

My group decided to do the second option for this - although I do not want to explain it fully, so you can try it out for yourself.

I showed the following images to 5 people; and asked them what it made them think - what did itmake them feel, and if it provoked any specific thoughts. Try not to click on the links below the images until you have read to the bottom.

Reveal

This was the first image. I got several answers:

"It motivates me."

"I have no idea what this is getting at."

"Metaphoric, the engine inside is driving us - giving us energy."

"Excitement in medicine."

"Cars, and The Stig."

Reveal

For this second image, a reasonably diverse selection of answers:

"This one makes me think of greed."

"Technology, it makes me think of things changing with the times."

"Diverse business, and consumerism."

"Reminds me of the saying many hands make light work."

"This makes me think of gluttony."

Reveal

 Third image:

"This makes me think of crime, I wouldn't say scared, but it makes me wary."

"Crime in general."

"A suspect in an ongoing crime. It also makes me think of authority and control."

"This reminds me of old fashioned police work."

"The police."

Reveal

Lastly:

"This makes me feel sad about the rain forests."

"This is making me think about supplies running out, i.e. oil etc."

"An attempt to generate awareness of depletion."

"This makes me think of recycling, and reducing the damage in third world countries and rain forests."

"The environment, and the fact we are basically killing it."

Next, I explained that these were all in fact photoshopped adverts, with their branding removed. I asked the volunteers if, on seeing what it was advertising, if their thoughts on the images changed. If you would like to take part, I have linked the original underneath each image. Feel free to leave your comments at the bottom of this page!

After revealing the brand, I got the following responses:

For the first image:

"This makes me feel lazy now, at first I was motivated, but not anymore."

"This still makes no sense to me."

"I can understand it now it is in context, but I would never of come to this conclusion without the logo."

"I still think what I thought before, although I do get it from the adverts perspective."

"It still reminds me of cars."

The second image generated the following:

"It changes my mind, I now think of cleanliness rather than greed."

"I can see that [it's the brand] now, it's quite clever."

"[The brand is] not what I would have expected."

"I still think what I originally thought."

"I still think it's creepy."

The third image:

"This makes me confused, does it make it criminal to use [the brand]? I would of thought [the advert] was for something like drink driving."

"This image doesn't really relate to the product, I am a bit confused."

"I think this image is unrelated and has no purpose in this context."

"I get it, I wasn't too sure what it was about to begin with but I understand it now."

"This doesn't make sense to me."

The fourth image:

"This makes me feel the same as before."

"I still think the same - things are running out."

"I still think the same."

"I like this, it's clever."

"I can understand it."

I have come to the conclusion that out of our selected images, the fourth image is the most successful at conveying it's purpose without text. The third however, is least successful, as even in the context of the product, it still fails to be understood. The first and second one are reasonable, as they remain equally misunderstood with or without branding. 

Design Studies: Blog Flyer

For our current assignment - we had a few things to do, but one of them was to make a flyer to give to the people we asked our questions to (all will be revealed in a later post).

I decided not to explain what the experiment was on the flyer, because if the entire of last semester taught me anything - it should be about viral advertising.

Coupled with Lauren's talk yesterday about using a consistent theme to promote yourself - I have created the following as my flyer.

Who says advertising has to cost more than 26p?