CoP- Study Task 5

Typeface- Times New Roman










Times New Roman falls under the classification of Roman. Times New Roman also falls into the category of being a humanist typeface. A humanist typeface are named after the first Roman font typefaces which appeared around 1470 in Venice. Humanist typefaces were created to imitate handwriting of Italian renaissance scholars. Human typefaces serifs as well as being wide and a feature that most humanist typefaces have are the squared full point.

Times New Roman was commissioned by The Times newspaper in 1931 and it was created by Victor Lardent who worked for Monotype. The typeface was commissioned as Stanley Morison had written an arcticle about how badly The Times newspaper was written. The Times New Roman font is used widely throughout the world. The typeface is installed onto both Apple and Microsoft products and it mainly is the default font when using applications such as Microsoft Word. The Times used the typeface for 40 years until it turned into a tabloid. Times New Roman is also used USA's Department of State, US Diplomatic documents.

In my opinion I would say that Times New Roman is used for function rather than form as the typeface is easy to read it works well in documents such as newspapers and books. Although the typeface isn't a "ugly" typeface I believe that it works better as a function rather than it being aesthetically pleasing.

The typeface was created based on old Roman fonts which is why it classes as a "Roman" typeface. The connotations of Times New Roman in my opinion are that it is a very classic typeface which is formally used in text for reading. The typeface itself it very strong and sturdy due to it having serifs and I believe also that it is a powerful font due to this. Times New Roman is a readable font, just as Beatrice Warde says in her Graphic Design Theory book " If books are printed in order to be read, we must distinguish readability from what the optician would call legibility."

CoP- Study Task 4

The connotations of this image are that the white child appears angelic and the black child is shown as a devil as you can see from the horns of the child’s hairstyle.  With this particular advertisement Oliveiro Toscani wanted to show the racial barrier that still appears today in many different cultures and societies. The advertisement was seen in the year of 1991. At first we see the denotation which is two children happily hugging each other.  Clearly the racial stereotype of black people is that they’re bad whereas the Arian white child is shown in a much more positive light almost angelic. The advertiser was trying to bring this point across to basically show the masses of how blatant racism actually is.

The denotations for this images is that the image shows two children hugging each other. One is looking happy whereas one child is looking sad.

Through looking at the image deeper we can see that Oliviero is trying to raise a point with this United Colours of Benetton advert rather than be racist. I find this advertisement interesting, as at the time it would have sparked debates on whether this advertisement should be banned due to the controversial topic lying behind it as well as it being so blatant.

What i'm arguing with this particular image is the fact that people don't like seeing things that are classed as controversial and they prefer seeing images for perfume adverts, or pictures of dogs or advertisements that sell you something. Noone likes to address controversial topics as they're afraid to speak their own mind so they just mask that and follow everyone else's opinions. What else I find from this image is the fact that racism still exists and more so around the time of the advertisement and people didn't like it even though racism still happens everyday. 

At first glance it is two children hugging but when you focus more you see there is a meaning to it, as you can see the black child has devil horns whereas the white child looks angelic. This is more to prove a point and show people that racism is as blatant as this advertisement.

CoP-Study Task 2

During our Context of Practice lesson on Tuesday the 8th of October we had to look and study the 2013/2014 college prospectus.Richard asked each member of the class to write up a few bullets points on what they thought about the prospectus.

This is the cover page of the prospectus in which I thought at first glance wasn't too bad although some of the shapes are badly placed. I found that from looking through the prospectus it wasn't too different from the 2012/2013 prospectus as the same generic stock photos had been used and it was very business like in the way the pages were laid out.

Looking through this prospectus I thought that there was a lot of body text that was hard to read as well as it being quite boring in places. Also the type was quite small on the pages making this also harder to read.  I thought the stock choice used was good as it was a thick stock which would be very hard wearing. 

I feel that it doesn't really hit the target audience, it isn't colourful enough and when flicking through the pages I found it to be quite clean and quite business like rather than a prospectus for an art college. 

I would consider using less body copy, more real images rather than stock images and making it less sterile so people actually want to read it.

CoP- Study Task 3

In the first context of practice lesson we were given a task in which we had to compare two images the questions we had to answer were:

• The choice and organisation of font and style of illustration
• The purpose and meaning of the image
• The target/potential audience of the image
• The social and historical contexts relevant to the production of the image

The images are:

The Uncle Sam Range (1876) by Schumacher and Ettlinger, New York

Poster by Savile Lumley


As we can see in the top one it is clearly an advertisement, after a discussion I found it was an advertisement for selling a range cooker from the 'Uncle Sam's Cooking Range'. In this advert we can see there is quite an American theme throughout with the Eagle as well as the carpet and clothes.  I would describe the advert as patriotic. The advert was made in 1876 which was 100 days after Independence day. We can see on the side there is a hint of racism with the slave doing the cooking in the corner. Clearly this was still at the time of slavery.We can also see there is more racism from the recipes in the photos for example suggesting China eats birds nests and grass hoppers. They're suggesting in a way that the American way of life is better than other cultures. From my own observation I would suggest the target audience for this advert is middle class families very nearly upper class. My reasoning for this is that I found that most upperclass families would most likely own a range cooker as they would have had the money beforehand when the range cookers were first made.

There are similarities between the first image and second image as they are both very patriotic. I say that the second image is patritoc due to the question at the bottom of the image which reads 'Daddy what did YOU do in the great war', I believe the image is of a middle-class English family with the young boy playing with the English guards. Also in the second image there is the use of roses on the curtains which could be refereeing to the English Rose.

In the second image the appearance doesn't compare much with the first image. The colours in this image are very neutral with the use of greens and blues. Also the font in the second image seems very soft with the use of the italics,  whereas in the top the type used has a very 'cowboy' look to it which shows a strong and in your face which turns your attention to the advert.

The second image clearly shows it is used for propaganda with the idea of a perfect family. I get this idea from the caption on the image which reads 'Daddy, what did YOU do in the Great War?', this caption is almost pressuring the audience for the image to join the army during WW1, also there is an emphasis on the 'you'. The target audience for this image is for males who are of the age to join the army. This image is used to persuade people to join the army, almost guilt tripping you into thinking you're a bad person if you don't join the Army. Focusing on the caption within the sentence it says the "Great War" this is implying the English are thinking very highly of themselves as they are implying they are going to be winning the War.

Although completely different countries and different messages both these images have quite a few things in common. They're both patriotic in their own ways, with the American one being less subtle than the other image.

CoP- Study Task One

 

Oliviero Toscani

This piece of design influences me as it's out of the ordinary and very controversial.  The designer Oliviero Toscani isn't afraid to step out of the bounds and this is what influences me as I want my work to stand out and also be controversial to an extent. What influences me most is that this piece is so simple yet conveys a very strong message which is why I like this piece of design. The words White, Black and Yellow convey a very strong message, Toscani is showing that whatever race you are our hearts are all the same still.

Graffiti

I can't put down a name of any specific graffiti artists but after exploring Leeds I've found different places in which there are many pieces of good graffiti. The reason I like graffiti is because it's secretive, not many people know the graffiti artists directly. It's also this idea of going against someone/something. 

Old Advertisements

Old advertisements really interest me. I often don't like the message behind the advertisements as they're usually quite derogatory or just don't make make any sense at all. But the reason I like them is because some of them are so ridiculous that they're actually funny. Also the illustrations are usually very well done.   

Propaganda

By this I don't mean I like what propaganda does or did,  I just like how the designs can influence society. In a way propaganda is advertising. Propaganda is a powerful tool. I really like the designs on the World War propaganda. They're patriotic, eye catching and bold. Although not a great message they worked and I can see why. This idea of using design as a tool for marketing and advertising is very clever and works. 

Collage

I've always enjoyed the idea of collage. I think it can be very powerful as well as creative. As we're moving more towards digital it's nice to go back and use creative practices such as collage as it moves us away from technology. I also find its a lot more creative than using a computer to design. I like using the idea of collage to send out a message but subtly.  

Introductory Brief

The brief title of the first brief is How To...

Date Given: 30th September
Date of Submission- 4th October

On Monday 30th September we were given the brief in which we had to get together in pairs and write down 20 problems which we have or had when we moved to Leeds.After we had thought of 20 in our pairs we joined another two people and discussed the problems that we found and we again narrowed our 40 problems as a group into 20 problems.

We then joined another group and again matched up or problems and then initially we narrowed them down to 10 problems. After this discussion in a group the whole class shared their problems and we all agreed on 10 problems from each groups which we thought were most important.

When we got our brief on Monday we were split into groups and we were given a problem from the 10 that were narrowed down. The problem our group got was "Student Employment", students are worried that there aren't enough student jobs, our job was to create a document alongside a 5 minute presentation that communicates the solution to the problem.

We did a mindmap of all the problems and solutions and then we started focusing on the format of the document. We decided that we wanted our document to inform the audience and we decided that our target audience was students from all over the country at different universities.

Whilst mind mapping ideas we came up with the use of origami which then led on to us creating a paper fortune teller. We thought that the paper fortune teller would be a fun and interactive way of getting our point across. 

We then started designing the paper fortune teller on Photoshop when we had researched all the information that was needed for the design. We used a template from the internet to help us with the dimensions of the fortune teller.

On Photoshop we then started to put our paper fortune teller together to see if it worked. After we had found out it worked we started to work on the fortune teller as well as the poster to go on the back. In different groups we started to design different posters such as this one below...

We decided to go with the teal colour as we thought it was quite neutral.

We then had a crit where a few points we brought up about our design such as:

• Our design might look better in just black and white
• Needs to be more fluent with the colour and typefaces used
• On the logo the word "Jobs" isn't clear enough

Having taking this information on board we tried the design in black and white but we felt it was too boring so we decided to tone down the coloring with a simple green and blue. When we got together as a group we went through all the designs and tided them up so they were fluent throughout as you can see below. We decided to keep the design clean with the colours used.

We then presented our fortune teller to the rest of the class who thought it was fun and interactive.