Week 9: Lecture – Form and Function
This week’s interview lecture with Sam Winston looks at the relationship between form and function and how we read, understand and engineer communication.
Suzanna and Sam chat about how form and material can affect the work we produce.
Sam’s work is more tangible than others we have seen through these modules, more traditional, craft-based items. A more physical way of working which moves away from digital.
For Sam, using your hands more gives the opportunity to explore different outcomes by using different tools. ‘Learning through touch’, as he puts it, brings different ideas but also chances to make mistakes and discover new things which too much planning might cause you to miss. To figure out how something will feel it’s better to actually feel it, rather than just see it on-screen. When working on a project you’re interested in, don’t get too concerned with the outcome – let the work develop as you go.
The Solar Annual Report
This project is so simple, it’s genius. It’s the best corporate piece I’ve seen in a long time. The creators and the client should both be congratulated, the trust shown by the client to the agency is huge.
Imagine receiving a copy of this…
The confusion when you take a blank book out of an envelope, followed a split second later (depending on the sun) with all the content there in front of you. What’s happening is totally obvious to the reader, it simply isn’t possible to misunderstand the message.
Not only that, the design and layout is also impressive so it’s worth the wait on a dull day.
The Trillion Dollar Campaign
In 2009 the Zimbabwean newspaper ran an ad campaign to highlight the growing problem of hyperinflation in Zimbabwe.
The Trillion Dollar Campaign used Zimbabwean banknotes as the paper to print handouts, billboards and posters, claiming it was cheaper to print onto the banknotes instead of buying the paper as normal.
Banknotes between Z$1,000,000 and Z$100,000,000,000 showed English-language advertising slogans and were handed out to motorists in Johannesburg. Rolls of currency were sent to key industry figures, media personalities, and politicians, and posters were shown at every location selling the newspaper in the city.
Murals and billboards all made from hundreds or thousands of banknotes carried slogans such as; “Fight The Regime That Has Crippled A Country”, “Z$250 000 000 Cannot Buy The Paper To Print This Poster On” and “Thanks to Mugabe This Money Is Wallpaper”.
There’s no mistaking the message being told by the campaign, the money was utterly worthless.
I’m finding this module, the whole nine weeks, is helping me to think better. I’d sum up my current working practice for the past few years as:
- Deadline
- Decent enough idea
- Work it up
- Done
- Next…
Now I’m starting to feel as though I’m getting back to thinking differently and finding different approaches to producing work, different mediums and how take ideas a step further, and it’s re-energising.
The examples above show what’s possible when you let an idea run on a step further, but it’s not just down to the agency or studio which comes up with the ideas, the client also has to see further and trust the designers who are trying to deliver something different.
Brief 3 – Press
This project explores the arena in which the message is deployed, from the printed page to the interactive screen, from 3D form to environmental installation. You will also begin to address how we ‘understand’ these messages and the symbolism and semiotics that allow us both to ‘read’ but also engineer communications today, both for the familiar and the new. The outcome will see you create a message in response to an issue or cause revealed, and promote in an appropriate medium.
The Challenge: Message vs Medium
How can a message be enhanced through the medium in which it is implemented?
The challenge this week is asking you to consider the relationship between the message and the modes / mediums / methods through which you can communicate it. To do this we’re asking you to look locally again – and explore a single emotion that encapsulates or expresses your city.
The task asks you to:
- Communicate an emotion you perceive your city or location is about.
- Take the word and use an appropriate material, form or medium – 2D, digital, 3D or immersive.
The Word: Reticent
ˈrɛtɪs(ə)nt
Adjective not revealing one’s thoughts or feelings readily: she was extremely reticent about her personal affairs.
I’ve chosen the word ‘Reticent’, it doesn’t imply an ignorance or superiority as a reason for not talking, but more of a little reluctance to get started in a conversation with someone unknown, a word such as ‘shy’ or ‘introverted’ seem too harsh, reticent seems softer somehow…
Just listen…
That was this weeks plan after the lectures, just listen and see what happens.
I took this literally and went to the town square, sat and listened to what was going on. Mostly people shopping and sitting in the sun, but I noticed a bit of each keeping to themselves. The benches weren’t full of people but it seemed like there was nowhere to sit, people were standing waiting in the park-and-ride bus queue but nobody was even doing the universal gesture for ‘I wish this bus would hurry up’ by raising their eyebrows with a sigh.
It’s an odd place, it’s friendly but up to a point, don’t talk too much unless you’re complaining about the parking, buses, roadworks, homeless, the money being ‘wasted’ updating Pride Hill, “they could have done something better with that…”, the traffic, the teenagers ‘rioting’ (?!).
It’s a great place to live and to visit but there’s a bit of a stand-off between age groups, between schools, between areas of the town, a kind of hierarchy. One of the responses I had summed it up well as having “a small town mentality” and “being closed to new ideas” as well as feeling that a lot of people who’ve lived here for a long time feel like they’re in charge.
Each level of this hierarchy feels as if the one above them isn’t allowing them to show their opinion, indeed I even had to re-word my question for one of the surveys from ‘what do/don’t you like about…’ to ‘what do you love about…’ so that their social media page could just stay positive and not give any encouragement for people to start using it as an outlet for their complaints.
Results – Interviews
I managed six interviews in the time we had. I explained what the situation was, what their view would be used for and that their response would be absolutely anonymous.
Simple statement:
- Tell me something good
- Tell me something bad
Good things
Bad things
Displaying the results
This was the fun part. To take the interview and survey responses from the quiet and anonymous format they were gathered and show them off as a complete opposite reaction.
The results from the online survey were made into slides an projected onto the side of building in the town, the opinions of the town larger than life.
Further development would be to collate statements about specific buildings or relevant areas; a complaint about the shops projected along the high street, a compliment towards the history of the town; project it onto the outside of the castle walls.
The audio from the interviews off the street is being animated. I’m showing any pause for thought, or sounds, etc. made by the speaker during the interview and synching the speed, the size for volume, and the delivery length of each words into the animation to reflect the way the person is talking.
The first example is shown below, one of the ongoing parts of this brief will be to animate the rest.
The clip below shows the test projection onto the building opposite the studio. I plan to project the animated texts also.
Slideshow Projection from S E V E R N on Vimeo.
Reflection
Exciting project, one of the worries was the legal side of projecting onto a town centre building, whether to just do it, or to check what’s needed beforehand.
Asking a local artist who works with lighting installations his advice was: “it’s much easier to apologise after you’ve done it than to ask for permission first”.
Decision made.
The difficult part was the interviewing. I was apprehensive about stopping people to ask them questions and record their answer.
We don’t like to be in the eyeline of charity workers, our main street through town sometimes feels like a game of Pac-Man trying to avoid them, now I was the one people were trying to avoid.
However, it wasn’t so bad…
Asking people for help was a big part of this project, the lighting guy, members of the public and the owner of the social media page, all glad to help.
