SYMPOSIUM FORAY v1

After a lot of investigation, I focused on "branding" as a design strategy relative to the rhetoric of authenticity. I was fascinated by the contrasting variables that need to stay under consideration (e.g., consistency while being relevant and fresh) in order to ensure a long-term sustainable value. Since a misstep at any touchpoint could easily weaken a consumer's brand confidence, there are endless amounts of resources used to try and piece together the perfect branding strategy. My intent with this project was to visualize the difficulty/misalignment brands have communicating their objectives. This disconnect is physically shown with seven 8.5 x 14" one sheets. They are spaced out to imply groupings whose content you are supposed to investigate as a dialogue.

After reading the name of the piece you are confronted with the first set of posters. There is a blank sheet of paper juxtaposed with an image of a heart bleep - signifying the "birth" of a brand. I made this a part of the dialogue to give my narrative a beginning full of possibilities, in contrast to the end of the series.

A brand's effort to meticulously align with a person's perceptions, beliefs and attitude is the focus of the second set. I chose to extend the line from the previous poster and use rigid geometric shapes, coming from one source, to symbolize the branding effort, while the fickle emotional state of humans took shape as unpredictable organic waves (I sound like an alien from another planet, haha). These two elements are reaching out to each other, but their physical differences hinder the possibility of a good connection. Measuring the positive resonance of a brand or even ensuring loyalty is extremely difficult - now that consumers have the whole world to shop from with the internet - and the lack of contact shown here is partially speaking to that. But, it is also difficult to connect the brand's objectives with the people who are doing the branding...

The last set of posters is a commentary on differentiation as a main branding purpose. I extended a hand from the previous poster to represent an individual's belief that what they are outputting is going to make them stand out, even though most of the time they are just falling into a river of trendy sameness.

Interestingly enough, the gaps in dialogue between my three sets is where I think the designer's role is most pivotal (trying to connect the brand to people, etc.) and I am considering making this a visible addition. Thinking about the context of this symposium, I was unsure about how direct my point of view had to be. Without any annotations I know that these visuals could easily be read differently than I inteded, but I kind of like the idea of leaving the posters open for interpretation. I am curious to know if you think it is still too vague. I definitely tried to run with my most wild and crazy idea, so if you think I need to pull it in or jump farther, please let me know. Thank you in advance for all of your input!

CURIOUS...

While loading a pdf, I was able to read the text before it fully uploaded. I just felt like this should have been harder, since the text was so obscured:



And it made me think back to the Cambridge word scramble study:

"Arocdnicg to rsceearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pcale. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit pobelrm. Tihs is buseace the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe."

Even though I've heard this wasn't a real study, I still love how these kind of occurrences make me (re)appreciate how the brain works.

INITIATION TO _______. REFLECTION

It is apparent that finding a design strategy that works with this assignment is illusive. According to "The Rhetorical Act", by Karylyn Kohrs Campbell and Susan Schultz Huxman, the challenge as a rhetor is, "attempt(ing) to overcome the obstacles in a given situation with a specific audience on a given issue to achieve a particular end." Would the simple fact that I am an outsider be my biggest obstacle? Is being a human designing for another human enough, or am I unwillingly inadequate at designing for a community that I am not a part of?

For me, Project 2 became an initiation of the Raleigh Amateur Radio Society (RARS) to an extension of Twitter using morse code. The goal was to adopt RARS' existing visual conventions, while harmoniously/arrestingly introducing new visuals. The following are key questions and problems that I addressed during my process:

What constitutes an initiation?

What could I initiate my community to that would be a logical extension of their current interests?

Which conventional formats and visuals should be borrowed in the design of the initiation?

How could I create a design that felt authentic to my target audience when unfamiliar visuals were being introduced? (Which, I later realized, was an unnecessary constraint I gave myself.)

And how far could I divert from what is "standard" and still be effective?

I tried to create an operator's manual that took in consideration my audience's biases, values, expectations and knowledge. The "twitter circuit diagram" annotated with ham acronyms was an important feature of the manual that concreted my initiative mission, but this blending of twitter and RARS still fell short of the projected goal. The initiation could have been pushed farther away from the safety nets of "how a manual works" and "how twitter works". I had unintentionally given myself parameters concerning authenticity in an attempt to make the project more explicit, but ended up stagnating exploration. I really liked Tony's suggestion of Twitter CW becoming a metaphor for the lapsing time frames that exist in morse code. Although I was previously apprehensive about the complexities of that correlation, addressing the function of the interface would not have been my problem. Instead the project could have taken shape as a solely diagrammatic manual on Twitter CW that visualized twitter messages interacting with time and space.

I am trying to relinquish my approach as a practical problem solver, and let grad school nurture uninhibited theoretical exploration. Making this conscious effort to refocus my attention to the possibilities and what ifs will deter me from targeting a fully designed, functioning end product. Seeing the different interpretations of the same assignment really reveals the subjectiveness of the design process, and the difficulty in finding "the right" approach. One of the things that struck me during critique was how the assimilation of new visual methods into the initiations recurrently sacrificed legibility, conviction or incentive. As students liberated to manipulate visual conventions, what defines our success in these assignments? Does a project have to be realistic and consumable by the real world or does pushing the boundaries of comprehension show a greater strength?

INITIATION TO _______. v2

INITIATION TO _______. v2 (FALSE START)

I have been going full force trying to wrap my head around a way of using the visual rhetoric of my community in an initiation. I decided on a pamphlet format as my immersive delivery of universal signals of distress...

When I found out that my weekend could potentially be full of boring publication layout I had a little voice in my head that said "Get out of there!". My community is math and science centric, so reflecting dry schematics into the delivery would be effective, but really boring for me. That's not what grad school is about! I want to get excited about my projects!!

So, I got as far as these cover spreads:





Now that I got that out of my system, I can move on to more interesting outlets :)