The first unit of MA Graphic Design course was split into three periods of taught strategies for practice. At the beginning of each period, we would be introduced to a theory through a series of lectures and design challenges. These theories often derived from linguistics, and we would be tasked with an assignment that required it to be applied to a design outcome.
My contextual process was collected into a 82-page journal.
In the first assignment, we were introduced to Frame Semantics, breaking down all the individual elements which frame and bring context to an entity. Our brief was to choose an everyday object, analyse the frame in which it lives, and write a scenario that step-by-step narrates how that object is usually used. Then we were challenged to choose an element in that scenario that could be twisted to disrupt the balance of the frame, rendering the object useless
I decided to focus my research on an object which will be used by peoples from kids to elderly one, from students to managers, politics, professors and etc., for their regular usage. My choice is writing table and I make a scenario based on the usage of the writing table.
I used a witty way to disrupt the writing table scenario in which it belongs, through the designing 3D tables. The designed writing tables are a response based on subconscious comfortability or desire, in part because it disrupts the scenario of keeping and holding stuffs on it, sitting behind it and other ordinary functions of that.
Strategies for Design
In the second assignment we learned about Primary Metaphor.
This assignment asks us to produce a series of experiments to define the relationships between freedom, space and constraints using the primary metaphor.
Metaphor uses pictures, concepts and tangible things to represent fewer tangible things or ideas. For example, “good is a sign of bright”, in the expression intangible meaning of ‘good’ which is the target, becomes clearly defined by tangible quality of ‘is a sign of bright’, the source. The cross-domain mapping between the target and the source is the main part of metaphorical expressions. As Charles Forceville mentioned in his book Pictorial Metaphor in Advertising, “Metaphor is the result of the interaction between two different domains”.
Many designers and specialists believe that using metaphor in design leads to better understanding about the designed material and may make the product more appealing and familiar by the audience. Metaphor helps us to make a sense of abstracts more clearly and easily.
Our task was to create a typographic poster that uses primary-metaphor to illustrate a particular rule or policy that we felt restricted our freedoms. I chose some limitation and restrictions that some factories apply for factory workers.
Some factories force the workers to stand up for more than 7 hours a day to do their tasks. However, the assigned tasks can be done while the workers are sitting through providing the essential infrastructures in the factory.
There are some restrictions which I consider for developing my project using freedom is space metaphor.
I started by drawing the ideas came to my mind. After that I designed posters and finally with combination of the ideas, designs and concepts I designed 3 final posters.
My poster evokes metaphor for restriction, being deaf and mute.
In the final assignment of this unit we expanded on frame theory and investigated how frames are applied to much broader worldviews, in particular The White Racial Frame. This over-reaching frame can be seen to have an effect on the media we consume, past and present, as well as in the design used to present that media. This can be through explicit elements such as racial stereotyping or ‘anti-others’ expression, to more subtle methods such as appropriating modernity. We also learned of counter frames, in this example ‘Home-culture’ is a frame that sees groups incorporate positive cultural expression from their ethnic background into a more white-determined setting. The brief for this assignment was to choose a piece of media and determine if it tapped into the white racial frame or not, and to what extent. This was a heavily research-based task in which we designed pitch boards to present our findings.
I chose the Tom and Jerry animation and film. In the project I realized where the White Racial Frame might sit within Tom and Jerry Cartoon and examined whether the modern world has had an impact on the racist trend, how does the cartoon balanced representation of attractiveness, job and social status among white and non-white characters?
And answer to some questions like: Does it balanced representation of white and non-white character’s presence?
through review and analyse the episodes and bringing some evidences to support or challenge the white racial frame and its development process during the time if any.
