Wednesday 29 February 2012

LECTURE NOTES:HISTORY OF ADVERTISING//OUGD401

HISTORY OF ADVERTISING:
  • Bernbach - very influential agency in the 50s in New York called Doyle Dane Bernbach. 
  • Bernbach was a philosopher, a scientist, a humanitarian,  influences went beyond advertising.
  • example of his quote.

"Advertising doesn't create a product advantage. It can only convey it."
KEY POINTS OF HISTORY:
-context in which modern advertising emerged 
-aspects of advertising 
-the importance of soap
theme-intergratition of art and technology  ‘an area of art history neglected ... where art and technology meet’ (Elton, 1968, pvii)
THE BEGINNING:
  • Advertising, The Most Fun You Can Have With Your Clothes On! (R4, 2009)
  • Robin Wight (WCRS)118 118 & The future’s bright, the future’s orange.
  • William Hesketh Lever, (1851-1925) Lever Bros
  • Bill Bernbach (1911-1982) (DDB) first to combine copywriters and art directors 

SUNLIGHT VISION:
Lever Brothers founders James Darcy & William Hesketh Lever (1885).
build a gallery and open it up for the public. Port Sunlight 19c village commissioned by William Hesketh Lever - house his
soap factory workers. Centre- Lady Lever. 
LEVER BORN 1851
1851 GREAT EXHIBITION- colour printing not practiced until the 19th century 
photos and 3D technology - first time public saw this


ADVERTISING AN ESSENTIAL COMPONENT OF ANY COMPETITIVE MARKET ECONOMY


PRE-PACKAGING

1860s cereal companies figured out how to print, fold & fill cardboard boxes mechanically.  -John & William Kellogg 

Soap was sold in long bars to grocers, who stamped and sliced up.  
THE FIRST TABLET OF SOAP:
ADDED BRAND VALUE THROUGH ADVERTISING

BOOM:
Advertising boom aided by abolishment of taxes on newspapers 1855 & paper in 1861
Press (newspapers) owes much to advertising
News of the world ended when advertisers pulled.
THE SECOND BOOM:
Technological progress reproduction & colour printing, pictorial ads in magazines 1880s
 By 1890s technology enabled contemporary paintings to be reproduced


Sunlight Soap Ad (1890s) 
advertising increased  


First Multinational 
Advertising transformed company from a local soap manufacturer in 1885 to one of the world's first multinationals
Largest corporation in Britain by 1930 ‘Colourful, innovative advertising was crucial to Lever’s success’
 What worked so well about this advertising?

The soap men’s extensive use of contemporary paintings in their advertising is a case in point. (Lewis, 2008, p65)
Used in Sunlight soap ad with copy ‘So Clean’ 

    
As good as new - emotive

Bride (peasant) trying wedding dress.
Leverhulme used for an advertisement poster 1889, As good as new
Implies dress worn by brides mother, passing down beauty secrets.
Emotional strategy
enhanced by naturalism of Newlyn school (Cornwall) 
First Creative Advertising

Encouraged consumers to collect vouchers and save for prints of the ads.


Selecting and presenting contemporary art works (RA) communicated more powerfully a desired message.
Message was told in an interesting and innovative way. 



‘Advertising, from the moment it was born, was trying to entertain us’ (Hegarty, 2011, p9) 
FIRST GLOBAL COMPANIES:

Medicine, chocolate and soap manufacturers
Sunlight Soap among the first products to feature in a global ad campaign. 


WRAPPER PROMOS:

-1890s Sunlight soap magazine ad
-1903 began a wrapper scheme, offering soap in return

-1904 offer a gramophone + records for 750 wrappers & rolled gold watch for 4,000 (Port Sunlight Museum, 2009) 

-One method beloved of advertisers ...was to capture the children. In 1890s, purchases of sunlight soap received free paper dolls with interchangeable outfits’ 
-Targeted mothers- ensuring a life long loyalty to the brand

INVESTING IN ADVERTISING

-Lever spent £2m first two decades of making soap.
-1899 Lever purchased a Philadelphia soap firm – owner Sidney Gross became a director.
-‘Gross was expert at picking the right artist for advertisements’ (Lewis, 2008)


TARGET AUDIENCES:

-Copy in Sunlight soap ads spoke directly to working-class housewives.
Salvation of Sunlight, improves their life, leaving quality-time for romance.
Sunlight Almanac (annually) 1895-1900)
Woman’s World 470p illustrated book
High-feeling/emotive strategy -Lewis (2008) 

WORLD DOMINATION:

-20c Lever used different international agencies.
-Domestic and imperial markets Britishness suited all.
- Royal connections, national and imperial imagery
- Context of thousands of ads trading on Britannia, Where the British flag flies, Dunlop Tyres are paramount’ 



The successful global campaign
- Lever’s achievement
 ‘to convince people all over the world that they did not just want this product, they needed it’ 

THE LYNX EFFECT:

“The message was clear, if one wished to gain or retain a partner, a job, a reputation and self esteem, one needed to attend to personal hygiene...sales skyrocketed” (Lewis, 2008, p81)
-High-feeling strategy 
    
Psychology of Advertising
Advertisers, more than any other group of people, made hay with new understandings of human psychology in the twentieth century 

ROLES OF ADVERTISING:

Fundamentals of honest business, will continue to advance humanity to brotherhood...honesty in advertising ...is a cardinal principle in your country and in mine...the advertiser...is building for those who follow after him. It should be the same with nations’ 
SUMMARY:

- This history Wight (R4)- library, So Clean Lewis (2008) Sunlight Vision and Alice in Wonderland exhibitions. Focus on the beginning.
- Included historical, political, economic and technological contexts which enabled Lever’s modern advertising to emerge.
- Colour printing and reproduction technological developments 19c.
- Creative advertising strategy, art and copy.
Advertising principles truth and entertainment.
- The importance of advertising to an economy, soap to imperialism.
-Social Media and Communication, impact of New Media on advertising and creativity. 

Tuesday 21 February 2012

LECTURE NOTES:MEDIUM SPECIFICITY//OUGD401

Edward R. Tufte argues that powerpoint design inherently makes it more difficult to communicate with an audience.  
  • Instead of giving an informative presentation, PowerPoint encourages speakers to create slides with ultra- short, incomplete thoughts listed with bullets. 
New technology tends to mimic old ones.
Medium/media specificity -term used in aesthetics and art criticism 
Media specificity and media specific analysis are ways to identify new media art forms such as internet art "the medium is the message"
the medium becomes the media which is itself simply an extension of our own physical and mental limitations.
DEFINITIONS:

• Medium: material or technical means of artistic expression.
• Media is the plural form of medium.
• The dictionary defines media as all the communication devices and channels of communication used to reach mass audiences.

WHAT ARE WE?Our medium specificity is that we are biological creatures. Organic in nature, we have a close genetic connection to the animal world. 

  • The basic aspects of our nature are physiological, psychological and sociological.    
A human being is a biosocial being and the subject of social forms of life, communication and consciousness. 
A definition
• Medium specificity is the view that the media associated with a given art form (both its material components and the processes by which they are exploited) entail specific possibilities for and constraints on representation and expression, and this provides a normative framework for what artists working in that art form ought to attempt.
• Noël Carroll 2008 

WHAT IS MEDIA SPECIFICITY?
It is most closely associated with modernism, but it predates it. According to Clement Greenberg,, medium specificity holds that "the unique and proper area of competence" for a form of art corresponds with the ability of an artist to manipulate those features that are "unique to the nature" of a particular medium. 


Medium specificity can be used as an aesthetic judgement tool, it can be used to frame the question, “ Does this work fulfil the promise contained in the medium used to bring the artwork into existence?” 



Media Specificity as Communication Theory Marshall McLuhan

  • “Themediumisthemessage"
  • The central idea in his 1964 book: Understanding Media: The
    Extensions of Man
  • McLuhan calls attention to the intrinsic effect of communications media and explains that it is not the content, it is the carrier that creates meaning.
  • McLuhan expands our understanding of media.
  • The medium becomes the media which is
    itself simply an extension of our own physical and mental limitations. 

    Sound and media specificity
    • In the 1920's the 10-inch 78 rpm Shellac gramophone disc became the most popular recording medium.
    • A 10 inch disc rotating at 78 rpm limited the duration of recorded time on each side of a disc to around three minutes. 


    Social extensions
    • Social [knowledge] building as a creative process of knowing will be collectively extended to the whole of human society (McLuhan 1964) Mobile phone networks, Facebook, Twitter
    • Electronic mass media collapse space and time barriers in human communication, enabling people to interact and live on a global scale (McLuhan; 1962 Gutenberg galaxy)
    • "The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village." (McLuhan 1966)


      Technology as Memory extensions
      • Footprints
      • Drawing, painting and symbol making
      • Writing
      • Printing
      • Photography
      • Sound recording
      • Silent Film
      • Technological convergence of Sound recording and Silent Film
      • TV
      • Computers (1940s)
      • Magnetic tape (Available to the public from 1940s)
      • Video tape (Available to the public from 1969)






  • Due to their media certain art forms are better at certain tasks than others.
  • The Art of Comics: A Philosophical Approach
  • From the chapter: Making Comics into Film p. 149
  • By Aaron Meskin, Roy T. Cook, Warren Ellis To be released Feb. 2012 
     
    Comic specificity

    Each page is segmented into panels (or frames), which have borders that separate them from other panels.
    Individual panels contain one part of a story (perhaps dialogue between characters), or a character's inner thoughts (represented by speech and thought balloons) that leads into the next panel.


    Panels are routinely separated by blank areas called gutters.
    Panels are set out to logically flow one to another, guiding the reader's eyes so that they can take in the story in a sequential manner.


Friday 3 February 2012

FIVE IMAGES OF VISUAL COMMUNICATION ACCESSIBLE TO THE PUBLIC DOMAIN

5 images that exist and are accessible to the public domain:
PUBLIC PLACES THAT COULD SHOW TYPES OF VISUAL COMMUNICATION:
BUS STOP- SHOPS- CITY CENTRE- BILLBOARDS - NEWSPAPERS- THE UNDERGROUND ETC.
This is an advertisement for the National Portrait Gallery, on the side of a bus stop, accessible for the all the public to see.  Its quite a basic design, however, the colours stand out and its simple with interesting and limited type, this would definitely enhance the readers interest, as its quick and easy to be attracted to it.  The poster asks the reader questions such as 'What drives me?' which has got to get a reaction and engage the reader in some way, even if it is only until the bus comes.
This is an art campaign made by a group of graphic designers for artwork of the London underground.  They have chosen famous historical and political icons and made a poster with a famous quote from that person.  I definitely think its eye catching due to the bold colours and the faces our instantly recognisable anyway.  It makes waiting for the train more interesting, which was the point, I think its worked successfully. 
I think this is quite clever, even though the actual design of the advertisement itself obviously hasn't had too much thought visually, but I think its clever where its been placed.  Thousands of people will get on that tube carriage everyday and your constantly looking up at the map and the advertisements around, this would definitely be unavoidable to read, which is all its actually saying so I think its effective, not sure what its actually advertising though.
This is an eye catching billboard, the fact that its 3D catches peoples eye, and the brand, Apple, is so well known that its instantly interesting because pretty much everyone wants to own an Apple product. Theres also recognisable album covers on the billboard which people will connect with.
This is probably one of the biggest forms of visual communication, newspapers are everywhere and theres so many different ones, you can't help but read the headlines as you walk by a news agents or flick through one thats been left on the tube/bus.

Wednesday 1 February 2012

OUGD404//THE ANATOMY OF TYPE NOTES//DESIGN PRINCIPLES


ty·pog·ra·phy (tī-pŏg'rəә-fē) n., pl. -phies.

1. The art and technique of printing with movable type.
2. The composition of printed material from movable type.
3. The arrangement and appearance of printed matter. 

POINT SIZE
1 point = 1⁄72 inches = 25.4⁄72 mm = 0.3527 mm
12 POINTS = 1 PICA

Th arrangement of type is the selection of type faces, point size, line length, leading and kerning.  The anatomy of a letterform consists of:
-stem
-baseline
-ascender
-descender
-serif
-x height 





















OUGD404//THE ANATOMY OF TYPE NOTES//DESIGN PRINCIPLES


SEMINAR NOTES:


VISUAL SYNECDOCHE
This term is applied when a part is used to represent the whole, or vice versa. Quite simply, the main subject is substituted for something that is inherently connected to it. This substitution only works if what the synecdoche represents is universally recognised

 VISUAL METAPHOR
A visual metaphor is used to transfer the meaning from one image to another. Although the images may have no close relationship, a metaphor conveys an impression about something relatively unfamiliar by drawing a comparison between it and something familiar.



VISUAL METONYM
A visual metonym is a symbolic image that is used to make reference to something with a more literal meaning. For example, a cross might be used to signify the church. By way of association the viewer makes a connection between the image and the intended subject. Unlike a visual synecdoche , the two images bear a close relationship, but are not intrinsically linked. 




Legibility
is the degree to which glyphs (individual characters) in text are understandable or recognizable based on appearance. 



Readability
is the ease in which text can be read and understood. It is influenced by line length, primary and secondary leading, justification, typestyle,
kerning, tracking, point size, etc. 

OUGD404//THE ANATOMY OF TYPE NOTES//DESIGN PRINCIPLES

VISUAL LITERACY:



+The ability to construct meaning from visual images and type. 
+The ability to construct meaning from visual images and type.
+Producing images that effectively communicate a message to an audience.


VISUAL COMMUNICATION:

+Is a process of sending and receiving messages using images and type
+Is based on a level of shared understanding of signs, symbols, gestures and objects
+Is affected by audience, context, media and method of distribution.

 
KEY ELEMENTS OF GRAPHIC DESIGN 

FRAME
FORMAT
FIGURE/FORM
GROUND
COMPOSITION
VISUAL DYNAMICS
TYPE
IMAGE
COLOUR

LAYOUT
LEGIBILITY
READABILITY




All that is necessary for any language to exist is an agreement amongst a group of people that one thing will stand for another.


SLIDES FROM PRESENTATION 



VOCABULARY 
• font
• typeface
• font family
• weight
• Stroke
• uppercase / lowercase
• tracking 
• kerning 


-Serif
-Sans Serif
-Script
-Black Letter
-Display
-Monotype
-Symbol




• TYPEFACE
A collection of characters, letters, numbers, symbols, punctuation etc. which have the same distinct design

• FONT
The physical means used to create a typeface, be it computer code, lithographic film, metal or woodcut