Design Studies III: Changes & Conflict

4/02/18 Week 1-14
Kamal Afiq [0330643]
Design Studies III: Changes & Conflict
Week 1

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WEEK I Ethics

Ethics is a set of principles of right conduct, and is generally the nature of moral choices made by a person.

1. Legalities - the rules that govern profession, e.g. copyright
2. Integrity - principles of right conduct, e.g. contracts and crowd sourcing
3. Morality - the general nature of moral choices made by a person, e.g. social responsibility

Best practices to create effective visual design:

• Reduce the size and number of editions of documents (versions in German, Japanese...)
• Reduce translation (dependence on verbal and written language)
• Ease learning (easy to see and understand)
• Improve comprehension

Further design considerations:

1. Reading habits
2. Study artistic expectations
3. Allow for different learning styles
4. Suppress unimportant details

WEEK II Social Class Transformations

A social class is a division of society based on social economic status. Often there are 4: the Upper Class, The Middle Class, The Working Class and the Lower Class. Social classes are helpful to researchers because it helps them to:

1. See how changes in class structure impact social change
2. Understand the ways in which consciousness of different populations is influenced by class position
3. How class consciousness leads to political action and social transformation

The best way to see how social classes is to look at how different groups work together. According to Karl Marx, there are two classes of people who earn income:

• Proletarian: People who work but do not own the means of production
• Capitalist: People who own the means of production

Social class transformation often proceeds in four steps:

1. Hunting and Gathering (survival)
2. Horticultural (hunting and gathering + gardening)
3. Agrarian (Wide scale farming, less hunting and gathering)
4. Industry (manufacturing, services and skilled experts)

A main driving factor for the social class transformation is that of the creative impulse. Creativity is now what drives change in industry by way of advantages.

WEEK III The Creative Class: Rise & Effects to Design Culture

Humans began to move from hunter-gatherer societies to agriculture and industry because of our creative instinct. Today, the economy is powered by human creativity where the ability to create meaningful new forms is now the decisive source of competitive advantage. The winners are often the ones that can create and keep revolutionizing agriculture and industry.

At the turn of the 21st century, between 1997-2000, the internet started to enter middle-income homes. eCommerce starting becoming popular. However due to profit turnover, many online companies collapsed between 2000-2001 resulting in the Burst of the Internet Bubble. The companies that did recover however flourished until today.

The design of websites to fuel eCommerce gained prominence and importance. The rise of the creative class was proven successful by Japanese technological/automobile industries. Whole new industries such as CGI and video games.

WEEK IV The Creative Class: Rise & Effects to Design Culture Continued

Design throughout the 20th century has changed immensly in terms of execution and style.

• 1950s advertisements were exaggerated to convey wealth and satisfaction. Bright enthusiastic lors, paintings and middle-class emphasis.
• 1960s drawings replaced with photographs. Design principles used extensively. Counterculture gains steam.
• 1970s psychedelic, bright and clashing colors. More experimental graphic design.
• 1980s urban culture became mainstream. Bold, jagged and hair-raising graphic design.
• 1990s great influence by grunge. Photoshop is released.
• 2000s visuals created for screens now. Revival of class designs as well as modern advancements.

WEEK V Political Strategy

Visuals or colors are often used in politics as to assert messages about strength, honesty, intelligence as well as to invoke a psychological effect on the viewer. Politicians often use it so manipulate their audience. 

Typography is an increasingly important tool as well. Different fonts communicate different personalities and styles of political digress. 

Symbols are often used as positive messages and for political manipulation. 

Propaganda was an important tool to push forward regimes, programs and other political agendas. Striking posters with high contrast were used with simple but significant messages.

One great example is Obama's political campaign, which made great use of social media and platforms like YouTube for spreading information. The campaign used the pronoun 'We' a lot to invoke a sense of community and collaborative change. 

Posters like 'Keep Calm and Carry On' which was produced in preparation for WWII and Mao Ze Dong's posters used a mixture of simplicity, color and things like halos and contrast to give different messages.