Marimekko presentation

I decided what subjects I wanted to talk about, and what the content of my presentation would be. I put these headings on separate sheets of paper and read through all the material I had used for research purpose. I made notes, according to the topic, on the relevant sheet. 

Once I knew what information I was going to use, I wrote the slides for the presentation. I felt it was important to include lots of Marimekko's designs in my slides, to show the company in context. I used their patterns as backgrounds to slides, and imagery of their clothing on separate slides.

I printed out the slides onto handout pages, and used the blank space to make notes to prompt me during the presentation.

Now all I have to do is practice what I'm going to say!!

Annotated bibliography

For my presentation on Marimekko, I spent a lot of time tracking down relevant material.

There was not a huge amount available on the college Journals database, just a couple of reports, but I found relevant background material on Scandinavian design which was very interesting for putting design into context.

I bought two books about Marimekko which contain lots of detailed information. Marimekko: Fabrics, Fashion, Architecture is an interesting collection of essays, and Patterns: Marimekko is a brilliant visual resource. Both have lots of relevant content.

I then looked at information online, including Marimekko's own website and some of their retailers.

The popular press had some published articles on the internet on Scandinavian design history which I can use.

Finally, I looked at the company's financial statements.

Presentation and Annotated Bibliography Brief

Marimekko

I decided to base my presentation for Contextual Studies on the Finnish company Marimekko, who, for the last 60 years have been famous for their printed designs produced for fashion and homewares.

Their most famous print, still in production after 50 years, is Unikko:

This print has been used on everything from clothing,  to dinner plates, to tube train interiors, to airplanes.

I want to research what makes the company and their designs so enduring, in this fast fashion world that we now live in. What it is about the ethics of this company that makes it so successful? How does this fit in with the broader Scandinavian ethos to work and design equality?

I really want to find out more about Marimekko's patterns as I have discovered that I have developed a strong interest in surface pattern design.

PressPausePlay

The digital media age

We watched the documentary PressPausePlay, and I chose to answer the question (with a focus on graphic design): 

How has new technology democratised media? What possibilities and problems are posed by this democratisation?

The advent of cheap and readily available equipment, whatever field your ambitions lie in (i.e. a PC, software and relevant digital equipment - recording, photography, design, etc) has enabled everyone to "have a go". The explosion of the internet and the ability to share whatever you have created immediately has caused a deluge of work to flood the internet, via YouTube and social media. With the plethora out there, it can be hard to break through all the noise and get noticed. However, potentially your work can reach a much larger audience than would have been possible before. If you work the system well and learn the skills of internet networking, you can achieve a huge following. 

Creatives no longer need to get a record deal and a publisher, they have the ability to produce their own music and upload it for anyone browsing, or who subscribes to their blog, Twitter feed, YouTube channel etc, to view it.

Before equipment became so affordable, only professionals would have access to the relevant tools. Only graphic designers would own the equipment necessary and have the skills to create good work. Now anyone can access software relatively cheaply, or even a pirated copy for free. Lessons are viewable online and work can be uploaded to Behance, for instant feedback from the design community. Everyone now thinks they can be a graphic designer. Now YouTube can teach you anything you want to learn, there is no mystery to the profession. 

A graphic designer no longer needs an agent or to work for an agency. Work can be sought on line, or those commissioning work can find designers from their online portfolio or other online presence. The internet has meant that designers can work from home, for a company located the other end of the country, or the opposite side of the world. They can create their own brand and manage their own time. It is possible to publish your work and get a commission or employment immediately now.  It is also very easy to share work and collaborate with anyone, no matter where they are. Software now does it all. It speeds up workflow, meaning jobs can be accomplished in a fraction of the time. Sharing digitally means there is no waiting for the post to arrive, and responses and feedback are immediate. 

More people can now express themselves creatively than ever before, meaning that this way of relaxing, creating and calming has benefitted an enormous amount of people. Younger people can now teach themselves and skills are not necessarily acquired by only those who have served their time and worked their way up the ranks. Producing work that is available to all is not now the preserve of the educated white middle classes who had the opportunities of privilege and education. Work is produced by younger people for their contemporaries, not by people who "think" they know what that generation responds to. Money isn't needed to get your work seen, only Internet savvy and good social media skills. 

However, not everyone has talent, the internet phenomena of a particular kind of celebrity means that recognition goes to those with the most clicks, likes, or fans. Some might say that we are drowning in a sea of mediocrity and that this dumbed down level will become the new norm - are we entering a new dark age of creativity?

For those people that were successful before digitalisation, would they now have been noticed? Would their work be so good, now that computer skills are so relevant? How would their work have got noticed through the noise? The computer can create work that only those with experience and skills could have done before. By downloading templates, photography, and a watching quick YouTube lesson those with basic skills can accomplish a high standard of work, without any creative skills themselves. 

One person can now perform many functions - photographer, illustrator, typographer, and graphic designer meaning that person's vision and ideas do not get watered down. Their vision remains evident in the final work. 

It is now just as important to be taught the skills of ideation and communicating, of team working and self promotion, and of adapting to change, as it is to learn the fundamentals of design. Creativity is more important now than the knowledge of craft. Technology changes so quickly that those skills soon become obsolete. 

Purely digital work can be seen as soulless, too perfect and without character. Some designers work with both physical media and digital, combining them to achieve something more personal. Print making is popular because every piece is individual. Buyers want to see evidence of the craft, and they want something just a little bit unique. 

People consume digitally with much less focus - click click click through the Pinterest wormhole while watching TV or eating a meal. Everyone is more distracted and less able to focus. We live in a world where we can't truly relax and unplug ourselves. Everyone wants to be fed snippets of information or imagery, for 2 seconds before moving on. Have we become unable to concentrate?

You don't just have to be a good graphic designer now, you have to be a good marketeer. You need to understand how to make social media work for you. You must embrace it and utilise it, making contacts and gaining a following. Digital content can be given away for free in self-promotion.

Art is no longer elitist, it is truly democratised. The visions of William Morris and the Bauhaus have been realised, in a format that they could never have imagined. As the documentary stated, for most of us "this is the best shot you'll ever get".

Art Deco and Bauhaus – similarities and differences

When?

Art Deco: 1919-1929 (Black Tuesday and the Great Depression)

Bauhaus (means ”building house”): 1919-1933 (build up to WW2)

Why?

Art Deco: WW1 ended Art Nouveau – after the war the world had changed. Women had been freed from a life of oppression – they filled the jobs that men at war had vacated and their lives, and of the men, would change forever. They were no longer subservient, they had rights – to work, to vote, to wear what they wanted and be who they wanted. Prudish Victorian values had gone. There was optimism for the future, there would never be another “war to end all wars”. The golden age of Hollywood and screen icons drove consumer culture. The printing press made it easy to produce print which meant there was lots of ad space to sell. Everyone had leisure time.

Bauhaus: Walter Gropius (the founder of Bauhaus) wanted good design for everyone, not the wealthy elite few.

Where:

Art Deco: It was embraced across the world, but particularly in the US.

Bauhaus:

Who?

Art Deco:

Bauhaus: Was a school of art and design in Weimar, Germany. Founded by Walter Gropius, he appointed artists as teachers – Paul Klee, Vassily Kandinsky, Josef Albers, Herbert Bayer and Gunta Stoltz. This was the invention of the modern art school, not for the wealthy, but for all.  The town hated the “long haired radical art students”. The school was totally inclusive, men and women attended. In the first 6 months they studied foundation subjects of form and materials. Then they studied how to use every material in workshops, and studied tools, space, colour, construction, etc, before specialising and working on architectural projects.  Many women applied and specialised in weaving (not through choice!).

Ethos?

Art Deco: Luxury for everyone, embrace the new, only looking to the future and to reinvigorate commercialism. It was all about the image of youth and optimism. Desirable but achievable, project an image of well traveled, exotic, wealthy. 

Bauhaus: Affordable design for the masses. Embracing mass production. Honesty of design and materials. Form follows function. Clean lines. Design through collaboration.  Elevate status of craftsmen. This was about a new future, embracing the machine age, the modern and new, but with an honesty and integrity. Everything was designed, manufactured and showcased in their workshops.

What?

Art Deco: fashion, art, painting, film (eg Batman), sculpture, graphic design. Very geometric designs, luxurious materials, zig zags, steps, guilding, precious and semi precious materials, plastic to fake jewels. Imagery of skyscrapers, ocean liners, travel. with bold colours, symmetry, sunbursts, geometric lines. Broad range of products and no unified look – individual elements of the style may be incorporated on their own.  Everything became stylized, even day to day objects. Suntans became fashionable.

Bauhaus: Very specific look. Architecture, furniture, posters, textiles, typography. Geometric and simple. Red, yellow and blue, circles, squares and triangles. Wood was replaced by metal, inspired by cars and planes. They built a housing estate in the town – affordable, modern prefabs.

How?

Art Deco: influenced by international travel, archeological finds, Egyptians, Aztec, Mexican, Japanese and Chinese art.

Bauhaus: influenced by Modernism, Art Deco and Deutscher Werkbund (utility).

The end

Art Deco: Ended with the Great Depression. The end spread slowly, with the end of optimism. People were starving in America, and it was seen as gaudy and in poor taste. Artists were bored of it. Art Deco was dead when WW2 began.

Bauhaus: At the end of WW1 the Treaty of Versailles meant Germany was bankrupt, the reneged on their debt, hyperinflation was a fact of life and there was social unrest. The monarchy was overthrown. Bauhaus was a much a socialist movement as anything else and the Nazis dissolved the Bauhaus because of their communist politics. It was seen as cosmopolitan, Jewish loving and Bolshevik.

Legacy

Art Deco: When countries are feeling rich and people are optimistic, opulence is back in fashion – with a booming stock market in the 1980s bad taste was back in. Using plastics to imitate rare stones continues today.  The desexualisation of the “flapper girl” has disappeared and younger and younger girls are being sexualised now because of exposure to internet images. After the WW1 women may have thought they would finally become equal, but this is still not the case today. Advertising perpetuates the image of women being only valued for sex.

Bauhaus: Teachers and students of the Bauhaus spread throughout the world – their mark is clearly seen on Chicago where many of them emigrated to. The New Typography, and the popularity of sans serifs.

With austerity in the West, there is a backlash against overt displays of wealth now, and people are returning to desiring well made, individual products that outlast trashy throw away goods. The middle classes are willing to pay more for things with these attributes. German design is still perceived as solid, reliable, if unexciting construction. German cars – VW, BMW, Mercedes, are the epitome of this, along with German electrical goods.

The advent of the advertising agency in the 20s and 30s lives on, and graphic design has taken hold. The idea of beauty and youth being the ideals is perpetuated by ads.

Modernism came out of both Art Deco and Bauhaus….

Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau was prevalent from 1890-1914 and developed from Arts and Crafts to focus on looking forward with excitement and optimism, and as the first truly modern style which did not rely on the past for its influences.

Works included female figures with long flowing hair, and flowing sensual lines. It feature the natural world with flowers and buds. Female nudes feature heavily and in a sexualised way for the first time. Influences were from outside the UK - worldwide communication was becoming easier and shrinking the world, and Japanese influences, brought to the UK by Liberties of London, were introduced to the masses. As well as Japanese influences, the earlier Arts and Crafts, also featured. Gustav Klimt, Lautrec, Munch, Beardsley, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Horta, Lalique, Mucha, Behrens and Gaudi all worked in the Art Nouveau style. Art Nouveau work included jewellery, painting, print design, and architecture. Advertising and marketing was becoming more popular as commercialism expanded. It spread across the world and was embraced by the Americans (the east coast, mid-west, and California) as it embodied their whole forward thinking modern culture. They had a much more commercial approach and were materialists. They did not have the socialist ethical views of their English counterparts.

Art Nouveau work was very diverse and the artists were prolific producing work in many disciplines.

Mackintosh worked with stylised florals, stained glass and furniture, and his work often featured heavily stylised females in soft muted colours. He was a member of the Glasgow School and produced this piece for The Scottish Musical Review. He worked with his wife and 2 others as the Glasgow Four who were very influential in the movement (Eskilsson, 2012).

Beardsley worked with high contrast black and white imagery, nudes, sweeping curves, metaphorical images and myth, and was heavily influenced by the Japanese style. He worked primarily in woodcut. This is The Dancer's Reward.

Gustav Klimt's work was very different - opulent, sensual and passionate. The work on the left is The Kiss.

Toulouse-Lautrec was an artist and graphic designer focused on poster design. Moulin Rouge: Le Goulue. He was renown for his advertising and marketing work with designs such as Le Chat Noir.




















Unlike Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau embraced mass production and new technology, and reflected that in its designs with swooping lines and whiplash curves. Mostly the work was in flat colours (sometimes with texture, but not with depth), with solid outlines and often included flowers, buds and seeds. They liked pre-raphaelite nudes with long flowing hair, exotic woods, opulent glass, and silver and semi-precious stones

Consumers of these products could present themselves as wealthy and well travelled, as reflected in the subjects and influences of the works.

The Paris Metro signs were designed by Hector Guimard. Hill House in Helensburgh near Glasgow was an example of the architecture, along with the Glasgow School of Art and the V&A have a huge collection of their art. Art Nouveau artists were prolific and produced varied bodies of work - Mackintosh produced furniture, glass, print and paintings.

Artists such as Monet, Gaugin, Van Gogh, Ensor, Munch and Lautrec where influenced by Art Nouveau.

Arts and Crafts

The Arts and Crafts movement took place in the UK in 1860 until 1910, when it evolved into Art Nouveau. It was a socialist and design movement, and the first style to incorporate design and art, and not just focus on art.

John Ruskin and Williams Morris were the main proponents of Arts and Crafts. Ruskin was primarily concerned with the social and theoretical aspects of Arts and Crafts and was not an artist or designer and an idealised view of the life of medieval craftsmen. Morris was a designer, a poet and an architect who also commissioned others to design work.

Ruskin and Morris focused on the plight of the lives of those working in the factories in the "dark Satanic mills" (Eskilson, 2012) . They wanted to improve the quality and artistic merit of utilitarian objects, and by also focusing on the social aspect of the craftspeople, they could improve the lives of their countrymen in both ways. Williams Morris said "have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.

It was a rebellion against the dawning of the industrial age in Britain, where commercialism was at the fore. Morris saw that workers were being exploited to produce cheap mass produced goods, and wanted to his idealised version of the past. This was the naive idea of someone who considered that factory workers had a much better life in rural communities before industrialisation, and he came from a wealthy family himself (Eskilsson, 2012). Morris wanted to produced functional objects that were pleasing to use. However, with handcrafted items, there was an increased cost associated with them, which meant the products were out of the reach of the people Morris wanted them to be for. This was something that troubled Morris but there was little he could do about it. The people who bought his products did not understand that wanting to return to a simpler time, when workers lived in the green and pleasant land, was actually a very idealised view of the working classes. Those who bought these products had little insight in the lives of workers, and whether what would make their lives better or worse, as they were so far removed from the manufacturing classes. In fact there lives had always been hard before and after the industrial revolution.

It was primarily a British movement, but had a global impact, spreading to the US and becoming popular from 1890-1916. The American constitution and politics meant that they didn't have the same scruples about poor working conditions as the (slightly) more socialist Britain.

Arts and Crafts was strongly influenced by Mediaeval and Gothic design. Its imagery was plant based, and of stylised florals, and mostly in muted colours. The block repeats were organic and integrated, compared the more gappy ones from their competitors, who also used the newly invented chemical dyes. They only produced function items, and not art or paintings for display. It was a design movement, not art. Examples of their products included stained glass, furniture, wallpaper, and architecture. He owned Kelmscott Press, making books and designing type.

The Arts and Crafts exhibition of 1888 cited itself as being "for the homes of simple and gentle folk". The Art Workers Guild wanted to raise the standards of decorative arts and the craftsmen, and they wanted to work with the commercial word. The products were designed and made in cities, for city dwellers.

In 1993, Morris was critisized as being "the work of a few, for the few", which was something that Morris was never able to overcome.

This movement has much in common with today - a desire to look back to traditional methods of the past, when the world around us is changing at an exponential rate. We now see the rise of websites such as Etsy, Folksy, Not on the High Street, etc, who champion the handmade and the individual, just like Ruskin and Morris. Sections of modern day British society put high values on unique handcrafted items and are willing to pay for them, and the availability of such products is huge. There has been a huge backlash from the public against companies who have been found to exploit there workers, and there in an increase in wanting to understand the provenance of the products we consume - whether they are food, clothing, electronics, or any other products. The the idea of social utility of good design is also relevant to graphic design today.

Eskilson, S (2012) Graphic Design A History.

Starbucks presentation development

Seb and I met to discuss our research findings. Seb gave me information for his slides, so I have incorporated those into the Powerpoint slideshow.  Unfortunately Connor wasn't in today, so I emailed him requesting the information for his slides so I could add them too. I passed all the questionnaires I had got completed, along with the results of the Facebook survey I did, via his friend, to pass on to Connor so he could use them to prepare during reading week.

Research assignment - Starbucks

There was a huge amount of information to be found in academic journals and reports about Starbucks and coffee shops in general. It was difficult sifting through and finding things that could be used to help prove or disprove our hypothesis. In the end the information I focused on was a Keynote Market Report 2014, on coffee and sandwich shops, and a report called Starbucks Exceptionalism: An Institutional Ethnographic Exploration of Coffee Culture in America from the Journal of Psychological Issues in Organisational Culture.

I considered what the agenda's of these two publications would be, and who was consulted for the purpose of the surveys - what ages, socio-economic groups, nationalities, etc, and whether they were already Starbucks customers.

I printed out both reports, and highlighted facts which I considered were relevant to confirming or contradict our hypothesis that Starbucks is so successful because its coffee has become a status symbol. Next I went through and summarised my findings with bullet points.

I also asked as many friends, family and colleagues as I could, the questions in the survey that Seb and myself had put together, and got 12 completed responses. I also asked a very quick 2 question survey on Facebook: describe Starbucks, and describe a Starbucks customer. I got 15 responses. The difficulties with both of these are friends and family are likely to share viewpoints, be from the same socio economic group and the research could be very skewed. With asking people for 2 words, you get a very generalised view of their opinions, and some people respond with what they consider to be "funny" responses!

Seb and Connor are working on their respective areas, so I decided to start putting the slides together, so that on Thursday we can confirm our presentation.

Research assignment

Why is Starbucks so successful?

We were put into teams to work on presentation to investigate brand perception and consumer responses. I was partnered with Seb and Connor. Unfortunately Connor was unwell, so Seb and I started our research.

We decided to use Starbucks for our presentation. The question we wanted to answer was "Why is Starbucks so successful?". We discussed what our hypothesis could be, and concluded that it would be "Starbucks is so successful because a Starbucks coffee is considered to be a status symbol".

Seb and I discussed what research already exists and how we could use it. We decided that we would research academic journals, general information available in the press on the internet, and conduct a questionnaire to provide us with primary research. 

We drew up a questionnaire of 10 questions that we could use. We planned to conduct primary research amongst our friends and family and also outside Starbucks in Farnborough.

It was decided that while we would all complete about 20-30 questionnaires with our friends and family, Seb and Connor would undertake to question customers together outside Starbucks (for 1-2 hours on Thursday). I will be responsible for investigating academic research, and Seb and Connor will also look into other sources from the internet in general. 

We will meet on Thursday to discuss our progress. Next Monday we will review our results. The following Thursday we will analyse our findings and decide what will go into the presentation, and then create the slides. The presentation will be divided up so we each present for about 3 minutes on the Monday after half term. 

Objectified - Gary Hustwitt

Objectified is a short film produced by Gary Hustwitt about design. It explains that everything we come into contact with is designed, no matter how basic that object may be. Our assumptions on looking at a piece of design are immediate - in a split second we make a judgement about it.

Various design experts explained their views. The start of mass production, at the time of the industrial revolution, meant that design was standardised. It was explained that good design is created not for the average user, but for the users at the extremes of the spectrum. If it works for those people, it will also work for the average user.

Good design is invisible, almost undesigned. The statement that "form follows function" worked for the analogue age, it is not so relevant for digital products (e.g. the software functionality of a smartphone does not rely on the physical manifestation of the product). Products are not designed for now, they are designed for the future, because we live in an era where new products become obsolete within months of release.  Most items are designed for the 10% of the world that already has too much anyway. For the other 90%, who really need good design to lift them out of just subsisting, not enough investment is made because the return would be smaller.

Much of the design we purchase, we do so because it says something about the image we want to project - the film likened a car to our own personal avatar. Most of what we purchase is consigned to landfill, only objects with real meaning are conserved.

The film was really interesting. Much of the commentary was obvious, but so obvious that you take it for granted without thinking about it. Once it is articulated, it brings it into your consciousness and it makes you understand that absolutely everything we will make as designers needs to be considered carefully, and justified. You should question every existing design, and see if you can come up with an alternative solution.