Further Research

After identifying a route for my visual diagram and seeing the different areas I could look into, I continued with more research into loneliness and depression amongst freelancers. This research was mainly in the form of newspaper and online articles because it is a topic that has been covered quite  a bit in recent years. I went through this information and highlighted points I thought were relevant. Reading some personal accounts of feelings of isolation as a result of going freelance gave me another viewpoint on the situation that I hadn't really explored before. It made the topic seem more personal and sometimes a bit upsetting to read about how they were feeling. I need to be wary of my poster being really downbeat because I don't want it to be really negative. I think adding in humour (not to offend) and maybe taking a twist on how I approach the subject may lead to a more lighthearted outcome with a more serious underlying message. 

Making things clearer

Writing out this diagram made the point of my presentation clearer to me. I have been drawing in my sketchbook but didn't feel like I was actually being specific enough with my aims so I hope that from now onwards, I will have clearer intentions for my drawings. I think this diagram will also come in useful when planning out the structure of my presentation as it lists the main points of my arguments, they just need refining and supporting with appropriate imagery. 

Direction for Visual Diagram

During a chat with matt in the studio, we identified two potential routes for my cop project to go in. The first was about the isolation illustrators may experience when they are working freelance either from home or in a studio just for themselves. This led on to topics of feedback and the value of communication between creative people and how important these things are. 

The other idea was looking into the value of work that only exists in a digital cloud. This borders a philosophical debate of whether digital work actually exists or not and whether it can be valued and fallen in love with as a physical artefact can. I think there is more mileage in my first topic because it provides a starting point for some character based work and narratives. I think I will find it more interesting doing a diagram about this rather than the second topic. I also think it will be more relatable to the people I am presenting to and I can incorporate my own ideas and opinions into my research.  

Ideas for a visual diagram showing...

• Why feedback matters.
• Educational theories - Kolb’s learning cycle. 
• The dangers of working alone. 
• The dangers of working in your home environment (procrastination).
• The many stages of procrastination.

Map of Understanding and 35 pieces of information

This is my map of understanding which is exploring different pathways stemming from the question of my essay. I have looked into themes of social media, technology addiction, the value or digital work as oppose to hand crafted, the freelancing lifestyle and isolation. I will continue my research before deciding which pathway I am going to take in order to produce my final visual diagram. 

5 Quotes

‘PhotoShop has certainly not replaced illustrators altogether (and many fine illustrators employ PhotoShop as a tool), but this tool is far more threatening than any previous technological development in the history of illustration’ - Steve Heller, 2003

'It is not uncommon to witness a raw visual mix of the digital, the analogue, the traditional, the photographic and the stencilled, as well as hand-drawn and painted marks within the images of contemporary illustrators.' - Lawrence Zeegen, 2012

‘Computers are to design as microwaves are to cooking.’ - Milton Glaser

‘Good design is good business.’ - Thomas Watson Jr

'Nothing stays still in this constant changing industry. It is fickle and one minute you can be hot next you are yesterdays news.’ - John Holcroft, 2013

5 Statistics/ facts

71% of internet users have a Facebook account.

24% of the creative workforce in the UK are freelancers. 

Etsy is launched in 2005 which allowed creatives to sell their work and buy supplies in a online, creative marketplace.

14 minutes is the global average amount of time people spend on Facebook each day. 

Shutterstock claims that between 2011 and 2012, there has been a 134% growth in apps (buttons and icon design), a 60% growth in packaging (illustrated labels), and a staggering 525% increase in infographics.

5 Significant moments in history

Ink Jet Printing Technology was created - 1976

First computer generated film title sequence (Superman) - 1978

The first handheld mobile phone becomes commercially available - 1983

San Fransisco MOMA launches ‘Playstation 2 010101 - Art in Technological Times’ exhibition - 2000

Adobe Creative Suite is launched - 2003

5 People of note

Thomas and John Knoll - developers of the regional Photoshop ‘ImagePro.'

Mark Zuckerberg - co-founder of Facebook, a key figure of the social media revolution. 

Tim Berners-Lee - introduced the world wide web.

Steve Jobbs - co-founder of Apple.

Steve Wilhite - inventor of the GIF (graphics interchange format).

5 Images/ photos/ maps/ drawings/ charts

 5 Inventions/ objects/ garments/ artefacts

The internet

Adobe Creative Suite

Wacom tablet and Cintiq

Smartphones

3D printer

5 Locations/ environments/ countries

London - the hub of creative freelancing in the UK 


Cupertino, California, USA - Apple Headquarters

Mountain View, California, USA - where Adobe Systems was founded

Home studio environment

The middle of nowhere - the internet can reach everyone. 

Colour Theory - Systematic Colour Part 1

Physical / Physiological / Psychological

We can only see colour when light is there. 
Each colour has a different electromagnetic wavelength. 

We have receptors in the eye:
Rods - allow us to see black, white and grey. 
Cones - allow us to see colour. 

Type 1 - red/orange light
Type 2 - green light 
Type 3 - blue/violet light

Stimulated green cones makes us see green.
Stimulated red cones makes us see red. 
Stimulated red and green cones makes us see yellow. 

Colour is not a physical thing. 
How do we perceive colour? What to we believe to be there?
Colour is affected by the light it is viewed in. 

Names to remember:  Josef Albers, Johannes Itten

Itten's Colour Wheel

Complimentary colours:
- Chromatic colours
- Colour wheel opposites
- Cancel each other out
- Mixing them creates neutrals. 
- Grey and brown are pure neutrals, they are an absence of colour. 

Spectral colour - we cannot differentiate spectral yellow and a combination of red and green. 

Colour Modes
On screen - RGB (the light in digital screens)
Print media - CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and black)

Primaries of one colour mode are secondaries of another. 

Subtractive colour 
- Physical
- Print/pigment
- Subtracting colour values - eventually get black. 
- Adding colour values - eventually get white. 

Chromatic Value = Hue, tone + saturation.

Hue - name of the pigment. 
Tone/luminance  - shade (pushing towards black), tint (pushing towards white), tone (pushing towards grey).

Saturation/desaturation - pureness of colour and the overall amount of it. 

Pantone coding system - defining colours. 

Postmodernism - Lecture Notes

Themes 

•  Fragmentation (what has been made is now coming apart). 
• Repetition (nothing is unique)

Cyclical time, e.g. seasons

An irreversible break in the past.

After Roman empire, events of moving forward

After the Middle Ages - new time.

Thoughts move away from nature and God, it is man who rises in enlightenment and can manipulate the world without God. 

Intrinsic ability to know the world.

Defining the world with our own mental capacities. 

Modern

• Always advancing
• Self overcoming
• Progress and development 

Modernisation - shift from agrarian proaction to factory production. 

Harrison Wood - Modernisation

Modernity is the development. 

Modernism is the art. 

Impressionism - innovation of technical peans.

• Application of paint. 
• Reduction and purification
• Shock and de-familiarisation
• The focus of painting is visual experience

Historical Avant Garde

Dada and Surrealist

Reimagining society. 

As the modern intensifies, movement towards the future rejects what is present now. 

They anticipate a change. 

Avant garde want a particular future. 

Postmodernism - things becoming more modern after modernism. 

Modernity continues to become more modern. A continuation. The ever new. 

Modernism is trailing off into the past. 

The notion of contemporary. 

‘ever new but always in its newness, the same.’

Pursuit of novelty

Doubling - a new novelty must refer back to old novelty. 

‘The Present Age’

The media and press hold the nation together - a culture of representation. 

Marx 

• Commodities 
• Use value
• Satisfy human needs
• Things require and exchange value
• Exchange value is dependent on need
• Derealisation
• Workers have an exchange value

Less connection with factory made products than handmade artefacts. 

‘All that is solid melts into air’

Nietzsche

• Building on metaphors
• Nerve stimulus -> Image -> Oral -> Mental concept

Specular order of promotion - product advertising, wants and desires. 

Having commodities - more interested in appearance. 

Postmodernism - end of grand narratives. 

Knowledge is reduced to conceptual notions. 

Lyotard - language is ancient city, a combination of old and new, with additions from other ages. 

Use value is lost, stronger desire for form, colour, social standing. Needs disappear into products. 

Advertising - making desire stay ‘relevant’ to commodities. 

Baudrillard - window displays and store layouts. Eclectic, and a feast for the eyes. 

The way we understand the world is the way advertising portrays it to us. 

Lecture Notes - Modernity and Modernism

People connected the term ‘modern’ with positivity, progressiveness, style, times better than before and progression. 

Paris 1900

Urbanisation - Trottoir Rouland - Electric moving walkway

Lives were controlled by work times and schedules - different to how things were organised on farms. 

Transport - motorcar and trains in 18th and 19th centuries. 

World time becomes standardised. 

Electricity, lighting and telephones. 

Secularisation

Enlightenment - late 18th century, thinking became more scientific and philosophical (turning away from God). 

Eiffel Tower 1899 - symbol of modernity.

Caillebette - ‘Paris on a rainy day’ 1877

Class, gender relationships, dynamics, so close to people but so distant. 

Paris went through Haussmanisation (Haussman was a city architect)

The rich dominate the centre of the city and the poor live around the edges. 

Wide boulevards instead of narrow streets - ease of policing. 

Experiements emerge - thinking continues to advance, psychology and investigation. 

Fashion is a signifier of your place in society. 

Seurat - Isle de la Grande Jatte 

(Pointillism) The subject of the painting is a park where the middle classes would spend time. 

Degas - Absinthe Drinker 1876

Shows the effect of modern life on people living in the city - feeling the need to drink to oblivion. 

You can tell by the cropping of the painting that it is based on a photograph and not from direct observation - shows how modernism is affecting artwork. 

Kaiseranorama 1883

People prefer to sit at a machine to watch the world rather than go out and see it. 

Cinema - Lumière Brothers

Photography take sover painting in terms of documentation - painters turn to more subjective works. 

Picasso - Les Demeoiselles d’Avignon 1907

Moving towards abstraction, a fragmented and confused experience.

It becomes more about the media than the subject.

Graphic design is crisp and clean and usually based on a grid structure. 

‘Form follows function.’

Simplicity of objects is timeless. 

Internationalism - the language of design is recognised worldwide. Pure and minimal.