CITY IN FLUX
THE CITY IS ALWAYS CHANGING
U1458749 Matt McGough
RESEARCH
define: FLUX
Definition: FLUX could be defined as: continuous change or movement. Sample sentence: ‘The situation is in a state of FLUX.’ ‘The situation is in a state of continual change.’ See also/synonyms: Fluctuation, changeability, fluidity, variability, instability, irregular, alteration, modification.
evolution
transformation instability
fluid
change
FLUX variation modification
transition
fluctuation
mutable
flow
alteration
mutation
conversion
continuous
inconsistent
RESEARCH
Photo comaprisons Walk through the city
Maps
architecture
Photography/Film overlaid on maps
Time lapse video
Outcomes/ End Products
population circles Infographics bar charts replace bars with buildings from the city Johnathan Barnbrook
Population change Population density
Harry Beck
Changes between two parts of the same city
Change in lanuage/signage
Long/short periods
CITY IN FLUX
Photographers Matt Stuart Martin Roemers
Animators & Filmmakers
Time Periods
1800’s
modern day
Manchester
70’s/80’s/90’s
pre, during and post war(s)
Huddersfield
People to Look at
Pre-1800’s
1900-1919
Inspired by the city
Designers
Site Specific (one spot)
Change
Animation population pyramids
City & suburbs
Changes between two cities
20’s/30’s/40’s
New York
Cities
London
Chernobyl
Fukushima
Leeds Pripryat
50’s/60’s
Ghost towns
Mat t STUART Web
mattstuart.com
Facebook www.facebook.com/ pages/Matt-Stuart/ 256034902132 Twitter
@mattustu
RESEARCH Profession: Street and Commercial Photographer and Video maker. Location/Nationality: Born; Harrow, North West London Based, and primarily works in; London, some work shot in New York . See also/influences: Robert Frank, Henri Cartier-Bresson, skateboarding
Stuart often tries to inject humour into his work. Often catching objects that coincide to make one humorous snapshot, in a city where most of the time the commute to work is dull, uneventful., and full of routine. Stuart shoots in both colour and black film. He uses a Legia 35 mm camera because he doesn’t want to hide behind technology or the ability to use Photoshop to boost his work; he wants to capture a genuine moment and a moment that people know is genuine when they look at the final outcome. He does, however, use a digital camera (Canon EOS 5D) when he is shooting commercial and commission work and video projects such as adverts.
A lot of Stuart’s work fuses elements in the foreground and elements in the background that might not be straightforwardly obvious. Some of his work is obviously funny, others require a bit more thought and analysis before you ‘get the joke’. A lot of his work may be impossible to repeat, reproduce or imitate as many of his shots were once in a lifetime coincidences. A rare and often humorous snapshot into one of the worlds busiest cities, an ever changing metropolis that is forever in flux. Whilst I like Stuart’s work, and the fact he is capturing one snapshot into the lives of people in a constantly changing city, and that he uses the city as his inspiration and playground, it does not feel as if he has set out to capture the city in flux, or document how the city is or has changed.
Mart in ROEMERS
Web: martinroemers.com
Profession: Documentary Photographer. Location/Nationality: Born; the Netherlands Works around the world including Europe, and Asia.
RESEARCH Roemers’ previous projects saw him travelling across Europe photographing relics of the Cold War such as abandoned bunkers, cemeteries, memorials and monuments that are still visible in today’s modern world. Another project looked at ‘The Eyes of War’ looking at the wounds that had being inflicted on people’s eyes during conflicts. Roemers also took a series of black and white portraits of members of ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) forces in Kabul, Afghanistan and labelled the series ‘Kabul Portraits’. His latest project, ‘Metropolises’, uses long exposures to capture the movement of vehicles and people within cities around the world. Focusing on cities with large populations and high population densities, cities such as Karachi, Dhaka, Mumbai, and New York City are included. The effects of the long exposure, as well as the crowds of people wearing similarly coloured clothes leads to a ghost like-trails trailing the inhabitants, and their vehicles. I think his work is trying to capture the essence of human life within a modern city, whilst capturing common features of life that transcends borders and cultures. His focus on densely populated cities, offers an insight into what is could be in the future if the population of the world continues to rise at the current rate.
Jonathan BARNBROOK Some of his notable works include album covers for David Bowie, these include Bowie’s March 2013 album The Next Day. The artwork for this caused something of a stir upon release. This was because the base for the artwork was the artwork of Bowie’s 1977 album Heroes, but the most noticeable difference was the white square in the middle of the picture that covered most of the image, but the title of the album was crossed out leaving it to read “ ”Heroes” David Bowie ”. The white square was the main feature of the advertising campaign. Before the release date was confirmed posters started appearing with white squares over what would be the focal point of the poster, Barnbrook had started to subvert the posters by adding the white square on top. The standard version of the ‘The Next Day’ artwork is in monochrome – like Heroes, but there are limited editions variations that accompany the vinyl copies of the album, that are in vibrant colour and have a mismatch unregistered screen-printed feel about them.
Barnbrook has been quoted as saying that his ambition is to
use design “as a weapon for social change ”.
Barnbrook has also worked with companies in Japan and he has become quite well known in the Far East, having worked on two high-profile projects in Japan. I particularly like his work for the Mori Arts Center, because it is colorful, simple, yet innovative, using 5 lines to represent the 5 different branches of the arts center, with each line being given its on personality by changing the amount of waves in each line as well as the width and height of each peak or valley. Each line can then be taken out and used as the branding for each of the different sections of the centre. Each of the logos/lines are autonomous and work as logos on their own but when combined to make the logo for the arts center it is said to represent the whole spectrum of art and society, that is within the art center, by the use of the various colors from the spectrum of light. Also, the colored lines are reminiscent of Harry Beck’s tube map – the underground map has become a well-known icon of London and is something that has being imitated worldwide.
RESEARCH Web: barnbrook.net
Profession: Graphic Designer, typographer, film maker Location/Nationality: Born; Luton, England Based in London, but has a noticeable profile in Japan. Barnbrook’s other well-known work in Japan is the branding for the Roppongi Hills development in Tokyo – which at the time was the largest development of post war Japan. The branding is simple and the main visual element of the logo is the 6 circles, these 6 circles is the Kanji (a modern form of Japanese writing) for Roppongi and represents 6 trees, typography can be added to make the formal logo for the branding, but Barnbrook made variants of the logo to use for the branding that fits with the various parts of the development, the more formal or less modern areas have a more formal typesettng with serif and script fonts used instead.
I really like Barnbrook’s work because there is a lot of links and hidden meanings in his work. His Bowie cover uses an historic Bowie cover, his work for the Mori Arts Centre has a perhaps unseen link to science with the wavelength and colours being taken from the colour spectrum. His Roppongi hills work also traverses languages by using Japanese and English in the logo. Representing the change between then and now, between small scale businesses and the now global age of retail.
“Internet GEOGRAPHIES” The Oxford Internet Institute (part of the University of Oxford) has looked in depth at certain aspects of the Internet and how Internet use can change depending on where in the world you are. They have looked in depth at most of the world’s population and their relationship to the Internet.
Most of the OII’s work is presented in a way that represents Geography – making it easier to understand the differences between different regions or countries around the world. This first map uses a traditional map, with different regions shaded to match the findings of how much of the region uses the Internet; the darker the region on the map, means that more of the population within that region uses the Internet.
Web: geography.oii.ox.ac.uk Product: Infographics.
RESEARCH
Produced by: The Oxford Internet Institute, part of the University of Oxford.
The OII represent their data in a very interesting manner. Infographics in general interest me, as they are an easy way to data that if often of a scale that is hard to comprehend, and could be a great way to represent data on change. Infographics have become increasingly popular with the rise and introduction of more data tracking technologies, and I think that using an infographic would be suitable way to represent data from an urban city or on an ‘urban issue’. The only issue may be in finding a suitable style (or type) of graphic to represent my chosen topic of change in the city.
This map looks similar to a light map, but each dot on this map represents a photo that has been geo-tagged on Flickr. The more photos a location has the pinker the dots become. This tends to highlight tourist hotspots and locations that might have a particular influx of people for an event such as a music festival, a major sports final or occasion. Great Britain and Europe in particular are highlighted on this map, along with the population
centers in Australia (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane) and The United States is covered despite most of the central states within the US not having much in the way of tourism hotspots. A problem with this kind of map may be that it doesn’t take a count multiple tags by the same person, and photos can be geotagged even if they aren’t of a particular event or place – an empty field can be geotagged 6 times by the same person in order to be represented on this map.
Another type of map that the OII uses is one that changes the shape of the country and the size then changes on the data that is being represented. In this case the size of the rounded rectangle is representative of the amount of Wikipedia articles that have been Geotagged (with longitude and latitude co-ordinates) within the borders of that country. The shading of each of the countries depends on the ratio of articles within that country compared to the population. The darker the colour the higher the ratio of articles to million of population.
Nicholas FELTRON
Nichloas Feltron, is an author and graphic designer who publishes and produces infographics to represent data from his life. His products cover multiple aspects of his life such as his travel habits in 2011, personal communication data from 2013, and other aspects of his life such as food eaten, photographs taken and time spent with significant people within his life.
Feltron uses a mix of images, graphs, charts and text to illustrate his point. In the early editions of his ‘annual reports’ he used a two page spread for each category, one to act as a title page and introduction to each category such as travel, books or food. This page would be predominantly image with one word in a large point size to act as the title with two words in smaller point size before or after to act as an introduction and help keep a consistent theme through the sections of the document, despite having a diverse range of subjects to include in his report. The second page of the spread would then feature the content or relevant data, often split into 4 equal sections, but could be split into 3 should the data dictate this. For example a longer list required the page to be split in half vertically to make space for the list to run down the right whilst the left hand half was split in half horizontally to make two equal sized squares.
Whilst the style throughout one report is consistent, his style between different years differed greatly.
His first report in 2005 used a square page format with a 2 page spread per category with a title page and a page for content, using a full page image for the background of the title pages. The second page would then have a grey background with black, white and red text, with dotted white lines to separate the content on each page. His later work would remove the images for title pages and make the format of each page a traditional A4 ratio, but some his work continued to use the double page spread, but the taller pages saw an increase in the use of single page spreads when discussing subjects with smaller data sets. Later editions of the ‘Feltron annual report’ also start to feel more formal in tone, due to changes in layout, font, colour scheme and the increase of graphic content (charts and graphs) combined with the removal of photographic images. However his 2010 edition is used to depict the life of his father from birth to death using data collected through calendar appointments, slides and other objects in Feltron’s possession.
RESEARCH The 2005 in Miscellany spread utilizes the full page image on one side with the content on the right split into 3 sections because of the nature of the A to Z list lending itself to being in a long box. The heading for each section is smaller or of equal size to the data in the category and in black or red whilst the data is on white, on a grey background. The 2006 Food spread utilizes the full page image but on this occasion it is of a map with data plotted on it so it is used to educate rather than for decoration. The heading for each set of data is smaller than the actual data within the category and is set high against the bar that is used to separate the categories. The map uses an yellow accent colour with black text and data points, whilst the bodies of water are left to be formed by the negative space between the islands that make up New York City (Feltron’s home).
The 2009 report feels a lot more friendlier and less intense despite having more content on each page than the 2006 edition. This is primarily achieved through opening up more space and the use of sentence case copy as opposed to the all caps nature of the 2006 report. The use of Helvetica as a font, which is a bit more rounded, is easier to read. The combination of the Helvetica for the body and Georgia (or similar font) for the headings
I like the neutral colour pallete that Feltron has used in his work with the grey background and with the alternating use of black and red between each data set leads the reader to which order to read the data being presented. The grainy photos also help bring the title to the foreground and the clarity of the text prevent it getting lost in the background. I find it interesting that how he has used the yellow underneath the black on the right hand side but it does not effect the legibility of either component. I also like how he was mixed a variety of options to present his work with pie charts, maps, ratios and lists yet is still very easy to understand. I think the map is a good idea is it gives you sense of two aspects of his life; where he eats most often (the bigger circles) and the spread of locations across the city. This has more of an impact than the previous edition.
increases the readability and the separation between the two components of copy bcause of the contrast between the sans serif and traditional serif fonts, as well as the change in point size. The colour scheme used is also an improvement as it is softer because it is black and blue on white instead of a black or white on grey, it feels friendlier and less oppressive.
Web: feltron.com Profession: Graphic Designer, author Location: Based in New York City, NY, USA.. Here I have looked at how Feltron has presented some geographical data, mainly on maps of the United States of America, which he has cropped to areas that are relevant to the data he is presenting. Note this is commercial work and not part of his annual reports.
The first chart looks at the predicted fluctuations in house prices across the United States, The larger image has been cropped to include the North Eastern states which is known as New England. Not only does this highlight specific towns within this region (such as Albany, and Pittsburgh) it also highlights how the way Feltron has presented this data. Instead of using the data within the borders of the state he has drawn a line from the city/town and from this line there’s is a banner with the name of the city in it to act as a title which both highlights the town but also gives it more importance in the information hierarchy. Underneath this is the predicted percentage increase/decrease in the average house price. This is in a bigger point size and a different style of font. This is what you notice first and the increase in point size makes it easier to gather at a glance the general
trend across the spread of states. Each number is accompanied with a arrow which points upwards or downwards to indicate the trend. The last piece of information in the set is the average house price in USD $. This is probably the least important data in the set and returns to the original font setting but has no coloured background and is set in italics I like how this is set out because I think that it clearly distinguishes each of the data sets whilst giving a consistent theme across the spread. I also like the colour pallete and font combinations he has used but I don’t feel as if the same choices would be appropriate for the look and theme of my project. The second map looks at the demographics for the American Midwest, the picture is cropped to the population statistics and a map showing the politic trends of the states within the region. The population statistics are presented in a more efficient way, in a stack of statistics and figures, some of which include visual representations of the data being discussed such as the bar chart showing the percentage of the Countries population lives within the Midwest region compared with the western United States, as well as Southern and Northeastern regions.
The bar chart gives the population as of July 2007, with the figure in tall numbers underneath but underneath this is the figure as a percentage of the total in a serif font - contrasting and complementing the style of the tall numbers. The map on the right side of the image maps political information which is relevant to the feature it appears in. The graphic presents 3 sets of information and groups it by state, such as the number of electoral votes each state gets, the margin of the vote each candidate got in the previous presidential election, and the party of the candidate who got the most votes in that last election (represented by a blue or red bar, blue for democrats, red for republicans). I like how this is presented in a way that isn’t too information heavy and overloads the eye. It uses a nice colour palette and font combinations that contrast but are still easy to read. I also like the way Feltron has used the yellow colour in this graphic to contrast with the blue, red, white and black that used across the different elements. The only problem I have is with the layout in that you’re not too sure where to go after you’ve read the title, do you go down the column on the left then under the map or do you read the map first? In my opinion; the page is too cluttered for a single page spread. The final spread shows a route for a Southwest Airlines flight that would be more beneficial to the environment, or ‘greener’. The page on the left of the spread shows proposed the flight plan between the different airports in
the west and southern united states, with more information on the left side of the right hand page. These stats are also styled in a dot to dot style similar to the flight path of the plane, but are listed instead of being spread out. I like how this is presented with the plane symbols (and the shadows underneath the planes and the lines for the path subtly add depth to the graphic), and the circles around the dots to highlight the points on the journey or the list, and how these dots are coloured up to contrast with the colour of the map. Another element I like is that he has put the 3 letter airport code next to each airport, whilst putting the full name of the city underneath in a smaller point size. Thus, again, allowing the reader to take a quick glimpse at the proposed route, and if they are unfamiliar with the airport codes they can take a more detailed look and find out the city. So there is scope for the reader to learn more than one thing whilst looking at the infographic. However, I feel that this infographic is the least relevant to my project and is hard to see how elements such as the flight paths and shadows will translate. But things like the coloured circles can easily be used to represent the growth in population.
IDEAS and Concepts Initial IDEAS LANGUAGE - always changing, formal and informal language, street signs, advertising, change in purpose and audience.
PEOPLE - different origins and cultures, how has this changed over time, different locations and different parts of the city.
ARCHITECTURE - change in how buildings look and have looked, and how this changes between different parts of the city,
‘SNAPSHOT’ - difference in footfall, change between night and day in the same location, whole city or one spot, in a smaller time scale.
DEVELOPED ideas Idea 1 - Language Change Video About the written communications of the world around us. Looking at the centre of Leeds/Huddersfield and how the language of things such as adverts, posters and street signs can change depending on the tone, context, location and target audience and highlighting the changes. Presented in video format.
Idea 2 - Population Change Infographic Looking at the population of Leeds and its suburbs and how it has changed over a longer period of time and link these together using a line and dot style system similar to Harry Beck’s London Underground map. Presented as a series of prints or as an animation.
Idea 3 - Snapshot Video Time-lapse Video about change but on a micro-scale. Change on a small scale, looking at how things can change inside a small period of time, such as what the variety of the things that can happen in the same space within a day for example.
Idea 4 - Urbanisation graphic Study of the increase in urbanisation across world cities around the globe, using a bar charts to represent the data. The bars then can changed to match the shape of iconic buildings from each of the cities in question.
SYMBOLIC - looking at symbols/ icons that signify change in cities i.e. cranes, builders, destruction and construction.
CONSTANT - looking at things that constantly changing such as population, unemployment, industries and other statistics.
Infographics RESEARCH
Population RESEARCH
This table looks at the history of the population of Leeds using data found for each of the wards of Leeds at visionofbritain.org using historical data such as The Census. The chart also includes data found for Leeds as a whole district for the same time period. Some cells are empty as the relevant data could not be found for all the wards for within the period - 1801-2011.
LEEDS Research
Circa1875; corner of Albion Street & Commercial Street, was insurance offices, now a Starbucks.
Left - an older pencil sketch of the Leeds coat of arms. Above - an up to date coat of arms incorporated into the city councils branding.
Leeds Town Hall from the Headrow (circa 1800/1900’s)
Leeds Town Hall from the Headrow (modern day)
Town Hall and The Headrow c1955. Building on the right is now a bar and a hotel, part of the Light. The Tetley, was a brewery but is now a arts and learning centre.
Victoria Quarter (modern day), Victorian architecture with a modern glass roof(?). Looking along Boar Lane c1970, with the Church spire in the middle and the Saxone store which is now a McDonalds at the bottom of Briggate..
Looking up The Headrow modern day, noticeable increase in traffic and high-rise buildings.
(Roof of) Trinity Leeds, the UK’s newest shopping centre (2013) with the spire of the Holy Trinity Church, consecrated 1727, on the right.
Hyde Park Picture house, built 1914, Edwardian Architecture surrounded by Victorian housing, in an area now populated by hordes of students
Briggate c1951. Tudor style buildings in the left foreground have since been replaced. First Direct Arena, opened in 2013, could be argued that this is now the main entertainment destination for the city’s population.
Leeds Market, modern day, looking at ‘the 1904 hall’ extension, origins can be traced back as far as 1875. Interior has had many renovations and refurbishments throughout the years, with extensions also being added to the original hall. Left; Grand Theatre, Leeds (modern day) once the centre of entertainment in Leeds and surrounding areas. Opened 1878.
Deve l o p m e n t & EXPE R I M E N T A T I O N
Having gathered the population statistics for Leeds and the constituent wards of the city I needed a better way to store the information and make it easier to look at so I put it into this table. But as part of my intended idea I would need to figure out the percentage change in population. After I calculated I thought it would be easier to get a quick overview of the trend if these percentage changes were colour coded; red for a negative change (the population shrunk) and green for positive change - or growth. Plotting this on a black background made it look like the stock exchange - which links to Leeds’ financial quarter and the growth of Leeds as one of the best places outside of London for financial services.
DATA
MAP
Deve l o p m e n t & EXPE R I M E N T A T I O N Once I had found the relevant data for my project I needed to find a map to plot it on for my infographic. I found one that had all 33 wards of Leeds on it as this was how the information is gathered by.
But the one I found had a garish colour palette and didn’t have the name of each of the wards on the map, so I roughly traced around each of the wards (but i merged 19 & 20 together because historically the data for Morley had gathered as one ward until the mid-20th century when it was split into Morley North and Morley South). The wards of the council are split into area’s of roughly equal population (nowadays this is equates to roughly 22,00), hence why some wards are smaller than others.
Once I had traced around the wards I used a colour palette of white and grey on a black background. I then added the names of each of the wards on top of the corresponding shape. I then proceeded to add the names of each of the wards before adding a circle which was proportional to the population within the ward, for the year 1871. A circle with a 10 pixel diameter represents 1,000 of the population, so bigger circles represent a bigger population. Areas with no circles represent areas where I found no data about that wards population for that specific year.
The next step in the process would be to make this graphic for the rest of the years that I have gathered the information for and add more information (such as a list of the area’s that I haven’t found the information for that year) and add a title. If I were to animate this I would need to animate each of the circles individually as well as animate the year to match the progression with the circles.
serves to give a general overview of the size of the population within the wards that information could be gathered for. It can be used to draw comparisons between the area of the ward and population and comparisons can then be drawn between the wards, but it fails to give enough specific information to be truly useful for those wanting to know more in-depth information.
It could be improved by adding the figures of the population Although I think that this and how its changed to match the looks good I don’t feel that it is that circles, the colours could also be informative as an infographic, it only changed to improve the contrast
of the smaller circles because on this scale the circle that represents Alwoodley is not visible, as would the areas where the population is less than 500. The problem with using circles at this scale to represent this data is that when the population balloons to the modern day figures where each ward has 20,000+ inhabitants is that the legibility of each circle make decrease. The highest population on the above map is 19,712 in Beeston and Holbeck and it has already encroached on the 5 neighbouring wards.