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brief
I must create a research document containing all the information I collected, looking into the history of conversations and the importance of them especially in the first and second world war and how information was valued then and now. Then looking at social media and its implications and the implications of other communication devices.Then analyse the information gathered and come up with three design concepts to develop, all focusing on the theme of “A conversation.� I must then look at ways in which to create a visual outcome for my chosen concept and use techniques in illustrator, indesign and photoshop to experiment with different disciplines. Then continue with a final idea and develop it further.
response
A conversation is one of the basic elements of any community. It is how we interact with each-other and it is a very powerful tool. After receiving the brief I started to notice how many conversations I do have and how vital they are in life. We not only have face to face conversations but since the invention of the telephone conversing has only become more accessible. Now with the invention of social media and smart phone technology communication flows through us to anyone and everyone.
What’s the most important conversation for the future?
For me it will be the conversation between me and my future employer, you’re judged on what you say and how you respond, conversations are used like this to determine who you are. They are a judge of your character and ultimately your speech is a part of you, so in essence every conversation is important. Discussing why I deserve the job and why I’m good at what I do. For the world the most important conversation for the future will be between the world leaders discussing peace and prosperity. My initial ideas were to do with ‘Eavesdropping’ and the previous and present problems of accessing information that could be used at the discretion of the listener. This links in with the modern communication system and it’s problems with accessibility, for example 70% of employers use social media to stake out their potential employees for any discrepancies, this information can be accessed without account holders knowledge, So it’s important to keep a professional presence online and becoming well tuned in the privacy settings on social media websites.
research
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For my research I want to encompass all aspects of conversations then and now. Finding similarities and differences will be essential when creating design concepts. The subject area is very broad so I will only be looking at specific points in time when conversations have been the most prevalent. I also want to focus on inventions that have revolutionised the way we communicate with each other, with the creation of social media being the most important to date. I also want to research into language and how we and others perceive it. How technology has changed the way interact with each other, for example text speak & emojis.
FOUGASSE
Fougasse was a British cartoonist best known for his warning propaganda posters. During World War II, he worked unpaid at the ministry of information, desiging humourous but effective propaganda posters including the famous careless talk costs lives. For the series he recieved the honour of Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1946.
The Careless Talk propaganda was a widely spread awareness campaign to get people to stop talking about the war and the implications that had. I think these posters are extremely effective in their endevour to educate people on how dangerous conversations can be and that you don’t know whos listening and what they might do with the information. The posters work so well because they are comical and minimalist, they include a simple drawing of two people talking with a caption of what one of them is saying, for example “.....but of course it mustn’t go any further!” this is a normal conversational response when your telling someone something that they didn’t need to know. Also depicted in the posters is Hitler, Himmler and Goering in many different ways including in the suitcase compartment on a train, face in the bottles on the bar etc. These clever uses of public places and the placement was excellent in getting the point across, some are more subtle than others . The cartoon is small with the type taking not only centre of the poster but also has the big slogan “careless talk cost lives”. This again reenforces the premise of the propaganda.
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Twitter is an online social media website that allows it’s users to write 140 character “tweets” to anyone and everyone. Twitter currently has over 500 million users, 302 million of which are active. in January 2009 it moved from 22nd to 3rd in the ranking for social media websites. As a social network, Twitter revolves around the principle of followers. When you choose to follow another Twitter user, that user’s tweets appear in reverse chronological order on your main Twitter page. If you follow 20 people, you’ll see a mix of tweets scrolling down the page: news, current affairs, interesting new links, music recommendations and socialising. According to data collected in 2009 37.6% of all tweets were conversational (data collected over two weeks from 11am to 5pm), showing that the website is full of previous and present conversations between users, which anyone can access (with the right privacy settings). I think twitter revolutionised conversating not only in a mass social media sense but also in a different unique style. Limiting people to 140 characters condenses their thoughts into sound bites people can read easily and quickly. When the website first started in 2007 they had 400,000 tweets per quarter, as of March 2011 thye had 140 million tweets a day. It forces us to think more on how to word things and how we choose to present ourselves online. This SMS style social networking has also encouraged the use of text speak, using it to fit more information into the tweet, even I’ve changed the way I talk to text speak on twitter to fit more information into the tweet. Could this be seen as a dumbing down of language or just a challenging test of the users vocabulary? To take this further I could design some satirical images based on the 140 character limit and the effect that has on the way we converse. The use of hashtags helps you tag something in your tweet so that when people search for that hashtag your tweet and everyone else who uses that hashtag comes up. This gained more status in society with people using in everyday conversation. This was another unique way to share and receive information.
Facebook has had an interesting and controversial start but has become the most popular social networking site to date. Facebook was launched on February 4th 2004, it was initially designed for students at Harvard but every since 2006 anyone aged 13 or above can register for free. The premise is simple; make an account and add your friends so that whenever you post your thoughts, upload photos and share videos those friends can see them on their ‘newsfeed’. As of August 2015 Facebook had over 1.18 billion monthly active accounts. Facebook is now essential in modern society, it keeps people up to date on events happening and what their friends our doing. Facebook also includes the ability to open a dialogue with any friend, this makes conversations between Facebook users instantaneous. You could be at home talking to someone on the bus, whenever and wherever. Facebook is a vital communication tool in our society. Therefore any information you put on it is public to the friends you’ve added and if you haven’t tinkered with your privacy settings anyone else who wants to search you. This is becoming a more recent problem as employers are using the website to vet their employees to find out how they really are and what they get up to when they’re not at work. This can be very damaging to your chances of getting a job. But can someone be judged on their facebook page?
C O N C E P T
My first concept is to do with the social media website twitter specifically. I want to create a satirical image depicting the difficulties expressing your opinion with only 140 characters. The image would include a person speaking with a huge text bubble full of meaningful speech but you can only see the first 140 characters the rest is not legible but can be seen faintly.
My second concept is an awareness campaign on the dangers of what you put on your social media accounts, taking inspiration from the careless talk cost lives, my tagline will be “careless tweets cost jobs” or something similar in relation to facebook. I think this will be useful in explaining that employers are looking at your facebook and that it should be a reflection of you in moderation. I think this concept is my strongest.
My third concept is to record my interactions overall, face to face talking, social media interaction, texting and phone calls. This will be a great way to find out how much I communicate with others and how much I rely on technology and social media. This is the weakest of my concepts and don’t think I’ll be developing it any further.
This is my attempt at concept 1. I feel the idea is strong and it has a good message behind it, but I think it could of been executed better. The idea is that theres an inspirational quote that could be keep useful and empowering but it can’t be finished because of the character limit. The concept is can you say something meaningful and interesting in 140 characters, I’ve had times on twitter where I’ve wanted to say something but not had enough characters to write it out, because of this and trying to fit the entire sentence in one tweet you resort to using text abbreviations, which instantly devalues what the tweet is about. I don’t think I’ll be continuing with this idea.
Don’t let a character limit stop you from saying what you think.
This is my second concept. An advertising awareness campaign for teenagers and young adults (18-25). The campaign is similar to the careless talk campaign as I used the same layout and background, with the same font for the slogan. I felt the font and background were effective and made the design cleaner and easier to read, trying to keep the old theme because the message is similar. I also went for a more light hearted touch which is again a homage to Fougasse, although the poster includes no illustrations. I think this campaign could be a success, it has a catchy slogan, with a humour element to make people read it and think about it. Overall I aim to make 2 other posters to go with this campaign. According to Jobvite’s 2014 annual social recruiting survey 93% of hiring managers will review a candidate’s social profile before making a hiring decision. This figure proves how important it is to watch what you say online and how you say it, because you never know whos reading. The study also includes statistics on what employers think of alcohol, drugs, spelling etc. These are the chosen themes for my campaign. Another interesting fact that came into light because of the study was 55% of employers reconsidered a candidate based on what they find, with most (61%) of those double-takes being negative.
. . 66% of hiring managers said they would hold poor spelling and grammar against candidates . .
. . 44% of hiring managers would be concerned if they saw posts about alcohol . .
. . 83% of recruiters say any reference to illegal drugs is a strong turn off . .