WhAt iS GraPhiC CoMMuNiCAtiOn DeSigN? - How do you interact with Graphic Communication Design on an everyday basis?
"Graphic communication design is the art of generating and diffusing visual culture. [...] As a means of recording, informing, promoting and persuading, graphic communication design is responsible for shaping the ways people see and act in the world"
Using the project bibliography as a starting point, select and comment on examples of artists and designers who have made work which relies on the interaction of the viewer/audience to communicate or complete its message. Bear in mind the following:
- What strategies have they used to initiate their interactions?
- How successful were the interactions? What do think made them successful?
- Did the interactive element make the work more memorable? Why?
PrEPaRaTioN TasK
Aspects of interactive GCD in everyday life: [BRAINSTORM]
- Digital touch screen technology - using our fingers to interact with the content presented on the screen in the form of graphics.
- Traffic lights and road signs - iconography, colour, sound and light combining to indicate instructions leading to road safety.
- Magazines and product enticement - sampling products such as perfume inside of magazines, encouraging readers to engage with the promotion and feel persuaded to buy. In addition, well presented graphics, photography, and layout in publication can result in readers interacting with the brands they see in the magazine as an aftermath.
- Alarm clocks - digitally designed to present the time, generating a loud sound for a set moment, interact by turning it off and beginning your day as a reciprocal action.
- Sensory interaction - accessibility for those who are unable to fully engage in an element of graphic communication design, for example, Braille for the blind, audio description for those with visual impairments, subtitles (and typography), etc.
- GPS maps - actively use your location to create an interactive journey, following the visual and audio aids to provide instructions of how to reach a specific destination.
- Children's TV shows - often filled with rhetorical questions from the characters to the young viewers, encouraging interaction and engagement with the narrative. Include animation, illustration, photography and moving image, as well as sound, art direction, and a whole other range of graphic and visual creative roles.
- Food Sample Assistants in supermarkets - styled in a certain uniform, product design and design of packaging to appeal to customers, verbally communicating to achieve persuasion to buy the product, interacting through trying the product out first hand.
- Gaming, visual reality experiences, motion detective games ...
- Clothing with words, graphics, branded logos, etc. - by wearing such garments, not only are you interacting with the product, itself, but also the passive promotion of the brand/image/message...
inTeRAcTioN 1
Social media, in the 21st century, is the ultimate method of communication. Not only are apps, sites, images and messages digitally and graphically designed, but the way in which we interact with each other through social media reflects the graphic communication design that it utilises.
Colour combinations, typefaces, logos and emoticons become associated with each social media platform to the extent that the graphics communicate more than the content.
Documentation of my conversation with a fellow GCD classmate presents my interpretation towards the project, while also epitomising one approach towards how we interact with Graphic Communication Design in everyday life. Virtual conversations, facebook posts, tweets, instagram hashtags - every output we publish online not only communicates a message, but displays in a way that has been graphically designed by people, for others to visually enjoy.
InTeRAcTioN 2
Investigating and exploring different types of interactive graphic communication design in everyday life, as I walked through town I thought about how traffic lights communicate in a way that we automatically respond. The red, amber and green colours must have been chosen by someone, the iconography of the green and red men designed by someone, the concept of pressing the button that triggers and affects the circuit of the lights thought of by someone...
This video shows me interacting with the traffic lights: pressing the button, waiting for the signal, crossing, and continuing with my journey. It occurred to me, that although the actual traffic light system is the product of engineering work, more product design rather than graphic design, the machinery, itself, would not be approachable, identifiable or communicable if it were not for the graphic communication design aspects. The typeface presenting the instructions "Press button. Wait for signal" is simple, functional and easy to read. Above all, the colour schemes fit with the design and layout of the road, blending in and providing an everyday service, rather than a memorable or exclusive experience. Without the graphic communication of the traffic lights, our road systems would be shambles.
Naturally, because pedestrian crossings are used daily by billions of people worldwide, there has to be accessibility methods implemented so that EVERYONE can receive the message that is being communicated by the system. More specific measures of graphic communication design are used to do so. The high pitched beeping sound indicating that it is safe to cross makes it clear for those with visual impairments, as well as the spinning device underneath the button box, that turns when the green man shows, also for those with visual impairments that may not be able to hear the beeping in busy or loud areas of town. The use of green and red as the colours of the lights stand out in most areas, as the colours have increased visibility on the spectrum.
Although using the pedestrian crossing may not be a particularly memorable experience, considering we do it daily without ever thinking about the graphic communication design behind the works. However, what struck me when researching the iconography of the green and red men was that in different countries, the figures are completely different, yet communicate the same message. When in a different part of the world, it is instantly noticeable that the small detail of the pedestrian crossing icons is different, and this daily interaction almost becomes a cultural interaction as well. I tried to find as many different images of the different designs of the icons, and instead I found that one artist, Maya Barkai, had actually made a public installation in Australia all about the different figures of men from around the world. I found it really interesting to see how vast and varied the iconic green man can be, how completely different the designs are, yet the universal interaction and reaction from their signal remains the same. For me, this is the biggest success of the designs.
Refinery29’s “interactive fun house” 29Rooms
Between 2015 and 2017, Refinery29 launched openings of their interactive exhibition across the US, the biggest locations being New York and Los Angeles. The aim of the "29rooms" was to create a fun experienced based around visitor participation and social media. The events were huge successes, and the perfectly "instagramable" rooms/"selfie spots" meant the strong messages of female empowerment were not only communicated to those who viewed the exhibitions in person, but all the millions of other people on the internet. This epitomises the successful use of graphic communication design, in both the physical and virtual interactions with the work of Refinery29.
"Refinery29’s ECD Piera Gelardi said it reached one on two people on Instagram and thousands turned up to see it."
Punchbags featuring quirky typography reading "the future is female" encouraged female empowerment, interaction from participants to punch, kick, and ultimately feel strong and powerful. Using enticing designs that somewhat reduce the negative connotations with punching backs invite people to interact, yet don't degrade the message of female liberation and recognition. Considering how many people turned up for this exhibition, I think the interactive aspect must have been very successful, particularly because people would have seen the event whilst interacting with GCD in terms of social media, persuading them to engage in the event in person. The work is memorable because of this unconventional interactiveness that is often shunned on by galleries and exhibitions - visitors are almost always punished for touching work in typical art galleries and museums.
"The success of 29Rooms lies in its focus on fun and participation – and of course, the fact that it looks great on social media. It is not an art installation that visitors view from afar but a carefully curated fun house where visitors are invited to touch, sit on or pose with the artworks on show."
https://www.creativereview.co.uk/refinery29-fun-house-29rooms-new-york/
"The installation aims to reverse the roles of the viewer and the viewed during this in-voluntary interaction. It seeks to establish a different kind of relationship between viewer and technology." [http://www.chrisoshea.org/audience]
Chris O'Shea presents more of a fine art approach to an interactive installation. He takes 64 identically sized mirrors, and gives each one a unique personality through digital manipulation reflecting natural human behaviours - some behave confidently, others shy away from viewers, some appear to socially interact with each other through small movements resembling chat, some are curious of viewers, others uninterested, and so on. How the installation works is that when a viewer takes it upon themselves to interact with the mirrors, breaking the conventions of typical exhibitions and actually approaching the piece closely, the mirrors respond and interact back. It is this two way engagement that communicates the message of the work: "Will other members of the audience experience the sensation of being ignored or excluded when they are not the centre of attention? Will the installation create a feeling of un-ease and unsettlement? The work investigates if machines can evoke diverse emotional reactions with the simplest of means." [Chris O'Shea]
For me, the biggest irony is that by interacting with the mirrors, the real engagement is between you and your reflection that is repeatedly displayed before you.
HATO
https://sketch.london/
Sketch is an incredibly popular restaurant in London, rising to fame through social media, renowned for its especially "instagramable" interior designs and unique aesthetic. Below are screenshots of me interacting with the Sketch website. What Hato, the company behind this new design of Sketch's website, have done here is "transform sketch's interiors into an interactive digital experience".
The restaurant, itself, has already achieved social success through media platforms such as Instagram. To see a whole range of photographs of the food, the interior of the different dining rooms, and other people's documentation of their entire experience, all it takes is a quick search on social media or click on a hashtag. Thus, Sketch decided their website no longer needed to provide this information, and allowed Hato to roam freely in redesigning their website to be more interactive, enticing and minimal.
Each dining room has a different "avatar" that rather accurately reflects the appearance inside. The matching of colours and textures to reflect this is very cleverly presented here. The website homepage has all the avatars floating freely in circulation, providing information only when hovered over.
Interestingly, the only information provided when selecting each avatar is the title of the room, the theme, and the type of food/drink served at the respective times of day. The location and photo number remain a constant in the bottom left and right corner. The most notable feature of this unconventional restaurant website is the interactive games that open if/when the room avatars are clicked on.
There are no indications as to what the restaurant experience will directly be like, except through these abstract games.
"Within each dining room can be found a playful digital experience that gives a flavour of what to expect. On the new site visitors can play food Jenga with a perilous glut of pastries as found in the Gallery, design their own neon signs to illuminate the Parlour, create a forest floor carpet inspired by the Glade, recreate the Lecture Room & Library’s psychedelic patterns and even make a musical track featuring the bleeps and beats piped into sketch’s sci-fi washrooms.
The resulting site shuns endless interiors shots in favour of a mouth-watering digital experience that either igniting a memory of the place or the imagination of what it could be." https://www.hato.co/casestudy/14
https://www.creativereview.co.uk/playing-with-food-sketchs-new-website-features-games-instead-of-photos/
Personally, I feel this is a very unique and successful approach to alternative advertising through interaction. By using game-like activities that reflect a mood, experience or sensory trigger associated with each dining room, visitors - past, present or future - gain insight to the restaurant in a subtle yet memorable way. For me, the interactions on this site are successful because they are so unexpected; those who search a website most likely expect to find photographs of the food, the inside, reviews, menus, etc. except here none of this information is provide. Going against all expectations leaves a memorable impression. It is a bold statement, and reinforces the fact that Sketch restaurant does not need to advertise itself through further graphic communication, simply because those who visit do all of this promotion via social media, whether intentionally or unintentionally. In a sense, the mystery of what the restaurant experience actually entails makes the viewers more curious, therefore more interested in visiting, and so the cycle of enticement continues.
Gerardo Nigenda - Nudes
Gerardo Nigenda (1967 – 2010) was a blind photographer, and began taking his practice seriously at the start of the new millennium. What interests me most about his work is the way in which his photographs communicate intimate situations that he cannot even visually experience himself. Instead of capturing well composed, calculated photographs, Nigenda would take images based on his other senses - touch, taste, smell and hearing. Afterwards, Nigenda would sit down with someone and discuss the visual content of the images, then punch braille into the pieces, writing short captions of text that would remind him of the context of the image. For example, the piece above reads "…Between the Invisible and the Tangible… Arriving at Emotional Homeostasis". In doing this, his photographs draw away from the graphic aspect, and focus on the communication of his emotions, feelings and other senses during that given moment. This inspires me in the context of this project, "interact", as it makes me reconsider how people with sensory impairments interacting with the world of graphic communication design. To be working in the visual arts field, without having any vision is so unusual and inspirational.
Naturally, in order to perceive the messages he writes himself, Nigenda has to interact with the images, touching the Braille. Interactive communication such as Braille makes graphic communication design more accessible for those with sensory impairments, especially in everyday life.
Notably, this photograph depicts the actual interaction between the photographer and his subject within the photograph itself, yet the use of braille furthers the interaction with the work after print and production. I think the images work best black and white; perhaps colour would change the tone and atmosphere behind the quiet, sensual photographs. With so much bare skin showing in the picture, one can't help but almost feel the impression of fingertips/sensation on their own skin when viewing - should this be considered as sensory interaction with the image, consequentially?
"In the texts from this series the sensations of that subtle bodily contact between two people who do not see one another but feel reciprocally are perceived, in a tactile exploration—going from head to foot—of a woman waiting to be seen." - Jo. Trujillo Argüelles, taken from Gerardo Nigenda's website.
When thinking about graphic communication design in the light of interactive pieces, I thought about a book I made in the recent past, dealing with sensory impairment, inspired by the work of Gerardo Nigenda [see below]. This book features 12 different firsthand photographs taken and developed in the darkroom by myself, on black and white film. Each image focuses on the broader idea of 12 senses rather than 5: sight, smell, temperature, taste, touch, balance, movement, life, hearing, speech, thought and ego. Like Nigenda, they communicate messages that respond to the other senses I was feeling at the time of taking them. In this way, not only do the images graphically communicate with viewers what is in the image, with visual context, but also use of Braille - that could be considered a very set style of typography - to literally say what the I, or the photographer, want it to.
With this initial research, I hope to progress and develop ideas I have used in the past, in order to refine and improve this style of interaction in my work. Depending on the quote I get for this "Interact" project, perhaps I could include aspects of braille, audio description or subtitle-like captions, to make my work interactive for everyone, no matter the impairment.
iCoNoGRapHY of ThE "WaLKinG MaN"
At ThE TaTe MoDeRN - TANIA BRUGUERA: 10,144,703
This week, I visited the Tate Modern, to experience this interactive art piece by Tania Bruguera. The sheer number of people interacting with this piece was rather impressive, and I like the way that the sole purpose of the piece is to get people working together to reveal the portrait underneath, underlining the political message within.
"In the Turbine Hall is a large heat-sensitive floor. By using your body heat and working together with other visitors, you can reveal a hidden portrait of Yousef, a young man who left Syria to come to London. Meanwhile, a low-frequency sound fills the space with an unsettling energy. In a small room nearby, an organic compound in the air induces tears and provokes what the artist describes as ‘forced empathy’."
"as you make your bed, so you must lie on it"
iNitTiaL ViSUaLisAtiOn
Images below show our initial photographic visualisation and brainstorming around our given quote. We chose to focus on the concept of guilt, especially about lying, and so took these simple mugshot styled images as a starting point. Afterwards, we thought about how to turn this into an interactive experience, and so this led to the concept of confession - sharing your lies, whether publicly or anonymously, in order to receive redemption, perhaps.
Our final idea, as a result of the previous idea development, combines the previous concepts of taking responsibility for your actions, while simultaneously being destructive about it. Since we were really interested by the idea of lies, especially how they are easier to confine to someone than truths, we plan to ask the audience "what was the last lie you told?" This invites people to anonymously confess, in a sense, subconsciously taking responsibility for their actions through admitting they lied. We took inspiration from the idea of a confession booth, as in churches, in order to create a safe place for people to openly discuss things. However after brainstorming some more, confining ourselves to a corner of the building, trying to get people to interact, may be rather difficult. And so the creation of the public bed setup came around - simple sheets and pillows on the floor, with which people can hide their lies in. We help them feel relieved; they help us make the bed. We want the audience to write these lies on balloons, with which they will then place inside the bed sheet set up that we will set up in an open, public setting. When recording this interaction, viewers of the film (as an outcome) will be able to see the bed physically grow with lies. Once the sheets are full, Jie, Mogana and I will then jump on the bed-styled setup, bursting all the balloons, destroying the confessed lies. This could be seen as symbolic for putting the lies to bed/rest, a similar saying to the quote we were initially given.
ExPeRimENtinG wiTh iDeAs dUrinG pRoDUctiOn
During the process of providing this interactive experience for the public, as well as recording the footage to later turn into the short film explaining and exposing the activity, I played around with this idea of hiding behind your lies, for those who were happy to take part in this additional, more personal and disclosing aspect of the project. Like the original idea, and somewhat the core of our project's ethos, the partakers remain anonymous, literally hiding behind their lies. For those who were happy to let me see their lies, it was interesting to see how the lies replace their faces in the portrait styled shots, just as lies can take over your entire identity in life if they escalate.
What I found most interesting about this person who let me photograph them hiding behind their lie, is not is their face hidden by the lie, but they lie itself is hidden, scripted in Greek, and so even more anonymous and private. I am really interested in how people react to admitting their lies, even more so than the lies themselves, because reactions like this, in which the person is so secretive of the lie in a strangely extroverted manner, it is as if they are not truly accepting responsibility.
FiNaL oUTcOMe
[link to Vimeo page with final video outcome on]