Ryan Tatar

My favourite season will always be summer and I came across this photographer who captures it in ever picture he takes! He has a few different series of work, my favourites are sea tribes and the cape fear kooks.
Heres what Tatar has to say about the cape fear kooks,

"The Cape Fear Kooks is an ongoing photo essay, and subset of the sea-tribes body of work, that focuses on a small pocket sized capsule of eccentric surfers in North Carolina.  The photographs in this subset continue the tradition and attributes of the sea-tribes essay, however are specifically focused in the area around the photographer’s home and personal lifestyle from the fall of 2008 until early 2010.   Also, like sea-tribes, the photographs were taken with fully manual 1960s and 1970s era equipment and shot on a variety of black and white, cross processed, and expired films.  The colours are unique to the film processing technique (various slide films processed in C-41 chemicals) and polaroid."

 Every single photograph makes me wish it was summer and want to go on a road trip, here's some of my favourites, you can see all of his work here!

Assignment 3: Design Safari

Our third assignment was all about people watching, or the technical term 'Ethnography'. For this I decided I wanted to go and visit the G Casino in Dundee, a place all of my friends had been but I had never got around to going. So with a couple of other girls in my course we went for lunch one afternoon, a monday afternoon to be exact. When we first went in we got chatting to the guy on reception, who sorted out our membership for us. He informed us that the casino was in fact not that busy but we went on in anyway. When entering the casino you have to go up a few floors after reception to get to the actual casino, and as interior students we immediately started noticing all the decor, interesting wallpaper made up of tiny images of Dundee which we were all quite impressed with, and a rather out dated carpet we were a little confused with, as the casino has only just recently opened. However we carried on, ordered some lunch (which was very good by the way) and started to observe. We noticed that the casino was a little bit deserted, and the whole are very separated, with very different people in each area. The table area seemed to have only men, all age 40 or over and looking mostly middle/upper class. They were all looking very serious and very in to their gambling, something i thought odd for it only being lunch time. When we were observing them (perhaps not very subtly) they looked a little shifty and uncomfortable. We also noticed that as there wasn't too many people everyone was sitting a seat apart. Some seemed on edge as well, fidgeting and looking quite nervous. On the other side of the casino at the slot machines there were older people, typical 'grannies' who would sit at the same machine with a drink with them. This side of the casino was a lot more relaxed, more fun i would guess rather than the seriousness of people at the tables. It surprised me there was such a lack of younger student types in, as from what I'd heard from friends the casino was the place to be! Maybe not during the day but I still expected a few.
We noticed from the way people were so separated that the casino layout was designed with very different zones, the bar, the restaurant, the roulette tables, the slots and a seating area with televisions. The betting table area was very literally separate, with a railing around the area and it was central to all of the other zones, most likely because it's the part they make the most money and want people to go to the most. The bar is very flashy and glamorous, bright lights attract your attention and expensive wine and champagne menus are laid out at every table. We got chatting to the barman and he told us that the flashy lights at the bar were a great way of spotting the drunks as they can be quite disorientating, although i'm not sure if this was a deliberate design decision, but if it was, it's a clever one!

Lights played a prominent part in the design of the casino, adding to the 'glitziness' and also subliminally guiding people through the room. The lights on the ceiling swooped across the room guiding you from the entrance through to each section. This is continued with flooring and with the glass panels surrounding the roulette area, all allowing any user to smoothly walk from one area to the next.

Adding to the whole casino experience even more is the atmosphere of the place. Calm music is played throughout the day and the place is a lot more soothing and relaxed than i expected. This may just be due to the fact that it was during the week I visited and that at the weekend it livens up. I would expect the atmosphere is calm deliberately, keeping users happy and relaxed enough to keep on playing. 

My experience in the casino was not at all what I expected. Having never been in any casino I expected something like in the movies in Las Vegas, it was not like this at all. I visited once in the afternoon and then later in the week at night and at night it wasn't all that more exciting. It wasn't fun and full of the glamour advertised in its leaflets and the way casino's are portrayed in Hollywood, just older business men losing their money.

What a wonderful night for a moondance...

As part of our latest assignment we were asked to visit somewhere we'd never been before either a casino, a football match or the bingo. I visited the casino but also decided to go the Jazz night at the union, something i've always wanted to do, therefore killing two birds with one stone! The event was held on a Wednesday night in 'mono' in the union. Usually when i'm in mono it's for 'skint' and its a nightclub full of drunk, very drunk normally, students dancing away to a random mix of music. To walk into mono sober and to listen to music I haven't shown a lot of interest in previously was all very new to me!
The night attracted a lot of different people.        There were the slightly older group of people, sipping on cocktails and wine, very sophisticated. There were the more what i would call, artsy people, swaying about in time to the music. Finally there were people like my friends and I, people you probably wouldn't expect to see at a Jazz Night. I did feel a little out of place for a while, I have to admit.
I felt the atmosphere was overall relaxed and everyone fitted in. My idea of people who would be into jazz was pretentious people who thought they were all so cool, but there wasn't anyone like that really. Although saying this, it maybe wasn't a true
example of the whole jazz scene as it was a temporary space.
Although it was totally new to me I like new situations, getting out of my comfort zone a little. Last year i travelled to Madrid and lived with a host family alone and lived their lifestyle with them, something that was extremely new and quite brave for me. Its nice to seek out new experiences.
Here's a video of one of the songs the Universities Big Band played in the union 'Moondance', I also have a new found love for Sinatra and Etta James.

Service Design Tools

For assignment 3 we were asked to look at the website Service Design Tools,which shows you different communication methods that you can use in the design process. Looking through some of them i thought i would never use this and found a couple hard to understand but looking more into it I realised I actually use a few of the methods already, just didn't realise what exactly they were. There were tools such as mind maps that obviously all of us have previously used in the first semester. There was also an 'offering map' which I realised I have been using  (okay a much simpler version but still..)  for our current office project in order to help me get my head around the layout of the building.

One of the methods which was a very obvious communication tool was a mood board, however I have never sat down and made one so decided I would try it for this project and it really helped me sort all the different design ideas I have going on in my head right now!

There were some other methods i thought would be quite useful, especially since I'm quite a disorganised person, it would make sense for me to use some, mainly methods such as a task analysis grid, which looks time consuming but probably helps a lot when there's just too much information to take in at one time, I problem I have had with our current project. The context panorama looks like an interesting tool, and simple and easy to understand as well. I'll try to use as many methods as I can in future projects!

Radical Cartography

I came across this website today that is all about maps, but in very different ways you would expect to see a map. The maps aren't simply about places but a whole host of issues, race boundaries, suicides and comparisons in scale with different country's and cities. Some of the issues the maps are built around are pretty serious but some are really amazing to see and quite shocking and are a great way to get information across really fast and in a easily understandable way.

here's a couple of examples, find more here!

'what the world needs now' 

Assignment 2: What images mean

For our second assignment of semester 2 we were looking at what images mean and how different people can interpret the same image in different ways. To test this out myself and two other design students tried a little experiment.

We found 4 different advertisements and took off the text/logo so only the image was left. Here are the 4 images;

The images were very varied and also not obvious so the results were quite interesting. As a group we went into the student union just after lunch time so we could ask people about the images without being a pain! We asked 5 groups of people and gathered the results for each as all the people in a group combined.
The first image had most groups baffled, however the over all idea was that it was funny and weird. The image confused most people not understanding what it was about. After asking people what they thought it might be advertising no-one knew, someone guessed religion but this was the only guess.
The second image was a lot more obvious to the groups as being about some kind of danger and that it was also something about children. Someone also said that it was dangerous and that they wanted to stay away from it. For a complete opposite one group said it was happy and reminded them of childhood. Two groups also guessed that it may advertise child abuse.
The third image was the most popular image, with people laughing, finding it funny and 'cool'. One person said they also thought it was a little creepy and about control. A lot of the groups thought that, perhaps obvious, it advertised a magic show.
The final image was in complete contrast the least favourite image. One girl in a  group didn't even want to look at it after a while. A lot of people screwed their faces up when the image was shown to them for the first time. The general consensus was that it was 'horrid'. A lot of people also guessed that it advertised domestic abuse.

Images with the advertisements still attached:

domestic abuse helpline

viagra

mens deodorant 'Axe'

save the children

When we revealed to the groups what each of the advertisements were the reactions were quite interesting. The Viagra advert was one of the best examples. When we explained it was for Viagra and showed the image again they had a little think while it all clicked in their heads and got a typical 'oh yeah!' as they worked it out. People used words such as 'magic' and 'control' to describe the image, which in a way does describe the product and people thought the advert was quite clever and understood it as soon as its meaning was revealed. The logo was a tiny part of the image but revealed a lot to make everything click together and make sense. I found this advert the most amusing as unknowingly the people described the advert to be exactly what Viagra is about (well not exactly literally) and only from an image. Its very clever advertising in my opinion. 

The nun image, which advertises 'Axe' deodorant, the equivalent to the UK's 'Lynx' confused people, and even when the meaning was revealed, still confused people a little. Lynx advertisements are well known to be about attracting women with their scent, so i would guess that Axe is very similar with their approach. So the nun and the clothes peg is quite clever, saying that without it she too would be attracted to men, how sinful! People didn't seem to think much about the peg, only seeing the nun. The one guess we got about this advert was it advertised religion, a type of advert i personally don't see too often! The placement of the brand on the image was a discrete deodorant can in the corner of the advert, not obvious at all. Telling people the meaning of the advert didn't really clear up the confusion either, a lot of people still not 'getting it'. This shows that logos sometimes don't make an image 'make sense'. Maybe the advert needed a logo? Or was meant to just grab the viewers attention, and purposefully not obvious. 

The two more serious adverts, one for save the children and one for domestic abuse, were more hard hitting, hard to look at and  also apparently more obvious. These advertisements are important, not selling a product so therefore cant be too clever and difficult for people to 'read' as they need their message out there in the best possible way. Both images didn't even need a logo or writing for people to understand them and this shows just how successful and powerful they are. What was interesting about these adverts was that the two groups of people who guessed very quickly, before even asked, studied psychology and social work. The social work group commented on this fact that they could understand the harder hitting images more than the more light hearted adverts. This shows that different people see images in very different ways. One of the groups we asked was a younger girl and her parents waiting in the union for a nursing degree interview. She was clearly going to be nervous and i'm guessing was a little younger so perhaps more immune to some serious issues. She thought the save the children advert was happy and reminded her of childhood... probably not what STC had in mind when implementing the advertisement. 

In 'The Rhetoric of the Image' by Roland Barthes, Barthes talks about three types of messages in advertising; text, symoblic and non symbolic. All of the images we showed people were symbolic ones. There was no text describing what was being advertised and the literal product was not involved. However the 2 adverts we had that were advertising a tangible product were the ones that people couldn't guess... The two advertising services, people could guess. Possibly we asked the wrong people, or that the particular people we asked needed all three types of images to get what they were supposed to from the advertisement. For our experiment, it seems that more than just a symbolic message was needed.

Labyrinth

Today I came across this installation by Motoi Yamamoto, created on the floors of the Saint Peter Cologne cathedral in Germany. Its a Labyrinth created entirely by salt and made by hand, by Yamamoto alone. He started working with salt after his sister passed away from brain cancer, as salt represents mourning and purification in Japan, and used it as a way of honouring her life. He works his way forward carefully as to not cross over his previous work and destroy it, and at the end of the installation a group of children were asked to collect the salt and put it back into the Rhine River. Yamamoto has a lovely story behind his work and the installation looks beautiful and is an almost cradle to cradle cycle. 

Are You What You Wear/Buy/Sit On/Sleep In/Talk To?

Our first assignment of semester 2 was to be partnered with another design student we didn't know, swap photos, either from recent/teen years or of your room. We were also to read the book 'Snoop' by Sam Gosling to help us with the assignment. At first I was really looking forward to reading the book, I was interested in what it was going to say but I felt a lot was repeated and got bored with a few bits, although I was really interested in some parts and how much you can tell about someone from their stuff, and how much of the things we have on display are for show and to give people an idea of who we are,  which may be not who we really are.
I was excited to swap photo's with my partner, Lauren from textiles. The whole assignment reminded me of that television programme through the keyhole and I was interested to see what I could find out, and if i'm honest I love a good nosey at other peoples things! I was also curious as to what Lauren would think of me based on the photos of me from the past few years.

I gave Lauren photo's of me within the past 7/8 years and I do think this was quite hard for her to work out what i'm like from this,and although I really wanted to know what a complete stranger thought of me I was a bit apprehensive about sending them personal photos! She didn't really get a lot about my personality, however did mention that my appearance at the time was influenced by posters I had on my wall of pop stars, which I didn't even realise myself but now it makes sense that that's why I had my hair the way I did and the way I dressed. I wish i had sent pictures of my room as i feel this would maybe give my personality away a bit more and the results might have been a bit more in depth.

When looking at Lauren's photos one of the first things i noticed with the pictures is that the bed is unmade. This suggests that she is a little messy. However i then noticed that she has lots of different boxes and units for organising things, and everything seems to have its place. Although everything is quite organised there is a little mess, so its not organised in an anal way. Most of the organisation is with beauty products, i.e, hair products and body products have a box each in their own area with nail varnish and make up organised on the desk. The desk seems to be a working place and a make up table, as there is a laptop and a mirror. This gives me the impression she takes a lot of care in her appearance and probably takes a lot of pride in it too. I noticed a small cut out of a Mac advertisement, i'm not sure if its from an actual product or just from a magazine, but i also noticed that she had a lot of nail varnishes, and noticed some revlon branded ones, so i think she maybe spends a bit on cosmetics and buys branded, high quality products rather than cheaper alternatives, further showing she cares about her appearance.  Also on the desk was a little note to remind herself of some sort of appointment, suggesting she is quite forgetful, or that it was very important and not to be forgotten. Throughout the room there are a lot of very girlie little ornaments and momentos. In one of the photos, the small shelving unit on the desk there is a set of russian nesting dolls, and because this is one of the only close ups i was given i would guess they are quite important to her, maybe were given as a present or just something she really likes. One of the items that sticks out is a small box that looks hand made, im guessing its a jewellery box. It was maybe made by her or made by someone else for her. Either way this shows that she is quite sentimental, preferring this to a typical jewellery box everyone else has too. There is also a jewellery box that has held a charm bracelet. The charm bracelet itself is another insight to the 'girliness' of the room, and to her but the fact that she has kept the box also shows that perhaps it was given to her by someone special and that it's important to her, therefore keeping the box for memories sake. Although i wasn't shown any images of her clothes there was an image of a drawer in which she keeps her shoes, and there were also a lot of shoes on her floor, probably the ones she wears most. The high number of shoes and different types shows she is fashion concious and cares about her appearance. I also noticed a few fashion magazines and books showing her interest goes further than the typical person who follows everyone else when it comes to fashion. There was a fashion book that looked a bit like a 'coffee table book' and i thought maybe it was for show but then i noticed a page was kept with a piece of paper which suggests regular reading and a genuine interest in fashion rather than just being there for show. One of the things i noticed that was nowhere on show in her room were photos. This makes me think that she is maybe quite a private person, as maybe she does have them, they just aren't on show, possibly inside a wardrobe door on in a photo album somewhere. There are very little personal items like these, or obvious ones anyway. Although i'm guessing this is her room in Dundee and not her room at home i can understand that maybe this is the only reason there are a lack of personal things to give clues to her personality. Or it may even just be she likes to keep her family life at home separate to her life here in Dundee.

Overall I thought that Lauren had a typical 'girly' room but there wasn't a lot of insight into her personality, or maybe I just missed a lot of clues. Snooping was a lot more difficult than I first thought but the over all process is really interesting that people can find so much out just by looking at the things you keep. Whether I like it or not I think I will now 'snoop' a lot more when i'm in other peoples rooms!

Metroplastique

Wall art by Supakitch and Koralie. These guys have serious skills, i love the colours and the paint effects, and its a really nice video to watch and see the whole process! 

Switching City

I came across this entry into an international master plan design competition in the city of  Åndalsne. The architectural firm Jagnefalt Milton proposed the whole city be on rail tracks, existing tracks as well as new rail roads being built. The whole city, including Hotels, public swimming pools and a concert hall, all roll around the city depending on seasons and situations. Not only is it quite a fun idea, its flexible and doesn't require the city to build public squares or walkways. The presentation perspectives are really good as well and i think possibly helped the designers win the competition! 

click here for more info!