Client Project Update

Just an update regarding my client project, I've embedded a small interview snippet from the DVD, the whole thing needs colour correcting which is taking a while to render! The DVD menu is nearly there, so i should have some screenshots upped shortly. I'm Hoping to have the DVD printing sorted this week so fingers crossed theirs no problems. Overall I'm really pleased and my client seems very happy with the product which is going to be used as promotional tool to hand out. Hopefully the project shouldn't have any hiccups at the last minute.



** update - embedded video seems to go over the navigation on the right which looks awful, so I've decided to link it instead **

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Portfolio Website

I'm busy developing a portfolio website inbetween working on my client project & my PRP. I've been offered a job at a design studio if I can learn some coding so in my spare time I've been reading some CSS and XHTML books to develop my understanding.

My portfolio is going to be a very simple design, with 4 sections my home page, work, short biography, and contact details. I have my portfolio work there to be included but I'm still developing a way to best show this on my Work page. I'm thinking of using flash for that part. You can view 2 pages live that I have uploaded at the moment, I made sure they were W3C compliant and that they worked on multiple browsers before uploading! I'm very pleased with the outcome and cant wait to get my portfolio work section done that will be broke down into 3 sections, Web, Print and Video. I'm also wanting to develop a blog, however this is something I might have to get outside help with as its way past my ability. For my homepage I'm wanting a scrolling gallery of my most recent work. You can visit 2 live pages currently complete here:

http://www.mmd08.co.uk/davidgowans/home.html

Artefact 2: Ethnographic Study of Domestic Space

Evaluation:

Upon my research of new technologies that are used to study social patterns within domestic and commercial spaces and how these technologies can help give informed patterns of information relating to technology I decided to do an ethnographic study within a domestic environment to find my own patterns of how people interact and socialize.

I drew a top view plan of a domestic environment, including the living room, bedrooms, kitchen and bathroom and mapped the data of how the inhabitants moved within this domestic domain when interfacing with technology. I used different colours to visually correspond to singular actions, including movement, interaction with technology and where the inhabitants would socialize. I found that when one person used a mobile phone within a social situation with other people they would normally move to a more private space, usually their bedroom.

This is symmetric to my research paper on the Network Society, which discussed how mobile technologies are fragmenting society. This self autonomy clearly shows that technology within a domestic space does fragment the social sphere. I’ve found however more technology is allowing people to network within a digital domain; technology in physical conditions is having a direct impact that is fragmenting this face to face socialization.

I also found that when my participants were watching TV and an advert was about to come on, they would usually interface with a personal computer, which would usually last around 10-15 minutes. This correlates to the study of energy demands when football matches where aired and upon half time energy levels where upped to supply the demand of people putting the kettle on to make a cup of tea. My individuals in my experiment would usually log onto Facebook to network with people in a digital space, this shows that today we are living within a Network Society.

Artefact One: Literature Review of Society & Technology

Evaluation:

For this artefact I produced a mini literature review researching how new technologies are affecting society within a domestic and commercial space. Today advanced technologies are been used to track social movements within society to help individuals make more informed decisions about their environment.

I’ve researched Ethnographic studies of social movements (Creative Networking at RISD, 2008), Visual Displays of Quantitative Information (Edward R. Tufte, 2001), Realtime Rome, and the Crowd Compiler. These are all excellent resources to help me better understand the relationship between Society and Technology.
Real time Rome aggregates data from mobile phones to track the social movements of people within an urban environment and the crowd compiler algorithm displays crowds in time and space rather than as a static image to further analytically look at how people move in an urban environment.

My aim of this artefact was to help me further understand new technologies and research further into this way of ethnographically looking at society and how the results of this data can be represented visually rather than statistically. It has paved a way for me to further research Technology and Domestic Space and whether Technology is fragmenting our domestic space through the privatization of new entertainment technologies.

This brings me onto my 2nd artefact, I will be looking at ethnographic studies of a domestic space which will help me better understand how technology is changing our environment and whether domestic space needs to be changed to accommodate for this rise in what is ultimately a Network Society.

DVD Packaging Design - Client Project

This is the design I've came up for my client project, its the DVD packaging which m authored DVD Rom will be housed in. The DVD will be card with a plastic tray. I've gone for a simplistic design focusing on typography rather than imagery. The text will either be foil blocked or debossed, I'm currently enquiring on the printing costs of this as I want around 20 or so copies done so that some can be handed out at the exhibition as well as kept for my portfolio.

Front:

Inside (Transparent Tray will be on the Graphic Side):

Economic Growth - Richard Fenwick

Nice little video I forgot about which brought back a few college memories, I attended an opening to his RND films in 2004 which involved a talk and a private session in a studio with him showing his work and how he went about developing, designing and producing his videos which was very insightful and inspiring.




Also a dark comical animated video potraying safety procedures on a plane.

Red Riding - Channel 4

For anyone that hasn't seen this, the final chapter of the trilogy was aired Thursday Night, however it is possible to watch all 3 online at channel4.com/catchup. I highly recommend watching it! The direction, acting and visual style, and how all 3 stories interlink is fantastic. I found an interview with James Marsh (Director) talking about Red Riding to give a little insight to what its all about.

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