Tom Klinkowstein
Klinkows@mediaa.com
Purpose
The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the core ideas and technologies surrounding contemporary approaches to New Media, including a sampling of at least three of the following (depending on time available), Image Design, Sound Design, Motion Design, Social Media Design and Interactive Design. “Design Thinking”- the methodology of contemporary communications design - will also play an important role in this course.
Projects (subject to change)
There will be 3-5 project modules, each taking 2-3- weeks.
In addition to technological and design challenges, assignments
have conceptual themes, including:
Descriptive / Suggestive
Storytelling
Drama
While working on the assignments, try to understand both the "why" as well as the "what". In other words, try to figure out the big idea behind each project; don't just focus on the tool being employed to solve the given assignment. Try to learn how to think, perceive and judge differently and translate these perceptions into engaging results.
Required Materials
- Digital camera (use your own or borrow the department’s)
- (Possibly) video camera or still camera with video capabilities (use your own or borrow the department’s)
- External storage media such as a Firewire drive
Grading
Based on the successful completion of all assignments and their sub-sections, as well as vigorous class participation, presentations in front of the class and the quality of the content
of your blog.
Class Structure
A short lecture or discussion; students showing work and presenting reviews from their blogs; individual or group critiques, followed by time to work on the assignment.
Blog
Set up a free blog at blogspot.com and make it accessible to everyone. Customize the appearance in a manner appropriate to a graduate design student. In this blog, you should keep all your blog reviews, notes, planning materials, PowerPoints, audio and video files.
(Note: the following instructions may vary somewhat as the Blogger software is updated.)
-Go to Blogger.com website (https://www.blogger.com)
-Click “Create Your Blog Now”
-If you have a Google account already (like gmail account), click “sign in first”. If not, fill in the information and create your own Google account.
-Name Your Blog
-Choose a template
-You will get an email from Blogger to verify your email address and to activate your blog account.
-Click the link in the email, you will be able activate your account.
-When you go to your Dashboard in your own blog account (image below)
-Go to “+New Post” when you want to post a new blog entry.
-Go to “View Blog” when you want to see your past entries.
-Go to “Posts” when you want to edit your past entries.
-Go to “Settings” when you want to change the basic settings for publishing and formats.
-Go to “Layout” when you want to change the template, color and fonts.
Making a post:
When you post a new blog entry, click in dashboard.
Start by giving your post a title (optional), then enter the post itself by clicking “Embed”.
When you're done, click the "Preview" link to make sure it's ready to go:
Once you're satisfied with your post, click the "Publish" button. This will publish your new post: When you want to upload an image, click the button with photo (add image) and select the image from your files.
Use this blog to document all of your written, data, photographic, sound and video research as well as (to the largest extent possible), the sketches, and the prototypes and final files for the projects in this course.
On your blog, you must also review and comment (20-50 words each) on at least three posts every week (approximately 60 short commentaries over the course of the semester). Read and comment on posts in the list below of design and innovation blogs/sites. Also comment on design, innovation and media related posts from the New York Times.
You will be called upon periodically to give a presentation to the class using your blog entries.
Networking
Meet 5 new people at locations likely to deliver professionally useful encounters: design, technology, idea-oriented lectures and conferences.
Post the following on your blog:
The new peoples’ names, a sketch or photo, link to the work they do, answer to the question: what is the future of design and how will it be different than it is currently practiced?
Premise and “Premise Assignment”
Read the statement below as to the current state of design and the importance of Design Thinking / Design Methodology. Then order Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next 50 Years by Bruce Sterling (you can order this from Amazon or similar–specify next day delivery, or get it locally at Barnes and Nobel-check first that they have it in stock). Finally you will using an idea from the book as the basis to build brand platform elements (the assignments in this course).
Statement on the Current State of DesignProcter and Gamble, Nike, Kraft, Sony, Samsung, Tata and other large international companies, faced with fierce competition from lower-cost competitors look to move beyond mere efficiency to innovation (imaginative activity fashioned so as to produce outcomes that are both original and of pragmatic social and/or commercial value).
To paraphrase what Roger Martin, former director of the Boston business consultancy Monitor and current Dean of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, said in a Fast Company business magazine blog, …the world’s economy is radically transforming. As the production of goods and services increasingly becomes routinized, the cost advantages across a growing array of industries accrue to low-cost manufacturing based economies. Scale alone is not enough to thrive in a world where markets are rapidly globalizing; incremental improvement won't deliver a decent ROI. Our companies will continue to prosper only if they push to the higher ground of innovating and creating elegant, refined products and services.
“The upshot, says Martin, is nothing less than the emergence of the design economy -- the successor to the information economy, and, before it, the service and manufacturing economies. And that shift, he argues, has profound implications for every business leader and manager among us: "Businesspeople don't just need to understand designers better -- they need to become designers." Martin further says that companies usually "reward two types of logic: inductive (proving that something actually operates) and deductive (proving that something must be)." Designers combine inductive and deductive reasoning to create a fresh approach -- abductive thinking -- which Martin defines as "suggesting that something may be and reaching out to explore it." Instead of acting on what's certain, designers bet on what's probable. Companies such as Apple act like design shops by saying, "If everything must be proven, we'll never make the likes of an iPod."
David Kelley, Chairman of the IDEO design studio and founder of Stanford University’s Institute of Design (“DSchool”), says that businesses need to employ people with the “T-shaped” skills designers possess. "That means combining analytical thinking -- the vertical leg of the T -- with horizontal thinking: intuitive, experimental, and empathetic."
BookRead Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next 50 Years by Bruce Sterling. Pick a short quote (one sentence to one paragraph) from the book about a theme regarding the future. Shorten it as necessary into a 3-9 word theme. You can read the chapters out of order, so please pick a quote based on reading or at least skimming the later as well as the earlier chapters so that we don’t just get ideas from the beginning of the book.
Example quote: “Bits, for instance, are not immaterial. Bits in motion are physical things, electrons and photons. Bits sitting still are little patches of magnetized metal flakes, or little pits of molten plastic. They’re real objects, bits of atoms. They seem immaterial compared with wood pulps or tombstones. but if you visit a modern Internet backbone router, you will find yourself in a very large, extremely material info factory…”
Short theme derived from this quote: Bits will become the next “hot” material for products, fashion, etc.
Brand PlatformYou will use this theme as the basis to create a “brand platform”. A brand platform is the context (in images, sounds, animations, interactions, etc.) from which a product or service’s later, more specific stage of development and / or marketing may evolve.
See:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/31/realestate/commercial/31sqft.html
Nature of the Assignments
The assignments in this class are meant as short introductory exercises tied together thematically by the above detailed research (Assignment Premise).
In general, the desired result is suggestive and experimental rather than overly specific, illustrative or tightly specific or worked out.
Before doing the first assignment, we will (as a class), listen to everyone’s theme derived from the book quote and determine what (in general) kind of service or product might be associated with the theme they each came up with.
Assignment One, Brand Platform Color and Texture Mood Board from
Abstracted Images
Media: Digital Photography and PowerPoint file.
Part A
-Photograph three common objects and / or living things in an abstract manner using close-ups (in focus and out of focus), a moving camera, a moving object and combinations of the two.
Choose the objects so they will produce files showing the three colors and/or monochromes of your brand platform. They may also show intended “atmospheric” textures. The abstract images should not be literal representations of the photographed object, in fact the original object should NOT be recognizable in the abstracted images.
For documentative purposes, make three photos of the common objects on plain white, gray or black backgrounds that show the whole, unaltered, object.
Make a PowerPoint file with these components and in this order:
-Three equally sized parts of the selected photos on one slide, filling the
entire slide (three equal sized vertical slices).
-One slide each (for documentative purposes) of equally sized realistic images showing the three chosen objects before blurring, etc. on a white, gray or black background (with no edges of the background showing).
Your Powerpoint presentation has to be uploaded on
www.slideshare.net (you have to create an account), and then to your blog.
