GD : Competitiors

COMPETITORS 

We had to look at the competitors that are around the campaign of choice. Look at how they run their campaign and the approach that they use towards this. 

Due to me having this rap campaign, competitors are only seen towards the topic i would have to address through my source of media. In that case, the competitors would be looked from the drugs, violence, sex etc. Then from there we have a details info on how they have managed to do their campaign. With that being said, here are the topics with each having one main campaign description of the competition and also having supporting campaigns too.

VIOLENCE

Hitting With Words

This powerful PSA campaign from Singapore successfully illustrates how verbal abuse can be just as horrific as physical violence. This is an important issue to raise awareness of, as many people do not realize that vicious domestic verbal abuse can actually have longer lasting effects and hurt their partners and family just as much as physical aggression, if not more.

The parallel between verbal abuse and physical violence is drawn by showing a hand coming out of the man's mouth who is angrily shouting and proceeding to physically abuse the terrified woman by punching her on the face, pulling her hair, and other typical domestic violence instances.

From this above campaign, it was clear to see that the use of vulgar language was an issue and that it was that was causing violence through the words that we use. This can be seen in rap music by all the lyrics that we hear and that was also described in the infograph too. Vulgar language such as insults and phrases cause a harm to us in a way that we act afraid and live in fear and also assault by all this.

Supporting Campaigns

Clearly states that what you teach a child from birth about violence you teach him forever because he/she is able to see what is happening as they grow up and they get the understanding of this violence.

This is almost similar with the above campaign in such a way that kids/children may see pleasure in abusing people with violence and because of this, the influence we get from the music we listen also plays a part in this with music videos which show arguments and actions of violence.

SEX ABUSE

Anti-Rape Campaigns

This is a stunning visual which makes illustrates clearly yet with tact what we're talking about. (Although it does also assume sexual abuse must involve physical contact which isn't the case - forced exposure to pornography or involvement in creating single-person pornography for example).

The problem of how to inform the public, through a visual medium, about child abuse is a delicate one - the current NSPCC adverts I find too oblique - teddy bears cover their eyes aren't the reality of sexual abuse. It avoids portraying the pain and fear in a way which the other NSPCC "case" adverts (for neglect of physical violence) don't avoid. The NSPCC's poster campaigns around sexual violence have, to my mind, lacked real power. The same theme, of childhood sexual violence, is picked up (left) in the campaign from the US with this picture.

The campaign, from 2001, was run in Los Angeles as part of a personal safety campaign which put the emphasis (quite rightly) on those who commit crimes rather than the victims.

We see interesting visuals that depict of a hand touching a females private parts which in this case shows the abuse that is gone through such people. This plays a roll in rap music because all the images and songs we hear give us a feeling of wanting to indulge in sex and the likes and if not gotten, the only result turns out to sex abuse which leads to unwanted diseases, rape cases, pregnancies, sometimes even death. Hence these campaigns are there trying to give awareness to people who be suffering from these situations.

Supporting Campaigns

The above campaigns shows the results of both parties say no to the sex and the results that we get from either when she doesnt want it or when she changes his mind. Both will result in sexual abuse especially if they are forced to do what they are not willing to indulge in. In this case, sex.

DRUG ABUSE

Just Say No Campaign

Pretty simple, but apparently pretty effective.  I realize that no direct correlation could ever be substantiated between using a motto to stop drug use and how much drug use was affected.  But according to research conducted by the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, fewer young people in the 1980s were using illicit drugs. 

High school seniors using cannabis dropped from 50.1% in 1978 to 36% in 1987, to 12% in 1991 and the percentage of students using other drugs decreased similarly. Psychedelic drug use dropped from 11% to 6%, cocaine from 12% to 10%, and heroin from 1% to 0.5%.

Kind of funny to think that something so simple could be so effective.  Think about what the New Testament writer Titus writes in chapter 2.  We read in verse 11-13, “For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people.  It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

For the believer, saying no, is not about will power, but about Jesus power.  That power gives us the strength to say no to all sorts of things.  And that power is because we say yes to Jesus.  So the next time temptation comes your way, remember Nancy Reagan, and Jesus and just say no!  I think you will be glad that you did.

This campaign states it all. JUST SAY NO! its as simple as that and when it comes to drugs, the easiest and simplest we can say is NO! Hence this campaign was a good and well received because it showed the power of how saying no can be shown and to music influence this is good because with peer pressures we receive around us to avoid any problems the easiest we could say is No.

Supporting Campaigns

The images here show what an addict can be come and what the ratio is out there towards the people that are taking drugs and with the influence of rap music, the increase of these numbers shall increase if no action is taken and hence these campaigns are put into place.

ALCOHOL

Before One More Campaign

Before One More helps students understand when one more drink can become one too many and shows them how they can make low-risk drinking decisions. For students under 21, one is one too many. For students who choose to drink, it is important to know how to do it without harming themselves or others around them.

Here’s more information about the campaign:

• Before One More t-shirts were given out at Club NDSU. More than 1450 students attended this alcohol-free dance event this past weekend.
• Herd Hauler key tags will become available in early September with Before One more information on the back of the ticket. Herd Hauler is available to students as a safe way to get home after drinking.
• All student tickets for Fall 2010 Bison football games will have information on Before One More.
• The student-run NDSU television station, Bison Information Network (BIN), are working to create a public service announcement for Before One Mores

This is a good campaign towards the alcohol part influenced by people. When one drink becomes too many and then it becomes a problem for not just the drinker but the people around him/her. This pressure becomes even worse with the things we see on media such as the expensive alcohol bottom publicised by artists we know and then we tend to get an excitement to drink these alcoholic beverages without knowing the consequences of the intake.

Supporting Campaigns

The design of the campaign above relates to the alcoholic beverage called 'Absolute Vodka' and the shape of the bottle, the typography used matches the original design and with this as i mentioned taking bottles because of what we see on the media leads to unwanted things such as hangovers. For me this is a good campaign because the use of a well known alcohol can help in ways to address an issue.

These are the competitor campaigns that I researched on and which were going to give me a reference to my work on the infograph and also what I was finally going to do for my main campaign which is a song/video that was going to address some of these issues in a relation to 'Keep The Rap Clean'

Use of Grid Systems by Designers

In this task, we were told to look at some designers and see how the have a grid system towards the work that they bring out in the world today.
I decided to do my researched on famous architect Zaha Hadid and typographer, Neville Brody.

 Zaha Hadid

She was born in Baghdad in 1950. Mixed race having British- Iraqi Zaha Hadid is the first lady architect to win the prestigious Pritzer Prize, which she did in 2004. Her father was a lawmaker and it was expected and needed that she might further her instructive studies. 

In 1972 Hadid moved to London and enlisted at the Architectural Association School of Architecture. In 1980 she opened her own office which demonstrated a touch of a test; at the outset her thoughts were more sought after than her true outlines. Today she is overall venerated and in the cutting edge of engineering outline. She has gotten through the unattainable rank and her up to date, forefront rationalities have helped her to push the verges of construction modeling and plan.  Today her firm utilizes 350 individuals and has took care of 950 tasks in over 44 countries.

With a brief background on her, had to see what her work was like and the influences/inspiration of the work that she has done.

• While acknowledged and considered a respected engineer, has additionally extended into the universe of inner parts. Her consistent scan for a tasteful vision incorporates all territories of outline, from the extensive outer surfaces of her structural engineering to inner parts and furniture. The inner parts are only one more enlargement of the outside.

• Hadid was impacted by her unanticipated youth on villages of the swamps in Southern Iraq. The excellence of the scene where sand, water, structures and individuals all some way or another streamed together.

• She works around the element of bringing excitement and to have challenges in her designs. And this is widely seen by how she manages to give out the 'wow' factor in some of her designs because of her thinking outside the box and having to give people what they need but throughout something challenging. As she says "We want them to be able to embrace the unexpected" 

• Her designs are based on not taking what the traditional ideas or designs have nowadays but she looks at the architecture from alot of angles and is able to bring what she visualizes to real life. 

• The belief of future is what keeps her designs up to life and a way to move forward. Something to make them stand out and in a way to be looked back as such a creative outstanding design. She uses this to create 'futuristic' designs because of the architecture world moving forward and forward, it would be a good thing to have cutting edge designs.

Workflow seen in her designs in programs

Creative interior designing of her spaces in her buildings

Hadid's designs our vision of what's to come with new spatial thoughts and strong, visionary shapes.Her designs give an impression of an alternate planet, and enthuse them, make people amped up for thoughts. Other traditional construction modeling is natural, radical, worldwide and alterable. Nowadays people are concerned with building structures that inspire unique encounters, a sort of unusual quality and originality that is equivalent to the knowledge of heading off to another nation and in that is where she, Zaha Hadid comes in with her wonderful works.

Neville Brody

Neville Brody who was born 23 April 1957 in London is an English graphic designer, typographer and an art director. He has a creative mind and his work is unique after studying a 3 year B.A course in Graphics design. Affected by his life, his work has no limits. His worked with Nike, Kenzo, British Airways etc and all his work has been brilliant. His also the designer that redesigned BBC logo as well as ‘The Times’ in England.  

His consistency workflow in his would be seen by the reasons and inspiration that he would get and place in every design by : 

• Mostly works with typography mixing images with fonts and how he styles them up are very creative. He can create images with text which is one of his signature marks to his art. 

• Designed a number of notable typefaces and can see that he uses different types of typefaces, futuristic, stencil, sketch fonts all to add a ‘out of this world’ effect to his work.

• His work could be seen to have pop art in them. Mostly because back then in school, the music of pop was the in thing and this was one of the inspirations that he had towards his designs by the use of certain bold text and also the punk music back then. 

•  One of the techniques that is seen and always would be acknowledged in Brodys' work would be use of Dadaism.  With the meaning got from the online free dictionary as "A European artistic and literary movement (1916-1923) that flouted conventional aesthetic and cultural values by producing works marked by nonsense, travesty, and incongruity". 

This Dadaism is what is consistent in Brody's work such that he can 'define' this by having using images and text to portray a meaning of something. The use of heavy geometrical designs and also abstract images combined with text gave a different element in each art. The pop art influence is seen throughout his works due to the colors that he uses in his designs. They are colorful, bright and bold. This helped define his style and he took this on by creating more of his own designs and typefaces in relation to his work and inspiration. 

Grid Systems

With this task, we were told to know and research more and have our own understandings of grid system and how we can use it in graphics design and how else it influences our surroundings.

What is a grid system?

A grid system from my own understanding would be the layout of a design that is placed or put In order by a formal grid, be it by rows and columns.

In a grid system, it helps the way the design and layout of any design, be it a poster, architecture drawing, building and so forth. The way the grid system is shown in some examples are here :

·         Geographical – Helps in making of maps using the longitudes and the latitudes of the map that help in in analysing data.

·         Architectural -  The grid system can help in making accurate information that the designer may need in order to execute the design, for example he can use one grid square to represent a square kilometre of a placement of  bricks.

·         Roads – Helps to keep roads in order by having separate lanes, for outgoing and incoming of cars. This represents order.

In graphics design, the grid system can be shown in certain design layouts such as posters, books, articles etc.

·         Articles – In articles, the grid system is seen by having the columns of a news paper that have been aligned next to each other. Such a layout shows organization in the certain article.

·         Books – Books have certain grid systems that are in them which are seen in paragraphing the data.  The spacing in between the words as well, show a proper layout and organization shown.

·         Posters – When making posters, there would be need to have alignment to the design such as bleeding space and so forth, so guided lines would need to be used so as to keep the design in such a format that they design is centred and aligned properly.

With a brief understanding of the grid system I gained to get knowledge from, we were told to take pictures and see where this grid system could be applied and how you could see it being used.

Invisible & Visible Grid Systems

This is where the graphical part of the grid system is applied and how we can spot where it being used.

These are normally differentiated in two parts being :

Print based grid system - this is the type that has the grid applied on its printed issue/material. e.g, articles, banners, books etc. This falls under the invisible and visible grid system because in some cases, you can see the way columns are set up in an article or book. In a banner, the centering and all cant really be seen because its covered by the text that we see on the banner, but grids used there.

Fig. 1

In Fig.1 this shows the layout that articles that you would see in magazines, books etc. This shows a grid system that will form organisation where the information will be placed.

Fig. 2

In Fig.2 we see how the grid system in Fig.1 influences what we see in these articles of nowadays and how the information in it.

Fig. 3

In Fig.3 we see a variety of the rows and columns which form a type of a mosaic type of print which could or would be a word puzzle that needs to be filled in. So this type of example shows creativity in a grid system in a design to give an illusion of something formed by using the same system.

Screen based grid system - Ina screen based type of a grid, its more or less by the term itself, 'screen based'. The grids are supposedly seen on screen be it on phones, tablets, televisions etc. The sight made by our human eye on a screen to spot a grid is falls under this. Such as mostly invisibility due to the perfection of making sure everything is on a grid before its actually seen by the people. E.G, layout of a phones icons are just seen by users as normal icons that are just placed in a position and in 'order'. But this same order is got from a grid system to have the icons sized up and placed properly. iPhone grid layout is an example of how this screen based is articulated and after the description, one can now actually see that there is a grid of rows and columns crossing each other with icons in the middle. 

Fig. 4

In the above image, we see how a grid system is used on a screen based system. The grid is represented by the icons that are placed in an order where the rows and columns criss-cross each other. This can fall under invisible grids because visually seeing the grids with our eyes is not seen as a normal grid like in Fig. 3.

Fig. 5

This a television type of grid system which we normally see but never pay attention to the details that it gives. These are normally used as background images via green screen which are seen on footages such as talk shows, news, etc. A sample of a how a grid screen via green screen is show below where the televisions are placed in a  format in relation to a grid system.

A further more task was given to us by taking pictures of objects in our surroundings that have a grid system and also not just show the typical straight line grid system but to have a variety. So with that understanding, these are the images that i had and showed where the grid system was used.

• Foot path

This is the first picture of where i could see a simple grid system that is formed by a foot path. 

• Foot path 2

In this path, you can see that we have a grid system that is surely not the simple straight line grid that form accurate boxes etc. The grid system on this is unique and has a pattern. With that pattern, it gives out the footpath to have a unique design as well. So playing around with a grid system platform creates unique designs.

• Trees

This was a unique type of grid system that i saw. It had trees, paths and tables set up. The way i also took the photo gave me a different perspective of the way i saw this grid. It was seen the trees were arranged in a line from one end to another and the walking paths crossing each other with the tables being aligned in a way where the were lined up together. The 'invisible' grid i saw is shown above in the red lines. All in a perspective view.

Typography Art

With the task, we were told to incorporate the knowlege that we have on the word that we picked. My word was was 'Line'. Therefore i had to research on what line was based on and what it related to with a design that would come. And with the reseach i made, these are the following meanings that i got.

After finding out the meanings of the words, we were told to see how these words can relate with images/pitcures so that we can have an idea of how our project would come out. With that in place, these are some of the images that i found that related to some of the words of choice.

Arrow showing direction

Grid

Speed through line

Formation through line

Thereafter, we are now to look at our concept on our final piece of art. How we were going to mix it up and come out with a line based project. Five images were told to taken and then form some sort of a book or storyline with a meaning of the images taken.
I was going to do something related with something that i have a passion for and that being, Music. So i had to explore with how i would come up with a design incorporated with music. Hence, these are a few sketch ups that i came up with from. The images taken were :

• Guy with headsets

• Speakers

• Piano

• Guitar

• Microphone

Few sketches of the work that i was to do is below here.

My main idea/concept was to show a flow of the music from the top to the bottom. Hence the project having a meaning from the headsets to the mic. With that in place, i started a few projects on ilustrator and with a multiple consults from the teacher my design gradually changed but i still wanted to maintain the same 'music flow' of my work. Here was a few works of how my work changed from the begining to the very end.

First idea that i had and worked on.

Second idea that i did that had more of the flow of music.

Final Piece of Art That I Did.

With the final piece of art, can see that i used alot of the line meanings to have a design, those being line, curves, shape etc. The knowlegde i had helped because i knew already what i wanted to depict from the final piece of work and hence the transformations helped with ideas coming in. Adding text around certain images helped as well and which also gave it that typography feel  to the images and gave it more depth. Here are the transitions of the artworks to the final art.

After all the research and all the concept refining, i was pleased with my final work because i had got more ideas and more understandings with the work and it helped to change a few  ideas to make it have more meaning.