Typography

An article in the age on the typefaces used for the american election.
How important type is in setting a tone of voice.

Link

Lecture 5

a

Lecture 5

It is interesting to note that the colour of each of the 6 thinking hats relates psychologically to the function of each hat, black (negative) yellow (positive), red (emotion) etc. it is interesting to query where these preconceived ideas of colour come from.

I remember a speaker at the agideas conference talk about the idea of creativity in children, 'As a child we paint in rainbow'.
There are no rules or pre conceived ideas as to what we are producing visually as children, a bird can be pink and the sky can be green. As we grow up however we are told that the sky is blue, therefore it we should colour it blue. We are made to believe that in order to depict something correctly or truthfully, it must must apear exactly as it does in real life.

As someone who is red/green colour-blind, my visual interpretation of these two colours clearly differs from that of 'normal' people. So I often find myself asking what is the true colour of an object and by who's standards is that colour determined? Is what im seeing wrong or just different?

Image reference: here

Lecture 5

Fuzzy Logic
When there is no clear definition of black and white, we are left with a field of grey.
It’s this ambiguity in design that I love – I often consider the conflict between client and designer, that if we as designers can really design something without adding our own prejudices or personal attitudes. We dedicate a period of our lives (and emotion) to a design and will often argue the opinions of the client to ensure the ‘integrity’ of the design is kept, but is the integrity we are fighting for; the design and its effectiveness or our own preferential view of how the outcome should appear?

Lecture 4

I thought this image showed a contradiction of attitude. The natural beauty of the tree contrasts perfectly with that of the unemotional sign. The two suggest an unnatural co-existence, with one responsible for the demise of the other – these two object also reflect the current social issues of global warming and the ‘peak oil’ fuel crisis that we face today.

Lecture 4

Permaculture

While walking through collingwood gardens, I found this great community vege patch at the collingwood childrens farm, not unlike the one set up in StKilda (accross the road from Luna Park). What is great about this setup however is the idea of community and education. I think that it is important to educate children in relation to these issues.

There was a campaign launched around this concept (helped by french child psychologist G. Clotaire Rapaille (mentioned below)) that in order to introduce coffee into Japan (who are a huge target market, but have always been heavy tea drinkers and didn't like the bitter taste of coffee) they would have to begin their focus on children, so that when they were the right age to start spending their money - coffee was as common place as tea.

It is this line of thinking that I believe needs to be applied to things like permaculture and water saving. The problem with our aging society is that these are the people (and I am making an assumption) who are unwilling to change, that just assume they won't make the difference and therefore don't try. It is the children we need to be targeting. - Think of the children.