It is said that the general public don’t have a voice, don’t have a say in what affects them as individuals. They are all the same and simply follow like sheep the main trend of the time not asking questions, not opposing what is told to them by distanced fat cats and aristocrats. Now, fifteen years ago I would have agreed with that, very rarely did the common individual get to talk to the nation and stick up for the regular “Joe” working the regular nine to five shift. But now everything has changed, the whole world has shrunk and allowed common individuals to become very powerful and manipulating, and you ask what has allowed this, the plane, the boat, the shuttle… The answer is the Internet, never in world history have so many different cultures, communities, and individuals talked to one another, spreading ideas and building friendships all over the globe. This has been done by various ways, but all are based on the notion of one computer being joined to another via the net, the Internet super highway.
One of the most popular ways of explaining yourself on the net is to create a personal homepage about yourself, your hobbies, your ideas, your ambitions, your problems, anything that your can dream of and want to share with the world. Many individuals do this, cancer patients, retired scientists, football fans, movie fans, etc. There are two types of personal homepages; the first is that of the author who wants to be “cool,” they often use stylish designed pages and comment on items and ideas that are in fashion at the current time. The other and more common is that where the author simply uses the homepage as a diary, gallery or journal of there life, including family and friends. The later is more common as the author doesn’t need any computing coding education to produce it; templates are available from providers such as Yahoo! Geocities and AOL. These then make the medium available to a much wider majority of the public and allow many people to express there ideas. The only problem though is that more often than not the personal homepage is simply an extension of the family album and ideas or problems with or for society are not discussed and brought to public attention. Blogs from such providers as Blogger also allow users to publish their ideas and reports on subjects, and even get comments from the readers on what they have just read. The only problem though with blogs is that they are usually too opinion driven and very rarely does one create a good, solid identity of the author.
Another and ever popular way of creating an online identity is that of the chat room. Chat rooms from such providers asMicrosoft and Talk City, allow any group of people to talk to each other anywhere in the world, with great ease and speed. For example some chat rooms that were present when researching this subject were “14-19teen,” “MarriedNLonely” and “Adult_Sexy_Flirts” to name a few. As you can see the chat rooms allow many people to discuss problems and ideas with other individuals who in turn can give support. One good adaptation of chat rooms is MSN Messenger, which I use on a daily basis. It’s a cross between chat rooms and email, and extremely useful when wanting to get in touch with friends. It’s basically just like texting service but doesn’t cost you money and allows you to send images, movies, sounds and most importantly allows you to create an online passport. You create a name, address, nickname, etc. and then talk to others over the internet. You can decide to be yourself or someone else, the choice is really yours and sometimes it is great fun to pretend to be somebody your not. For example many of times me and my friends have wound up others by pretending to be someone else, its cruel but really funny. Obviously though in serious situations this can be very dangerous and their have been many cases when individuals have come to harm when trying to physically meet fake online contacts. One amazing attribute though of chat rooms is the similarity between the text typed in by users and mobile phone text. For example “love” becomes “luv” and lots of laughs becomes “lol.” This nod back to mobile phone text style language is very apparent and at first on a large computer screen doesn’t look right. The reason for all this text style language I believe is down to the old notion of “coolness,” you see as mobile phone text language is seen as a young, modern phenomenon, older individuals adopt this kind of language in chat rooms to portray a “hip,” “cool” image of them self’s to others. As well as being places for the young and wanting to be young individuals to get together, chat rooms have a better purpose. They allow professionals such as scientists, from all over the world to talk to each other and discuss ideas and results. Allowing instant recognition and theories on important experiments and technological developments. Also fans of different genres can interact with each other often to their relief to actually find someone with same amount of interest in something as them. This doesn’t produce anything useful but allows individuals to talk comfortable between each other without having the feeling that someone will laugh at the views.
Sunday, December 12, 2004
The above examples of online identity as you can imagine are vastly text based, and don’t describe visually what a person is like. It is said that in the physical world we think how a person looks is much more descriptive of them self's than what the say, for example it is said that it takes us just four seconds to find out visually if you like or dislike someone. So it is only natural then that the next step was to create online virtual worlds to allow users to fully represent themselves to the world. Probably the best and most popular example of this is the Habbo Hotel, here internet users can actually sign in to a virtual hotel and communicate with other individuals, visually. It allows you to create your own Habbo (character) and then move around the hotel interact with other habbos. For example the above scene is that of the Christmas stage for a play and you can then interact with all the individuals in the room, and ask them to be your friend. You can even buy credits using physical money, so that you can buy furniture and clothes at the hotel as well as swim in the swimming pool and buy drinks at the bar. The exchange rate for these credits when I was dong my research was 10p for 1. Now this is obviously the way Habbo make the money to produce the website, but also it offers a great opportunity for individuals to live out parallel or totally opposite lifestyles. Allowing them to see what their lives are like in the eyes of other individuals. They can experiment with new chat up lines without physically being rejected which is also another key factor. This you see is interesting as it also happens in homepages and chat rooms; people become braver and more outgoing with their comments when they can’t physically see the person they are talking to. It’s the same phenomenon that appears in cars on the road, people act tough and confront people from within their cars with such expressions as the “V” sign, because they feel secure, but they would never dream of doing it when just walking past someone in the street. This then means that people talking to each other over the internet are in a sense more truthful and because they can construct opinions and arguments, they can be more constructive in their comments. It also works the other way though; the individual being commented upon can just as easily ignore the individual commenting on them. This also wouldn’t happen in real life as it would be seen to be rude to ignore someone, but yet again it is seen to be alright to do it on the “faceless” Internet.
The amazing thing though relating back to the Habbo Hotel is how much the visual representation of the character effects people’s perception of you. I created a stupid looking character and hardly anybody wanted to be my friend or talk to me but when I created a simple normal looking character, lots of people did. This obviously backs up the theory that people simply judge you one how you look, and the first four seconds of the first meeting are the most important.
So as you can see there are a variety of ways to create an online identity and many more aside but they all have the same problem, security. The very thing that makes the internet great for creating identities and allowing users to easily publish there views and opinions, is its greatest downfall. The problem is monitoring, there is no individual body such as the Police in the physical world that continually monitors the content of webpages. Homepage providers such as Yahoo! individually check homepages before publishing them but I’m sad to say not all do. This then allows individuals who may have angry opinions and evil personalities to talk to each other and even more dangerously, plan with each other. Terrorist organisations can promote their hate and evilness, that infects the minds of others creating dangerous, focused people of hate. Although occurrences where internet based violence has occurred are few and far between, in the future it may be different and this is only emphasised by the worlds governments who are creating vast teams to monitor and tackle inappropriate webpages of evil minded individuals. So as the internet becomes more and more available to more and more people only time will tell what affect online identities and opinions will have on our physical lives.
Bibliography
Web. Studies (David Gauntlett and Ross Horsley, 2004, Arnold, ISBN 0-340-81472-1)
Yahoo!
AOL
Microsoft
Talk City
Habbo Hotel
The amazing thing though relating back to the Habbo Hotel is how much the visual representation of the character effects people’s perception of you. I created a stupid looking character and hardly anybody wanted to be my friend or talk to me but when I created a simple normal looking character, lots of people did. This obviously backs up the theory that people simply judge you one how you look, and the first four seconds of the first meeting are the most important.
So as you can see there are a variety of ways to create an online identity and many more aside but they all have the same problem, security. The very thing that makes the internet great for creating identities and allowing users to easily publish there views and opinions, is its greatest downfall. The problem is monitoring, there is no individual body such as the Police in the physical world that continually monitors the content of webpages. Homepage providers such as Yahoo! individually check homepages before publishing them but I’m sad to say not all do. This then allows individuals who may have angry opinions and evil personalities to talk to each other and even more dangerously, plan with each other. Terrorist organisations can promote their hate and evilness, that infects the minds of others creating dangerous, focused people of hate. Although occurrences where internet based violence has occurred are few and far between, in the future it may be different and this is only emphasised by the worlds governments who are creating vast teams to monitor and tackle inappropriate webpages of evil minded individuals. So as the internet becomes more and more available to more and more people only time will tell what affect online identities and opinions will have on our physical lives.
Bibliography
Web. Studies (David Gauntlett and Ross Horsley, 2004, Arnold, ISBN 0-340-81472-1)
Yahoo!
AOL
Microsoft
Talk City
Habbo Hotel
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
How Colour can be useful to me as a Graphic Designer (Images below essay and also avaliable through links)
(To view all images below for the essay you will have to click on the Decemeber 2004 link on the right)
Colour what does it mean to us? It’s the stuff of emotion, passion, religion and even magic. It drives societies all over the world and allows them to communicate between themselves and each other. Unlike literacy it is something that doesn’t have to be taught, it’s just your gut feeling, your instincts. It’s this then due to the fact that different languages all over the world talk different dialects that make colour so important in universal communication. It’s used by graphic designers to produce persuasive and entertaining communicational designs, just as in the way adjectives are used by writers to emphasise text. Nowadays thanks to the computer more and more colours are available cheaply to designers to reproduce their creative concepts. To me as a graphic designer it is then really important to grasp the whole notion of colour theory, psychology, history and usage.
Firstly I must look at colour theory. This involves looking at the most basic reproduction of colour and its relationships within colour wheel. Colour theory through out time has not just been studied by artists but also philosophers and scientists, Da Vinci, Goethe and Newton to name a few. Probably the best way to display colour theory is by using the Bauhaus movement leaders, Johannes Itten’s example. Fig. 1. it is today the most basic building block for mixing pigments and paints, it consists simply of twelve colours, primary, secondary, and tertiary. The primary colours which are red, blue and yellow shown in the inner triangle are the most simple as no two or more colours can be mixed to create them. A secondary colour is then one that is created by mixing two primary colours for example red and yellow mixed make orange, these are shown in the middle ring. Finally a tertiary colour is then made by mixing a primary colour with a secondary colour. For example yellow and green when mixed create a yellow/green colour; these colours are shown in the outer ring.
Just as important as the basic colours though are the relationships that are between them and for me as a graphic designer I must use these relationships to emphasise the desired meaning of the design:
Monochromatic (Fig. 2.)
It is basically a scheme of a single colour and looks clean and elegant, creating a soothing feeling. It is easy on the eyes and is good at creating overall moods in a design but due to this it then lacks highlighting abilities. As you can see in Fig. 3. it is easy to manage and balanced but lacks visual contrast and punch.
Analogous (Fig. 4.)
This scheme then uses the colours adjacent to each other on the colour wheel, where one is dominant and the other simply enriches the design. So as you can see in Fig. 5. its richer than the monochromatic colour scheme but still lacks contrast.
Complimentary (Fig. 6.)
This scheme uses two colours that are opposite each other on the colour wheel and is extremely high contrasted. Fig. 7. shows that it offers strong contrasts and draws maximum attention but is harder to balance.
Triadic (Fig. 8.)
This scheme then uses three colours, all equally spaced around the colour wheel, and is popular with artists as it offers high visual contrast as well as balance and colour richness. As shown in Fig. 9. it offers contrast as well as balance but not as much contrast as the complimentary colour scheme, note though that it is the triadic colour scheme of a mixing colour wheel, red, blue and yellow.
These relationships can then be modified by altering the saturation and lightness of each hue (colour). The saturation of a colour or hue is simply the vibrancy of it, for example a bright red fire engine is heavily saturated while some dull red bricks are weakly saturated. Lightness then obviously refers to the brightness of the colour, for example pink is a lightness of red. This is done by simply adding either white to lighten the hue or black to darken it.
Also to a graphic designer it is important to know the two main types of colour used in design, RGB and CMYK. RGB is simply red, green and blue, the colours that our eyes detect and what monitors and televisions output. CMYK though standing for cyan, magenta, yellow and black are the actual colours that are used in the printing of the designs. This then means that if the design is going to be published on screen everything must be done in RGB but if it is going to be published in print everything must then be CMYK.
Secondly in conjunction with the actual use of colour the whole issue of psychology must be taken into account, as different colours stimulate different feelings meaning as a designer you must fully understand these different emotions to take full advantage of them. Here are some colours and their different psychological feelings:
Black (Fig. 10.)
As black reflects no light or colour it is seen as the colour of death and is used in funerals as the colour for mourning. Graphic designers usually use it as a receptacle and contrast to other colours being used and is often given the back seat in the design. In contrast though in other parts of the industry such as product design it is used to show newness and high technical abilities. It’s a very negative colour as people see it to be the colour of revolt, stubburness, inflexibility and this is why it used a lot in protests and propaganda.
Green (Fig. 11.)
Green is said to be firm, constant, proud and self-contained but resists change and always seeks recognition. People who often wear green are seen to by idealising self-image and seek a longer more useful life for themselves and others. It’s a very natural colour and is universally seen as the colour of peace but also as the colour of greed thanks to its moneyed connotations. Fig. 12. using the analogous colour scheme of green then shows this. The lime green symbolizes the modern money ruled world we live in today, it’s a sickly, vulgar colour. While the dark natural green symbolizes nature and where we come from and what we are now doing to it. The analogous colour scheme works perfectly as it shows all the negativity that beds itself in the so called “peaceful” colour of green.
Red (Fig. 13.)
Red in contrast is seen as impulsive, competitive and strong. It urges for achievement and success over the other colours, seeking excitement. Objects that are red are seen to be intense, rich, experienced and passionate. It’s the colour of love and also danger, it is simply the most powerful of all the colours, be it used to be positive or negative. It is this then that confused me to just what does red mean to me and everyone else. I represented this in Fig. 14, it shows how powerful red can be at getting the message across. It shows that out of all the colours it’s the one we are most in contact with everyday, its one the one most in contact with our emotions be them good or bad. To show this conflict within the colour itself I then decided to use the complementary colour to emphasise this fight.
Blue (Fig. 15.)
Blue is then seen to be a calm, ethical and a orderly colour. It creates feelings of harmony, tradition and is seen to minimise disturbance. To me blue is the colour of nature, pureness and beauty. It is this then in Fig. 16. that I wanted to create so I used the beautiful shape of a dolphin in conjunction with the shapely, powerful contours of the wave. Here the analogous colour scheme was used to show the opposite feeling of the green composition, one of overwhelming positivity and beauty within the colour.
Yellow (Fig. 17.)
Yellow to people gives off the feeling of happiness, achievement and importance as well as danger and caution. It’s modern, ambitious and is seen to be focused on the future. The most interesting thing to me though was the similarities and contrasts of the colour within nature and humanity. Fig. 18. shows this, in nature yellow means caution, insects and plants use it to warn others, but in humanity it is simply taken to the extreme, it basically means danger and lots of it. This is due to its vibrancy and verossity when used, it’s the colour of mass energy, for example in the form of explosions.
A good example of research into these notions of colour stimulating feelings is Max Lücher’s Colour Test which studied the different colour’s personalities. This test found out that each colour creates a different feeling and showed that it is useful for a graphic designer’s to know which colours stimulate which feelings as they often are trying to appeal to a common group of individuals. The above colours are just a few tested and these results give designers guidelines as to what to use in certain designs. It is important to note though that these are common feelings and not individual ones that can often sometimes differ due to experience and perception.
So to conclude as a graphic designer colour is very important to me and to use it well is the key factor as it is this that often makes you either a good or bad graphic designer and your designs brilliant or rubbish.
Bibliography
Colour for Professional Communicators
(André Jute, Batsford, ISBN: 0-7134-7088-7)
Big Colour (Roger Walton, ISBN 0-688-16939-2)
Colour Wheel Pro
Colour Matters
Dutch Flower
Designed
Designers Republic
Slattoff + Cohen Partners Inc.
Bulletproof Design
Colour what does it mean to us? It’s the stuff of emotion, passion, religion and even magic. It drives societies all over the world and allows them to communicate between themselves and each other. Unlike literacy it is something that doesn’t have to be taught, it’s just your gut feeling, your instincts. It’s this then due to the fact that different languages all over the world talk different dialects that make colour so important in universal communication. It’s used by graphic designers to produce persuasive and entertaining communicational designs, just as in the way adjectives are used by writers to emphasise text. Nowadays thanks to the computer more and more colours are available cheaply to designers to reproduce their creative concepts. To me as a graphic designer it is then really important to grasp the whole notion of colour theory, psychology, history and usage.
Firstly I must look at colour theory. This involves looking at the most basic reproduction of colour and its relationships within colour wheel. Colour theory through out time has not just been studied by artists but also philosophers and scientists, Da Vinci, Goethe and Newton to name a few. Probably the best way to display colour theory is by using the Bauhaus movement leaders, Johannes Itten’s example. Fig. 1. it is today the most basic building block for mixing pigments and paints, it consists simply of twelve colours, primary, secondary, and tertiary. The primary colours which are red, blue and yellow shown in the inner triangle are the most simple as no two or more colours can be mixed to create them. A secondary colour is then one that is created by mixing two primary colours for example red and yellow mixed make orange, these are shown in the middle ring. Finally a tertiary colour is then made by mixing a primary colour with a secondary colour. For example yellow and green when mixed create a yellow/green colour; these colours are shown in the outer ring.
Just as important as the basic colours though are the relationships that are between them and for me as a graphic designer I must use these relationships to emphasise the desired meaning of the design:
Monochromatic (Fig. 2.)
It is basically a scheme of a single colour and looks clean and elegant, creating a soothing feeling. It is easy on the eyes and is good at creating overall moods in a design but due to this it then lacks highlighting abilities. As you can see in Fig. 3. it is easy to manage and balanced but lacks visual contrast and punch.
Analogous (Fig. 4.)
This scheme then uses the colours adjacent to each other on the colour wheel, where one is dominant and the other simply enriches the design. So as you can see in Fig. 5. its richer than the monochromatic colour scheme but still lacks contrast.
Complimentary (Fig. 6.)
This scheme uses two colours that are opposite each other on the colour wheel and is extremely high contrasted. Fig. 7. shows that it offers strong contrasts and draws maximum attention but is harder to balance.
Triadic (Fig. 8.)
This scheme then uses three colours, all equally spaced around the colour wheel, and is popular with artists as it offers high visual contrast as well as balance and colour richness. As shown in Fig. 9. it offers contrast as well as balance but not as much contrast as the complimentary colour scheme, note though that it is the triadic colour scheme of a mixing colour wheel, red, blue and yellow.
These relationships can then be modified by altering the saturation and lightness of each hue (colour). The saturation of a colour or hue is simply the vibrancy of it, for example a bright red fire engine is heavily saturated while some dull red bricks are weakly saturated. Lightness then obviously refers to the brightness of the colour, for example pink is a lightness of red. This is done by simply adding either white to lighten the hue or black to darken it.
Also to a graphic designer it is important to know the two main types of colour used in design, RGB and CMYK. RGB is simply red, green and blue, the colours that our eyes detect and what monitors and televisions output. CMYK though standing for cyan, magenta, yellow and black are the actual colours that are used in the printing of the designs. This then means that if the design is going to be published on screen everything must be done in RGB but if it is going to be published in print everything must then be CMYK.
Secondly in conjunction with the actual use of colour the whole issue of psychology must be taken into account, as different colours stimulate different feelings meaning as a designer you must fully understand these different emotions to take full advantage of them. Here are some colours and their different psychological feelings:
Black (Fig. 10.)
As black reflects no light or colour it is seen as the colour of death and is used in funerals as the colour for mourning. Graphic designers usually use it as a receptacle and contrast to other colours being used and is often given the back seat in the design. In contrast though in other parts of the industry such as product design it is used to show newness and high technical abilities. It’s a very negative colour as people see it to be the colour of revolt, stubburness, inflexibility and this is why it used a lot in protests and propaganda.
Green (Fig. 11.)
Green is said to be firm, constant, proud and self-contained but resists change and always seeks recognition. People who often wear green are seen to by idealising self-image and seek a longer more useful life for themselves and others. It’s a very natural colour and is universally seen as the colour of peace but also as the colour of greed thanks to its moneyed connotations. Fig. 12. using the analogous colour scheme of green then shows this. The lime green symbolizes the modern money ruled world we live in today, it’s a sickly, vulgar colour. While the dark natural green symbolizes nature and where we come from and what we are now doing to it. The analogous colour scheme works perfectly as it shows all the negativity that beds itself in the so called “peaceful” colour of green.
Red (Fig. 13.)
Red in contrast is seen as impulsive, competitive and strong. It urges for achievement and success over the other colours, seeking excitement. Objects that are red are seen to be intense, rich, experienced and passionate. It’s the colour of love and also danger, it is simply the most powerful of all the colours, be it used to be positive or negative. It is this then that confused me to just what does red mean to me and everyone else. I represented this in Fig. 14, it shows how powerful red can be at getting the message across. It shows that out of all the colours it’s the one we are most in contact with everyday, its one the one most in contact with our emotions be them good or bad. To show this conflict within the colour itself I then decided to use the complementary colour to emphasise this fight.
Blue (Fig. 15.)
Blue is then seen to be a calm, ethical and a orderly colour. It creates feelings of harmony, tradition and is seen to minimise disturbance. To me blue is the colour of nature, pureness and beauty. It is this then in Fig. 16. that I wanted to create so I used the beautiful shape of a dolphin in conjunction with the shapely, powerful contours of the wave. Here the analogous colour scheme was used to show the opposite feeling of the green composition, one of overwhelming positivity and beauty within the colour.
Yellow (Fig. 17.)
Yellow to people gives off the feeling of happiness, achievement and importance as well as danger and caution. It’s modern, ambitious and is seen to be focused on the future. The most interesting thing to me though was the similarities and contrasts of the colour within nature and humanity. Fig. 18. shows this, in nature yellow means caution, insects and plants use it to warn others, but in humanity it is simply taken to the extreme, it basically means danger and lots of it. This is due to its vibrancy and verossity when used, it’s the colour of mass energy, for example in the form of explosions.
A good example of research into these notions of colour stimulating feelings is Max Lücher’s Colour Test which studied the different colour’s personalities. This test found out that each colour creates a different feeling and showed that it is useful for a graphic designer’s to know which colours stimulate which feelings as they often are trying to appeal to a common group of individuals. The above colours are just a few tested and these results give designers guidelines as to what to use in certain designs. It is important to note though that these are common feelings and not individual ones that can often sometimes differ due to experience and perception.
So to conclude as a graphic designer colour is very important to me and to use it well is the key factor as it is this that often makes you either a good or bad graphic designer and your designs brilliant or rubbish.
Bibliography
Colour for Professional Communicators
(André Jute, Batsford, ISBN: 0-7134-7088-7)
Big Colour (Roger Walton, ISBN 0-688-16939-2)
Colour Wheel Pro
Colour Matters
Dutch Flower
Designed
Designers Republic
Slattoff + Cohen Partners Inc.
Bulletproof Design
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
