ID: Individual Documenting

21st December 2019

It’s been 32 hours.

I haven’t slept. I can’t find no one. There is no one, the streets are empty. A city that never stopped is now a cemetery for the cars that fill the streets and that will probably never roam in again.  It took me a full day to come to terms with the shock and the grief, the loss of my loved ones and the sheer bewilderment of this situation.

The first thing was looking for necessities -water, food and shelter. I took some water and food from Sainsburys, no one would care if I stole it anyway. Even though the cameras were still working is not like someone would look at them. The next is shelter. I stayed at my place for the moment. I have been controlling the use of electricity as It’s counted how long it will last. It will be soon until the pumping stations and treatment works that supply water to the taps stop working.

I have gotten my hands on a good amount of bottled water in the supermarket next door and spread it to 5 different houses just in precaution. Fortunately, supermarkets also contain a great deal of preserved food. Most tinned meats and vegetables have sell-by dates a couple of years hence, but the reality is that you could probably live off it quite safely for decades. So, food and drink will not be a problem, although fresh food will be off the menu after a few days.

My only option is growing my own but considering I have no knowledge on the area I will have to worry on the priorities for now.  Hunting and fishing is also a problem.

There is to many things to worry about…

To begin with even if the house hangs for a few years, without regular maintenance and subject to the ravages of rain, frost and heat, most of Britain's housing will start to crumble and become dangerous within a decade or so.  Roofs will probably lose their tiles, eaves would lift and walls would absorb moisture, woodwork would rot and everywhere vegetation would push its way through concrete and asphalt. One lightning strike would burn everything down in the city fast in the worst-case scenario.

Even if I went to the countryside food and supplies will be even harder to come by. Washing and showering is going to be impossible in a few days as well, fortunately there’s loads of shops with clean clothes.

One thing that worries me the most is if an accident happens…Just a broken leg would be terrible without the proper care, and considering there’s no hospitals working I have to avoid everything that could be dangerous.

I need to secure a way to the library as well. Without internet, books are the most reliable source of information. Survival manuals, how to fix a broken car, how to sail a boat and how to hunt. . . it's all there in black and white.

…Even though everything is there……

I wasn’t even able to see the face of my unborn niece! I won’t be able to have my own children…I will forever be alone…

There is something that humans would have to face at some point, a far bigger threat than starvation, thirst, radiation or even disease.

That humans did not evolve to be solitary. We are tribal, pack animals.

That’s why if you find this message. Find me at -----------------------

Good luck.

This essay will be focusing on how the branding and creation of my media text has aided the distribution of my media product on a global level. It will focus on how I decided to create my logo and remix the way they currently are. In regards to the production side of things, I used After Effects and Premiere Pro to create my final media pieces. The benefit of using these two pieces of software is that they both belong to the Adobe family, so it is more convenient to share and access the platforms simultaneously. In regards to the final products, I took on board the use of colour psychology, and also how Star Power will allow me to access an already established fan base.

My company branding is “Boy from Nowhere.” (Marques, 2019) For the colour scheme, I chose white as the main writing colour, red as the subsidiary writing colour, and black as the background. To choose the colours, I used the Psychology of Colour in regards to marketing. For example, the white represents innocence and it contrasts the black background well; the red represents boldness and security. The reason why I used the psychology of colour is that “Psychologists have studied how people are affected by colours for years and found a strong correlation between colours and emotional responses” (Honigman, 2017). This way, my audience will get a clear understanding of my mission statement. So, with the white writing, I aim to attract my primary demographic audience of young adults with the sense of warmth and comfort given. The innocence also links with the concept of youth that comes with “Boy” in the name. The red, however, represents security and boldness. The fact that the single word “Nowhere” is isolated from the rest of the logo symbolises originality and individuality that is put into the products made by my company. Also, the use of red and black mimics that of Netflix, which my audience can identify with. This will allow an audience pull from those who can associate Netflix with that of the red and black combination. Not only that, but the fact that Netflix is a success within my primary demographic means that the branding has worked for them, so it should work for me too. However, you could argue that in the sense of the font style, the red is a little hard to read on the black background. This can prove to be an issue in regards to printing. Therefore, the overall branding has taken a lot into consideration. The colour scheme would work because it is identifiable to my audience, and allows me emit my mission statement purely in the first few seconds. However, I do need to consider how the logo could transfer onto different formats, such as print.

Before I settled for this branding, there were different logos that I had a go at. One thing I tried was “Open House Media” inspired by the fact that I live in a rural community in Portugal and the village is like an open house where we all come and go. However, in regards to corporate laws, there are other institutions called “Open House” so I decided against it. Also, the logo with a house with no doors had no correlation with my business aims and objectives, rather it was just a personal aspect of my life. Because of the lack of purpose and meaning behind the brand, that will not allow my audience to get what I mean, I chose to move on from this idea. For my colour scheme, I previously wanted to go for a blue theme. However, after looking at the Psychology of Colour in regards to Marketing, I realised that blue is very corporate and serious; whereas, for my company, I wanted my audience and clients to feel welcomed and comfortable, hence why I settled for the white, black, and red themes. In general, I had a bit of an experiment with my branding, and I made sure to play around with the logos and colours until I felt as though I found something that I am happy with. This was done with research from both the legals and business, and the intentions of my audience were kept in mind.

For my remix, I created a parody of the K-pop band NCT’s music video for “Regular.” I overlapped a documentary audio for Top Drug Lords to fit with the visuals of the video, and make it appear as though the band members are the ones discussed in the documentary. The purpose of this is meant to be humorous, and it fits the brief considering a Parody is a type of remix. (Dictionary.cambridge.org, n.d.) The reason why I used a K-pop band for the remix is because amongst teens, K-Pop is one of the most famous genres across the world. The popularity of the band NCT will mean that the fans of them are drawn to my remix. Media Theorist Richard Maltby states that stars are “The commodity that constantly draw audiences to the media.” (Maltby, 2003) This also aids my global distribution because K-Pop is created using both the Korean and English language. This means I am able to target the majority of the Western World, as well as the Far Eastern world, due to the vast geographical spread bands such as NCT have. However, you could argue that the fact that I use a voiceover from a video regarding drug lords will prove to be detrimental to my distribution. This is because the NCT fan base may not take this as a humorous project, rather a disrespectful one. The fact that I associate members of a popular band with famous drug lords could be taken as me ruining the image of the group and its members. This could then lead to a massive amount of backlash from said fan base, which would give the video a bad image. Overall, I think that the global distribution of this video would be aided by the international star power that NCT possesses, and the parody would shine a humorous light on what would be considered a serious and artsy music video. Although, this is down to the audience to take the message of my remix in a funny way, rather than a disrespectful one, making the remix as a whole, a risk. Not only that, but the fact that my company logo is at the beginning could prove to be detrimental to my brand if the video gets interpreted falsely.

For the remix, I chose K-Pop because I am a fan. However, I did make sure to carry out some market research before publishing on YouTube. After the video was created, I got in touch with my friend, Cody Maycock, who is part of the K-Pop society at Coventry University. I let him distribute the video amongst his Society peers, and waited for them to give me feedback. Overall, the satisfaction rate with the media text was very high. Cody and his friends found the context of the parody humorous; which was reassuring because it means that I got the approval of a K-Pop fan base in Coventry. My market research is inspired by the approach most businesses carry out to ensure satisfaction rates of their products. For example, Virgin Media business released an article stating the benefits of Market Research and how you can carry it out on a budget. It stated that a DIY Focus group can allow start-up businesses to receive critical evaluations of their products. I chose my DIY Focus group by finding my primary audience of K-Pop fans through my friend Cody. A benefit of this group is that I am unfamiliar with the majority of members, so the review they will give will be uninfluenced by our association.

Fame, of course, is relative. Madonna and David Letterman are famous. Most normal people, on the other hand, have never heard of Milton Glaser or Paul Rand. In the context of this, fame refers to something very specific: a famous graphic designer is famous, among other graphic designers.

I can’t say for sure that being famous counts for anything. If you create a study on rich and famous graphic designers, it’s surprisingly easy to calculate fame. Go through the list of names you can collect online or through the Directory of the Institute of Graphic Arts. The result will be 185 or so names. With further thought, I even could have put them in order, from most to least famous. Now, there are even more famous graphic designers. Yet, I sense that most people feel there really aren’t enough famous graphic designers. A lot of women designers don’t feel there are enough famous women designers, a lot of African-American designers don’t feel there are enough famous African-American designers, a lot of designers from London don’t feel there are enough famous London designers, and so forth. And, of course, a lot of individual designers don’t feel that they themselves are sufficiently famous. This is too bad because I feel that becoming famous isn’t really all that difficult. “Most kinds of fame are based, to a certain extent, on individual merit. But there are a lot of trivial things involved as well. These have to do with things like speeches and competitions. You can only do so much with the talent you were born with." On the other hand, these trivial things are sometimes amusingly simple to manipulate. But remember, there’s no guarantee that being famous counts for anything.

The fame, of course, can be overrated by the sense people give to its own personal meaning. The state of that same word can be described in many ways as well, someone who was famous and is now forgotten can be seen as a failure or as a relic of the past, while someone who is catching up really quick recently can be seen as a modern genius or a soon to drop artist. This shows only that being famous does not count for much unless you're looking for self-accomplishment through other people's opinion on your own talent and work.

Being a graphic designer can be a hard job in terms of recognition, as most people will remember your work more than they will remember you, they might even remember the place you worked for better or the campaign you design for.  This makes us ask ourselves, Is there a point in doing this job if most won’t recognise you outside of your own circle of design? 

I honestly think, yes.

Today I'll talk about the quarrel of if graphic design should be done with the audience in mind or not.

Although most graphic designers agree that the people who receive or use their work are important, significantly fewer feel the need to research their audience or test their work prior to publishing it. Approaching such research can range from scientific analysis to mystical connections. Designers like Kim Hiorthøy explain that "I don't think about the audience. They are not on my mind when I work at all. I only try to make it work for me. " "If it looks good to me, it will look good to other people. I don't really make things with those people in mind. On the contrary, I try very consciously not to. I actually find that I prefer a degree of isolation somehow." Vince Frost emphasises the point that a designer needs intuition in the design process, that there's no amount of market research that can beat that. "I use my intuition on every job I do because that's what makes me feel it's right. The client can be wrong." "A really important part of being a designer is to be really open to external stimuli and to be sensitive, to listen", says Frost.

Frost gives us the side of a designer not paying much attention to its audience and that prefers not to be limited by it but be able to run free on its own intuition. Like a detective that believes in his own hunch without even seeing the victim or know all the evidence.

Chapter 2 | 2015

The first year as a multimedia student was close to finishing and I had done so much in just the space of seven months, learned how to use 10 different programs, met so many different people and I was living my life to the fullest. I was learning how to love the course I was in and everyone said that It was good that I gave up my previous choice and came here, apparently I had somewhat of an advantage in learning compared to others. I was just happy to be having fun learning something interesting and practical that I could see myself doing in the future. 

Of course, I found it weird at the same time, why all of the sudden did I engage so much in a course I never even knew nothing about before? 

I asked many people this question. The answers were all different. -“Maybe this is easier. Probably this is more for you. You have talent for this which allows you to have fun while learning."- I couldn’t possible believe that, I was probably looking for an answer that no one could give. Until one day one of my friends, bluntly told me, “why do you care why? Nothing is certain in this world, it could be fate or just a coincidence, you chose. You should be thinking of what and how you gonna do something with this new passion you found.”

She was right.                                                                                                      There was no point in my thinking why it happened but what I was gonna do from now on with it. Which made me think of my next question. What am I gonna do from now on?                                                                                  Most of my professors told us that we have two options after finishing high school 1) end like most of the kids that graduate and end up in a low wage job for the rest of our lives or 2) continue to pursue by either finding a job related to multimedia or follow the course you want in a university. I have to point out that it was the second year that the course was open and our predecessores ended up 90% of not going to higher education but preferred to stay in the easier path of finding a easy job. 

One of the questions that comes out of everyone’s mouth when they hear that I’m studying it. 

First “graphic design is a type of language, you use it to tell somone about something that they want, or that you think they want or even that someone else thinks they want. You could begin to list things more specifically, like this: It’s for selling things and ideas to make money or to further political and social agendas. But then you realize: It’s also for critiquing such behaviours. It’s for making things clear - saving lives even - but it’s also for enriching our everyday lives through the addition of layers of complexity, nuance and subtlety. 

It’s for helping people find their way and comprehend data, but it’s also for helping them get lost in new ideas, fantastical narratives or landscapes, and to question and contest what information is presented.” 

Graphic design is embed in all aspects of social life. From the signs that tells a driver to stop at intersections and the label that show’s how much sugar is in our food, to the title that graphically let us grasp the essence and theme of movies. 

The thought of design having a clear purpose or being for something is archaic. It’s thinking that belongs to a time where fundamental truths existed, design is not as simple as to be corralled into a single definition of use. Design is for communicating with people: with a specific or general audience, participants, costumers, subscribers, passers-by. It’s for communities: small like locals or special interest groups, and larger ones, like populations and global consumers. Then it comes to the point on how much you treat that audience. 

There is designers that design for themselves and pay no heed to their audience, some design for others designers, some design for clients concepts or wishes of the audience in question. Others, like myself, find which is gonna be the receivers of their work and what appeals to them, and even ask the same ones for feedback to evolve their work. 

“Graphic design helps people to distinguish ideas, make choices, orient themselves in the day to day. It happens that graphic design can also create an enormous amount of pleasure and satisfaction in those who generate it and those who see it.” 

From what I see, graphic design exists to express ideas or to distinguish them, even if someone reaches the same idea as anyone else is our function as graphic designers to make their idea distinguishable and unique as possible from the others that surround it. It gives a presence to it. If someone as a place they want to share with the world, the graphic designer signs the audience through the facility to make the experience more enjoyable and memorable. 

If a social issue arises and need urgent attention, the graphic designer is the poster or the free newspaper that reaches the public. 

One of the works I made recently this week. I never tried doing something like this before. Recently I installed this program called Artstudio Pro, there you have the option to mirror the strokes of the brush so it creates a really interesting image like this. First I was drawing a tower or a weapon that looked like a lance that you would see in animation or movies but as I was drawing it in the computer, with my Wacom Intuos tablet, I was listening to music so I came with this mix of music and noise kind of image. I like it it looks messy and I love that style. One of the works I made recently this week. I never tried doing something like this before. Recently I installed this program called Artstudio Pro, there you have the option to mirror the strokes of the brush so it creates a really interesting image like this. First I was drawing a tower or a weapon that looked like a lance that you would see in animation or movies but as I was drawing it in the computer, with my Wacom Intuos tablet, I was listening to music so I came with this mix of music and noise kind of image. I like it it looks messy and I love that style. 

Chapter 1 | 2014: 

To start with I never had any intention of doing any design in my life. My whole life I dreamt of doing something like law or criminology, it was only in my first year of high school that when I first experienced a year in the Languages and Humanities course that I knew that “I would prefer dying than doing this my whole life”. Someone said to me in that year, maybe one of my teachers, that if you going to chose something for life you should really want it and love it. Which I didn’t. I was there lost for a year and ended up giving up on it halfway, maybe the german didn’t really helped in me liking the course, just saying.

After I failed I told my parents that I didn’t want to keep being in that course and they told me I had two choices, try the Mechatronics course

(It was literally the last thing I would do) it was the the course for people who just wanted to end high school the easiest and fastest way, worst part 100% male students. Nop, no that. I wasn’t really gifted in hand work anyway. 

The other choice was a course that opened the year before. Multimedia. To be honest at first I was like, uhhhh computer stuff, mathematics and coding. I was against it, but my parents said I had no other choice as I had to end high school no matter what. 

After almost being forced to enter a course I didn’t like or was interested in I felt like a running athlete who was forced to quit it’s career before the first race and was put in knitting or worse.

To my younger and dumb self. “You couldn’t be more wrong”. What followed was a roller coaster of emotions that can’t be put into words.

It was a total different environment, before I was told what to study and I just did my best to understand it and never forget it. Now, right on the first class, we were taught how to use Adobe’s Photoshop and were asked to “create something that you always wanted to create but never could”. I was at a loss for words.

Never have I ever even though of such a thing. My first question was “What.Do.You.Mean?”. With just one exercise from my teacher which I couldn’t do made me realise how close minded, unimaginative and non creative I was till that moment. This was the turning point for me and probably the beginning of the never ending challenge with myself.