NYT MAGAZINE ART
Kate Schmidt VISC 304
Articles Topics Considered +Misinformation Crisis +Digital Clutter +Zoom and Virtual Events +Amazon I decided to focus on Amazon’ for this project because Amazon represents controversial stances in many disciplines, including employment, technology, politics, economy, environmental impacts, and consumerism. Because of their vast impact on the way we operate, the visual elements and marks of Amazon are very well known and will lend themselves well to being subverted into novel messaging and imagery to convey a deeper meaning about their impacts.
How Big is Amazon Really? Market size matters, but even small changes have an outsize ripple effect. Writer, Shira Ovide, March 30, 2021 This article puts into perspective how much of retail spending in the United States is through Amazon. Out of every $100 spent on shopping in America, $14 is through online shopping, and within that $5 is attributed to customers shopping through Amazon. The data surrounding Amazon’s market share has been weaponized by both those in support and in opposition to Amazon. Regardless of the nuances of data interpretation, it is clear that Amazon has a strong influence on industries and policy makers, it is up to you to decide if they are responsibly using that power.
What is Amazon doing to our Country? In Amazon’s drive to maximize profitability, warehouse work often feels provisional and anonymous, in addition to being low paying. Writer, Xiaowei Wang, March 24, 2021 This article gives an overview of the compilation of research and accounts of the impacts Amazon’s explosion by author Alec MacGillis in his book: “Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America”. Amazon has a controversial history of extremely poor working conditions, shutting down workers unions and protests, edging out small businesses, and hiring big name lobbyists to gamble and bribe for Amazon to recieve tax cuts and favorable legislation.
This peeler did not need to be wrapped in so much plastic. Amazon must become a leader in reducing single-use packaging. Professors, Pamela L. Geller and Christopher Parmeter, April 5, 2021 While 2020 was a heartbreaking year for most Americans on account of the pandemic and resulting personal and financial loss, Amazon’s business has been booming; and they are hardly passing along the good fortune. Amazon is the nation’s largest online retailer with sales growing 38% in a year, and nearly 1.5 billion products shipped out during the holiday season alone. The result is 465 million pounds of single-use plastic packaging in ONE YEAR. As the leader in online retail, Amazon needs to put their innovative minds towards more sustainable solutions that do not harm our ecosystems and human environments.
Kate Schmidt
NYT Magazine Art
March, 2021
What is Amazon Doing to Our Country? + “Over the past year, as Covid has decimated the social + “MacGillis reminds us that the company’s totalizing and economic fabric of the United States, one compainfluence is one of parasitic opportunism, filling the ny has been recording staggering profits and market spaces left by the decline of American manufacturing growth, along with a hiring spree of over a thousand and taking advantage of industrial consolidation.” workers a day: Amazon.” “We spend time in Amazon’s corporate home in Se+ “The strong grip Amazon has on the United States, + attle, where its rise has resulted in urban inequalifrom the ground level — in the inhumane working ty, creating sharp contrasts between the haves and conditions of the warehouse, in rural towns upendhave-nots. In spite of tech’s supposed progressive ed by deindustrialization and subject to the glint of intentions, Amazon is perversely willing to throw $1.5 Amazon’s economic promise — to the gilded halls of million into a Seattle City Council race against proWashington, D.C., where Amazon’s lobbyists flock.” gressive candidates, in order to evade taxation, arguing its money is better spent on philanthropy.”
Kate Schmidt
NYT Magazine Art
March, 2021
Kate Schmidt
NYT Magazine Art
March, 2021
Source: Google Images
Brainstorm Word Lists
Visual Solutions
Online Retail, Shipping, Packaging, Distribution, Fulfillment, Workers’ Unions, Factories, Decentralized, Disposable, Stock, Market Share, Profit, Billionaires, Jeff Bezos, Lobbyists, Consumer, Plastic Waste, Single-Use Packaging, Monopoly, Transportation, Pollution, etc.
Take a familiar company that is popular and loved and and show the negative flip side of their impacts.
Visual Elements Boxes, Envelopes, Packaging Materials, Bubble Wrap, Ocean Ecosystems, Money, Shipping Labels, Credit Cards, Amazon Logo, Workers, Employers, Forklifts, Warehouses, Shelves, Packing Tape, Lawmakers, Scales, Market Trajectories, Digital Interfaces, Personal Technology
Use scale to show the dominance of Amazon within the industry or put their products in unexpected places to show the massive waste they create.
Abstract Ideas Oligarchy, Authoritarian, Crush, Corner, Manipulate, the World Wide Web, Out of Business, Bankruptcy, “Fine Print”, Puppets and Puppeteers, Superiority, Drowning, Inequity, Income Inequality, Overshadow, Force Out, Convenience
Kate Schmidt
NYT Magazine Art
March, 2021
Use Jeff Bezos as the personification of Amazon by displaying him as some form of dominant power.
Concept 1
Kate Schmidt
NYT Magazine Art
The convenience and speed of Amazon services do not come without excessive waste and the exploitation of workers; it is important to recognize the bad that comes with the good.
March, 2021
Concept 2
Kate Schmidt
NYT Magazine Art
The market share that Amazon holds has been weaponized as a means to gain power and influence in many realms of policy, economic practice, and consumerism. Jeff Bezos is willing to crush any thing that gets in the way of big business.
March, 2021
Concept 3
Kate Schmidt
NYT Magazine Art
Amazon treats their employees and consumers as mere pieces in a game of profit, with complete disregard for equity and the environment. Jeff Bezos is the modern day Monopoly man.
March, 2021
Concept 1
Kate Schmidt
NYT Magazine Art
The convenience and speed of Amazon services do not come without excessive waste and the exploitation of workers; it is important to recognize the bad that comes with the good.
March, 2021
Concept 2/3
Kate Schmidt
NYT Magazine Art
March, 2021
Capitalism and consumerism have turned life into a mere game of profits and losses, which increases the gap between the haves and the have nots; in this game of profits Amazon is by far the biggest player.
Sketches
Kate Schmidt
NYT Magazine Art
March, 2021
Kate Schmidt
NYT Magazine Art
March, 2021
Kate Schmidt
NYT Magazine Art
March, 2021
Kate Schmidt
NYT Magazine Art
March, 2021
Ideas 1-5
Cut out letters from carboard or from pieces of monopoly money!
Kate Schmidt
Take a graphic approach, cut paper feel. Limited color palette.
NYT Magazine Art
March, 2021
Edit a photograph or actu- Shape based, paper cut al deck of cards. feel. Use amazon colors. Photoshop manipulation. What is in background?
Very zoomed in. Box is actual cardboard. Materials are all collaged together.
Ideas 6-10
Vector graphics with slight textures. Minimal details. Express emotion through texture of digital mark.
Kate Schmidt
Use scans or photographs of actual bubble wrap. Create simple body forms in different positions.
NYT Magazine Art
March, 2021
Use lots of layers of cut paper. Very simple cut paper. Logo & Bezos need to be recognizable.
Use graphic approach. Does not need to be perfectly realistic human form. Scan in tape texture and show off worker vest.
Justapose the frown and smile with limited colors. Elongated figure, not necessarily a human form.
Experimentation
Kate Schmidt
NYT Magazine Art
March, 2021
Cover Exploration
Kate Schmidt
NYT Magazine Art
March, 2021
Kate Schmidt
NYT Magazine Art
March, 2021
Kate Schmidt
NYT Magazine Art
March, 2021
Cover Refinement
Kate Schmidt
NYT Magazine Art
March, 2021
Kate Schmidt
NYT Magazine Art
March, 2021
Kate Schmidt
NYT Magazine Art
March, 2021
Spot Art Sketches
Kate Schmidt
NYT Magazine Art
March, 2021
Use page framing. Vector forms with texture added.
Create conveyor belts in complex patterns or knots.
Create vector boxes and add texture.
Express Amazon’s profit during covid. Label?
Place game pieces on the US to represent Amazon.
5 in by 7 in
3.75 in by 3.75 in
5 in by 7 in
3.75 in by 3.75 in
7 in by 5 in
Use page framing. Vector forms with texture added.
Use graphic approach to show abundance.
Use vector approach. Emphasis on scale.
Censor/immobilize workers with the Amazon tape.
Silence workers with the Amazon tape.
5 in by 7 in
3.75 in by 3.75 in
5 in by 7 in
3.75 in by 3.75 in
3.75 in by 3.75 in
Kate Schmidt
NYT Magazine Art
March, 2021
Composition Exploration
Kate Schmidt
NYT Magazine Art
March, 2021
Kate Schmidt
NYT Magazine Art
March, 2021
Final Adjustments
Kate Schmidt
NYT Magazine Art
March, 2021
Refining label shape, letter texture, opacity, and typographic details.
Final Cover Details of letter texture and label shape!
Kate Schmidt
NYT Magazine Art
March, 2021
Spot Art Drafts
Kate Schmidt
NYT Magazine Art
March, 2021
Kate Schmidt
NYT Magazine Art
March, 2021
These ideas are combined for the final spot art animation.
Kate Schmidt
NYT Magazine Art
March, 2021
Spot Art Refinements
Peers recommended there only be one box and suggested a variety of ways to make the box appear more menacing.
Kate Schmidt
NYT Magazine Art
March, 2021
Animation Draft
The Amazon employees and boxes will move endlessly around the conveyor belt (in an infinity sign).
Kate Schmidt
NYT Magazine Art
March, 2021
Final Animation
Possible Title Lockups
Kate Schmidt
NYT Magazine Art
March, 2021
Title and by-line swipe on and off in final animation. The conveyor belt loops seamlessly and there is a plain textured background.
Spot Art
Kate Schmidt
NYT Magazine Art
Here are my initial and then refined spot art compositions. I improved the shadow shape, person’s pose, and the perspective of the box.
March, 2021
Final Spot Arts
Kate Schmidt
NYT Magazine Art
March, 2021