There is No Right Time

There is No Right Time

A Senior Practice Book by Rachel Bender

There Is No Right Time

by Rachel Bender First Edition: November 30, 2017

Content

Introduction 1. Grow Where You’re Planted 2. Hysterical Female 3. Feel It All Around 4. Mad Woman 5. I Can Do That!

6. Bad Design is Ruining My Life 7. I Swear I’m Normal, OK? 8. Go Play Outside 9. Space for Rent 10. Translation for Distribution Project Proposal

Introduction

I've been fighting with my multiple personalities for years. It started with theatre, where I took on as many roles as I could to distance myself from who I was in real life. Until one day I realized I had spent so much time trying to be other people I didn't know who I was anymore, when I wasn't developing a character there was nobody there.

The first hat I picked up after quitting acting was graphic design, and it felt good. It was everything I loved: storytelling, creativity, problem-solving, collaboration, with the chance to have an impact on a broad audience, and of course an introduction to typography that sparked what will be a lifelong obsession.

But lately, I've begun to reexamine my role as a graphic designer because deep down I don't think I have what it takes to be one. I don't say this for pity or compliments; I say this with the honesty of knowing who I am at this moment in time.

And I think that person is a strategist, a writer, and still a performer. I am changing right now, as inconvenient as it may be in relation to the time line of my degree.

I’ve come to learn in my years at Otis that there is no right time for a breakthrough.

The stars will not always align the way I want them too, new ideas emerge throughout. I owe it to myself to follow the impulses and see where they take me.

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I understand the language of design, but I want to spread it to a wider audience, people who might not realize it because they lack a classical educational background. I want to become a translator of sorts, taking creative ideas and funneling them to more people in a way that is meaningful, approachable, and sparks an emotional response. I want to utilize the strength of the various roles I’ve taken on in my life: actor, writer, singer, anthropologist, marketer, salesperson, skater, dancer, mothering figure, goalkeeper, pianist, feminist, therapist, baker, producer, and of course, designer.

All of these pieces of me fit together in unusual ways, even though there are days when I struggle, I am proud of who I am and where I am going. As I go planning my Senior Project, I’d like to use them as my guiding light towards exploring experiential design in the service of advertising.

Much like the various pieces of my identity, my sources of inspiration for this book also fit together in unusual ways. They make perfect sense to me and where I am on the journey with this project.

I started off with a lifelong interest. In Chapter One: Grow Where You're Planted, I begin my story in the only home I've ever known, California. I have such an affection for this state, the good and bad parts of it. I used to think that the second I turned 18, I would be out of here, running around the globe as fast as I could. But I’ve come to appreciate settling in one spot, I've been able to cultivate so much in such a short period of tie. Chapter Two: Hysterical Female dives deeper into a study about getting people on board with an idea through emotional appeals. I think it’s important as a creator to yield this power responsibly because it can be too much, shaming or scaring people rather than inspiring them to act.

Chapter Three: Feel It All Around dives into a recent interest in my life of ambient advertising and my desire to create work and events that audiences can engage with physically, leading to an emotional reaction be it serious or just for joy. Chapter Four: Mad Woman revisits what brought me to study advertising, writing, and graphic design in the first place, the show Mad Men. Also, the article calls out my generation’s fascination for borrowed nostalgia for a past that isn't ours, a phenomenon that contributes to rapid cultural repeating.

Chapter Five: I Can Do That speaks to the plans for the physical and speculative pieces of my senior project proposal. Obviously, I’m not trying to design a project that is meant to live on the 6th floor of Otis, but it is most likely where it’ll have the highest visibility. I need to be mindful of the presentation of my work within spaces outside of its intended physical placement.

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The next pair of topics veer away from advertising specific content, but can still find applications within the practice. In Chapter Six: Bad Design is Ruining My Life I discuss how the principles of good product design are applicable in every aspect of design. Things should be designed to optimize human interactions, advertisements included. Chapter Seven: I Swear I'm Normal, OK? is about my only real love in graphic design, the first thing I latched onto and have always stuck with, which is typography. It makes sense now that it's my favorite because typography is the visual expression of letters, words, and phrases.

Chapter Eight: Play Outside explores two fantastic volumes of real guerrilla marketing strategies implemented by companies across the globe. I hope that professional work I’m involved with will make it into a third or fourth addition sometime in the future.

Chapter Nine: Space for Rent talks about the future of immersive advertising spaces in light of recent success and failures with the Museum of Ice Cream specifically. I’m doing my best to analyze these experiential designs from a somewhat removed anthropological view, but it’s hard to tell at this point if these as a flash in the pan trend or the future of advertising.

Chapter Ten: Translation for Distribution reminds me of the beauty that can be found in information, how it is organized and presented to an audience. A presentation can affect understanding and how data is processed. If it speaks to a viewer in an unusual or visually compelling way, it’s more likely they’ll remember that information when they walk away. Some of the best social issue campaigns rely on facts and statistics to help a general audience understand how widespread a problem is. While this particular example is for data about graphic design studios in New York City, the way the information is displayed makes it compelling for me to peruse through.

I’ve designed this book to be the same size as the notebook I’ve been using this past semester.

It’s easy to carry but still leaves enough room to doodle in the margins. At the end of each chapter, there is also a blank lined page for additional notes and inspiration that will inevitably come up as I continue to work on this project, adding in more references and other fleeting thoughts. Photo collages at the beginning of each chapter act as visual markers with the inspiring extended annotations following after.

I made this book for me, but please take a look. If you have any thoughts on the subjects I researched reach out, I love discussing these ideas, expanding on them, finding more sources.

If you have any suggestions of your own, you are more than welcome to leave them on one of the blank pages. Happy reading! xo, Rachel

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Grow Where You’re Planted

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Chapter 1

Sandhaus, Louise. Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires & Riots California and Graphic Design 1936-1986. Thames and Hudson, 2015.

I am deeply rooted in California. It is hard for me to imagine living anywhere else. Sure, I love bouncing around the country and the rest of the globe from time to time, but I always return with a renewed sense of gratitude for my homeland. I find California’s design sensibilities and social issues awareness to be particularly inspiring to my practice. No hate for New York, but the history of California’s graphic design world has always been more exciting to me. It’s also the world I plan on joining from the advertising side, so perhaps I’m a tad biased and like preparing to understand the history of the scene before I enter.

[Type of Source] The book is a compilation of essays, excerpts from other publications, and artwork created by California designers. It is broken up into four large sections and does not claim to be a comprehensive history of every piece of graphic design ever in California. It’s written for designers or at least those with enough basic knowledge about the history of graphic design to appreciate the collection of works gathered. For a book that doesn’t have everything, it still has a ton of content (text and full-color images) contained in its 400 pages.

[Bias] The author states at the beginning of the text that this book focuses on a period which

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she finds the most interesting in California graphic design, 1936-1986, and even within that it’s a somewhat limited scope. It reflects her tastes and opinions that sometimes line up with traditional academic examples and others that are included just because she likes them; historical significance be damned. [Author Credentials] Louise Sandhaus is a graphic design legend.

She is a Fellow of AIGA, former graphic design program director at CalArts (and current faculty), and the head of her studio Louise Sandhaus Design (LSD). Her work ranges from print, exhibition, web, and branding.

[Currency] This book was written over a span of ten years and focuses on a fifty year period that ended almost thirty years before its publication. While it doesn’t take into account changes in the graphic design with the widespread use of digital software, I think it does a good initial dive into a large historical period. After attending a lecture with Sandhaus, I learned there won’t be a sequel to this publication because Sandhaus instead is working to create a crowd sourced online archive called Making History to capture California’s graphic design history and preserve it for decades to come. The project is being done in collaboration with AIGA and will continue to be created in December of this year. It’s exciting that from this intense interest in a specific geographical area of design Sandhaus is now able to create a rich resource for all.

[Relevance to project] At this point, I’m still trying to determine what my influences for my senior project should even be. So much of my career as a designer has happened because I’ve had an intense desire to stay rooted in California. Geography has had a huge part in defining who I am, who I want to be, and where I want to go. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be because of how all my interests intersect so vividly here. I love that so much of California design is related to film, television, and music. Let New York have its publishing and fine art scene; it’s the California work that gets seen around the world. I chose this book because it offers a plethora of thoughtfully written texts by some of my California design heroes, people with careers I hope to emulate. It’s full of images that have continually inspired my practice. I see it as a series of love letters and artwork that make me feel like being a California based designer will lead to doing work that could be impactful in my industry as a whole. It makes me excited to do further research, which in my next phase will probably delve more deeply into the relationship of California design and advertising.

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Hysterical Female

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Chapter 2

Noble, Gary, Alan Pomering, and Lester W. Johnson. “Gender and Message Appeal: Their Influence in a Pro-Environmental Social Advertising Context.� Journal of Social Marketing 4.1 (2014): 4-21. ProQuest. Web. 10 Sep. 2017.

I like to think that I can do some good in the world through advertising. However, figuring out exactly how to do that is a big challenge. While I love some older PSAs, I think that smarter strategies have to be implemented to get people to understand how simple it can be to get involved in social issues that affect their everyday life. [Audience/Type of Source] The Journal of Social Marketing is a tri-annually published scholarly journal. It is intended for academics, both professors, and students, who are studying or are interested in business, economics, marketing, and purchasing.

[Bias / Point of View] Since this is a study and not an argument essay, the bias is based on evidence rather than emotions or personal opinion. But, the initial hypothesis of the survey suggests that the authors believe there is a difference between how men and women react to emotional triggers, and it comes off as supposedly academically backed misogyny. The authors admit some of the flaws in their study, such as that it was only conducted with participants from three English speaking countries and it’s possible that subtle difference in language use 13

might’ve made this less effective for those from their non-native countries, the United States and United Kingdom. [Author Credentials] Noble is the Associate Dean for the Faculty of Business at the University of Wollongong Australia and has published thirty-five studies and papers in the last ten years. Pomering is the co-director of the Centre for Research in Socially Responsible Marketing, Faculty of Commerce at the UoW. Johnson is a professor of marketing at the Swinburne Business School and is on the board of many international journals.

Their background indicates to me that they’re more than qualified to run and publish a study about the effects of marketing.

[Currency of the Source] This study was conducted in 2012 and published in 2013. The design of the advertisement included to carry out this research is dreadful, but the findings speak to a more timeless quality that good ads possess; emotional appeals are more effective than rational ones. Also the study focuses on advertising for pro-environmental consciousness and it’s possible that the results might be different if this subject had been surveyed more recently or if a different social issue had been used all together.

[Relevance to Project] One of my steadfast beliefs throughout my academic career with commercial design is that advertising can be used for good and that it’s not always just an evil piece of the capitalist machine. In fact, without publicity and good branding, most social causes wouldn’t be able to gain the widespread traction they need to create impactful change. However, I find many ads that deal with such delicate topics rely on scare tactics or are presented in such a way that doesn’t resonate emotionally with their audiences. Part of why I even wanted to study advertising in the first place is that I think roughly 95% of all ads are just terrible. And there are plenty of reasons for that which are perfectly understandable, such as budgetary limitations and the reputation of a brand that encourages safe, creative choices. But I’ve always thought to myself perhaps if I could get in those rooms where the “powerful” people are making these big decisions, couldn’t I have a say as well? Is it possible to do work that’s more effective, more impactful? I don’t think I’m necessarily going to save the world, but I’d like for people to hear what I have to say, especially if it has the chance of helping them. In the words of Mindy Kaling, why not me? This article gave me an academically verified source of my belief that appealing to people through emotions rather than just reason is a better way to provoke a strong response. And when people are emotionally moved, they’re more likely to take action.

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Feel It All Around

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Chapter 3

Shelton, Amiee J., Lukasz P. Wojciechowski, and Jamie Warner.

“AMBIENT MARKETING PRACTICES IN THE UNITED STATES: A PROFESSIONAL VIEW.” Communication Today 7.1 (2016): 66-81. ProQuest. Web. 14 Sep. 2017.

It’s a super vague term, but ambient advertising is my favorite potential piece of a campaign.

It has no precise definition other than that it deviates from traditional media strategies, but it’s the execution that when done well can be extremely successful at getting attention. For example, when Truth placed hundreds of body bags to represent deaths from smoking in front of a major tobacco corporation in the early 2000s, it created a striking visual for both the intended target, employees of the company, and a secondary audience of passerbys in New York City.

[Audience/Type of Source] Communication Today is a peer reviewed scholarly journal. It is intended for academics, probably both professors, and students. While the article offers definitions of key terminologies, such as ambient advertising, it’d be a difficult publication to engage in without some prior knowledge on the subject. As a reader with a commercial educational background, I found it engaging and shed new light on the topic for me.

[Bias / Point of View] The authors come from a very academic viewpoint and are possibly a bit too detached from the current industry. They believed that more of the people interviewed

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would be aware of and easily able to define what ambient advertising was, but it would appear it’s a term that comes up more in their research than in the real world. The subjects interviewed for this study were communication professionals from only four east coast states, Massachusetts, Rhode Island New York, and Connecticut specifically, so their views are skewed towards that region’s relationship with ambient advertising.

[Author Credentials] Shelton is a Fulbright Scholar with a Ph.D. in Humanities from Salve Regina University. She regularly publishes in peer reviewed journals and is currently an Associate Professor of Public Relations & Communications at Roger Williams University. Wojciechowski holds a Ph.D. as well and is a lecturer at the Faculty of Mass Media Communication at the SS. Cyril and Methodius. Warner has a degree in Public Relations and Media Communication and is currently working in the industry as a Publicity Assistant. From these credentials, I can assume that the authors are well versed in academic media studies, capable of running a study on modern advertising.

[Currency of the Source] This study was conducted in 2016, and of the somewhat limited pool of interviewees, a majority of them were younger executives. It could’ve been interesting to hear from an older generation of advertisers to see how ambient and guerrilla marketing have adapted over time They also used plenty of trendy phrases in their answers such as “storytelling,” “making a difference,” and “user generated content” which feels as current to me as one can get in advertising. Buzzwords are always a pain and joy point for me in the design and advertising industry. It seems companies are trying to play into what is trendy without understanding why it is has become popular. They have no respect for the origin and just want to monetize without having a full background. While I wish they had included some examples from successful recent campaigns, there are plenty of real and unrealized images and videos of ambient advertising that can be found elsewhere.

[Relevance to Project] I chose this article because ambient advertising is the type of work I hope to do in my career. I know I remember something more when I unusually engage with the material, be it in an unexpected place or perhaps through physical touch. I want to continue to help define what the field of ambient advertising in the digital age can be. With the right idea, it’s possible that a strong execution in the physical world can end up having components that live elsewhere online.

I’ve seen some very interesting examples in person. Six years ago I was in New York City during the summer below the Highline and came across a pop up roller skating rink, sponsored by Uniqlo with an accompanying pop-up store with their clothing inside of a repurposed shipping container. While the physical activity seemed disconnected from the product upon first glance, it made sense to have a place to find a breezy outfit for before or after skating. It created the space for personal engagement with the brand through an unexpected approach.

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I also believe that at one point in the near future, there will be a mass screen fatigue. After so much time spent looking at our phones, we’re going to eventually truly want to find ways to stay engaged in the physical world and with the people around us. Humans are social and visual creatures who are going to need something else to commit themselves with once the novelty of social media goes too far. If ambient advertising can be a part of that reconnection, I want to be on the team helping to make it.

It’s hard for me to say exactly at this point what I what to do with all this knowledge and how I want to apply it to a campaign. I know I want to create work that could improve the lives of those suffering or call out societal wrongs. I don’t know who those clients are yet or what will be considered good innovative ambient advertising by the time I find myself ready for the agency world.

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Mad Mad Woman Woman

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Chapter 4

Hamilton, Caroline. "Seeing the World Second Hand: Mad Men and the Vintage Consumer." Cultural Studies Review 18.2 (2012): 223-41. ProQuest.

Web. 21 Sep. 2017.

[Relevance to Project] It would be impossible for me to talk about my relationship with advertising and not mention the profound impact that the series Mad Men had on my life. I was hooked on the show shortly after its premiere at first for shallow reasons. I loved the clothes, old-school technology, and the set decorating. But I grew to love the characters as well and had a special appreciation for the character of Peggy Olson, a young woman who was trying to work her way up in a male-dominated in industry. Her journey continually inspired me as I went through school and found a love for writing copy and coming up with campaigns. The aesthetics of the show managed to leech their way into my life; I have an extensive collection of vintage dresses to prove it and too much mid-century furniture. As a 12-year old, should I have been watching a nearly endless montage of alcoholism, sexism, and cigarette smoking?

Probably not, but my mother never deemed it a problem, we watched the show together, and anyway I was far more into the plotlines involving the creation of the ads rather than the failing personal lives of every unlikable character. I have been on a rewatching binge of Mad Men over the last few weeks because I felt a little apprehensive about beginning my senior year. I found myself lying on the floor at home asking myself, “Advertising is so hard, the

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industry is difficult to break into, and so is the work if I get there, why did I want to do this again?” Going through seven seasons reminded me that there are ways to make advertising cool and memorable, but that the most important aspect remains the same: if the idea is great, the rest will fall into place. While I don’t necessarily want to create a Mad Men type ad campaign for my senior project, I think that the principles of advertising utilized in the show can be applied to a more modern issue and execution...and you know, maybe some of the style.

Who knows? I love funky patterns and typefaces.

The name of the article drew me in, particularly this notion of the “vintage consumer, “ which is defined as one who desires “an alternative to contemporary modes of consumption and production.” There is value in reusing and repurposing, and I think it’s an important topic to discuss this as part of a culture that is obsessed with reviving the past, be it through art, music, fashion, or any other medium. [Bias/Point of View] The author draws information from many different television critics and academic papers written about the show. Her bias evidently swings in favor of the show, most likely because she is a fan as a viewer, but also because she believes there is value in “inauthentic nostalgia,” or a longing for a past golden age that one have never experienced, amongst younger audiences. It creates a new market for being able to draw on the past with the knowledge we have now to analyze social issues and their progression.

I find that watching the show now in light of the last few particularly tumultuous years in the world gives the show continued importance. The issues the characters face in the 1960s are not all that different than the battles that continue today. Racism still exists, people are upset with how our country fights our enemies, and there is still real fear that the world is on the brink of collapse.

[Author Credentials] The author Caroline Hamilton has a Ph.D. in literary studies from the University of Melbourne and has published numerous journal articles and papers related to modern communications and popular media. [Type of Source] The Cultural Studies Review, in which her work appears, is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal that includes articles involving social sciences, literary, and political reviews. It’s definitely for an academic audience, though as someone who doesn’t specifically study social sciences (even though Comm Arts is all about understanding our society) I found it to be easy to be engaged with the topic and understand her writing. Probably because I already have an interest in storytelling through the medium of television, and I love Mad Men so goddamn much. It’s almost embarrassing how much my life has been influenced by a single show, but so far the path hasn’t been too bad.

[Currency] The article was published in 2012, only after five of the total seven seasons of the series. It covers an incomplete scope of the entire show, but still captures what I found to be most important about capturing the essence of nostalgia and was published after the flood of other 60s era shows and paraphernalia were prevalent everywhere in pop culture.

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I Can Do That!

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Chapter 5

Ober-Heilig, Nadine, Sigrid Bekmeier-Feuerhahn, and Joerg Sikkenga.

"Enhancing Museum Brands with Experiential Design to Attract Low-Involvement Visitors." Arts Marketing 4.1 (2014): 67-86. ProQuest. Web. 21 Sep. 2017.

[Bias] The authors went into their study believing that experiential museum design would be more effectively engaging visitors than a non-experiential one. The definition of experiential they used involved learning, gaining new experiences, and doing something worthwhile. Their hypothesis proved to be correct, but within a limited scope and without enough variety in types of exhibits to get a fair cross range, at least in my opinion. They also only focused on traditional museum findings, 2-D paintings and small artifacts on pedestals. I imagine outcomes of this study would have been different with larger scale pieces. [Type of Source] Arts Marketing is a scholarly journal with a focus in business and marketing; it is meant for those with a legitimate marketing degree. The article itself is packed with data-heavy tables that are hard to interpret as a casual reader; I relied on the extensively written out paragraphs that analyzed what was supposedly being neatly presented in many little tables.

While their article was in English, it was difficult to find credentials on these authors in anything but German. [Author Credentials] Sigrid Bekmeier-Feuerhahn is a professor of Business

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Administration, Communication and Cultural Management at Leuphana University LĂźneburg. She is a member of the Institute for Management & Organization and the Institute for Sociology and Cultural Organization. At the time of its publication, Dr. Joerg Sikkenga and Nadine Ober-Heiling were PhD candidates in the Department of Communication and Public Relations, Institute of Corporate Development at Leuphana University. I assumed they acted as her research assistants on the project and conducted the experiment, but that the hypothesis came from Bekmeir-Feuerhan.

[Currency] The article was published in 2014, meaning the authors had some information to collect from the field of social media, but definitely not as much as today, especially in its relation to museums being designed to be Instagrammable.

[Relevance to Project] I read this article last week with the intention of using it for one of my chapters but decided against doing so because it felt too unrelated to my other topics. But I had made so many notes and highlights throughout the article when reading it the first time that I felt there had to be something in there I could use. Then it hit me: while this article deals specifically with experiential design and branding for museums, which didn't mean the research couldn't apply to another type of exhibit aka my senior project. I was able to attend the showcase for the first time this May. I noticed what kinds of projects received more attention and the ones that were being quickly passed over. I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to create something that makes people and look, or even better engage with the work I create. There is research from this article that feels incredibly applicable to creating an environment that invites viewers to leave feeling like they got to experience something rather than just look at it. I still don't know what form this is all going to take yet, I'm the type of designer who needs to keep gathering information and inspiration until it becomes a true hindrance in my life.

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Bad Design Is Ruining My Life

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Chapter 6

Norman, Donald A. The Design of Everyday Things. Basic Books, 2008.

I will admit, I get irrationally annoyed by a lot of things like dripping faucets, wobbly chairs, and my roommates moving my stuff in the kitchen. But recently I realized that a lot of the irritations that come out of nowhere are the product of bad design. I picked up the book The Design of Everyday Things at Powell's bookstore in May. I had recently watched a video about the phenomenon of "Norman doors," a phrase taken from the author, Donald Norman's, name for a door where the design tells you to do the opposite of what you're actually supposed to do. It was the issue that had plagued me for years that I didn't know there was a name for. I was hoping this book would contain more information about similar design problems and potential solutions. [Audience/Type of Source] I can't say I've read the entire book at this point, after all, it is 240 pages full of dense text with some black and white images and diagrams breaking it up. While this book was probably intended for those involved with product design, it's written in a way where academic information can be rather easily understood by a general audience.

[Author Credentials] Donald Norman has been a professor of psychology at Northwestern University and the founding chair of the Department of Cognitive Science at UC San Diego.

He was also the vice president of advanced technology at Apple and has authored many other

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books, though The Design of Everyday Things is probably his most famous title. To me, this means that Norman is highly academically and professionally qualified to discuss human-centered design, in which discoverability and feedback are key for us to understand how objects and products in our world work and how we're supposed to interact with them. [Bias/Point of View] Norman provides many examples to support his belief that human interactions should be the most important factor considered when designing. He believes that many difficulties people face with all types of technology are not necessarily their fault, but that the items are not well designed. He supports design made within specific principles including conceptual models, feedback, constraints, and affordances. I can imagine he has some dissenting thoughts about Apple's recent introduction of the iPhone X which won't even feature a home button to interact with anymore.

[Currency] The book was initially published in 1988, with updated versions released in 2002 and then again in 2013; I own the 2002 version. The principles of human-centered design have remained the same though, despite changes in technology. To create a good product designers must go through the process of idea generation, prototyping, testing, observation, and repeating that cycle until a satisfying conclusion is reached.

[Relevance to Project] I've been cherry picking at sections of this book for months because I like to have rational reasons behind why I hate and love certain things. For example, I can't stand it when soda machines have the back levers where you can just press your cup, and the drink comes out, but then you have to push a button for the ice. Why wouldn't they all be the same? Don't they realize people are usually holding their lunch pressing the button means they have to set everything down first? It wastes valuable time. This book makes me feel like I'm not crazy, that in fact, my observations of the world around me are what are going to make me a better designer. The principles extolled in this book are relevant to every other creative project in which, eventually, a person will see or use it. While I'm not involved specifically with product design, I think similar design theories can be applied just beyond objects. User experience design is found in everything, including the flow of making a cup of coffee in my kitchen. I love making things pretty, but it's even better if they are useful to a real human being.

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I Swear I’m Normal, OK? I Just Really Like Letters!

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Chapter 7

Lupton, Ellen. Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students. Princeton Architectural Press, 2010.

I bought this book immediately following the first graphic design class I ever took; it was a two-week intensive session at Parsons. I thought it was going to be my last one because at the time I had only three pieces that could go in a potential portfolio, but I learned to notice letters and wanted to keep exploring their history. In the end, I blame my entire design career on my early love for typography and subsequently this book by Ellen Lupton.

I know it's often listed on syllabuses for Typography 1 across the world, but in my defense, I was such a nerd I had it over a year before I took a real type class. [Author Credentials] After all, Ellen Lupton is a type goddess. She is an accomplished design and type educator; she earned her degree from Cooper Union College, is the director of the Graphic Design MFA program at MICA, author of many great books (I own four of them), and a curator for the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. For Lupton to be involved with some of the most respected schools in the country, as well as having many publications in the world, leads me to believe she is well-respected and trusted by her design peers and students. [Type of Source/ Audience] Thinking with Type is a good primer for those who don't know a lot about typography, or, for people more like me, an easy to navigate cheat sheet of sorts to basic typographic principles. Its intended audience is designers, editors, writers, and students.

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[Bias/Point of View] Lupton attempts to find a middle ground between information on classical page typography teachings and overwhelming her audience with too many facts and illustrations. She doesn't view her work as an exact guide of how to do typography; she encourages readers to see her book as a tool to work with rather than copy from the source material. She believes that design can be used to change society. Her scope though, of course, means certain aspects of typography, like lettering, is more of a footnote than a feature.

[Currency] Originally published in 2004, I own the expanded 2010 version of this book. I think this book remains a timeless and timely asset because of Lupton's range of information for traditional print and modern screen-based typographic moves.

[Relevance to Project] This book has been an unofficial guide for the last five years of my life. It is always on the bookshelf next to my bed; I like to peruse it whenever I need help remembering a typographical term or just because flipping through the examples inspires me to experiment with different typefaces. I think I'm going to have a lifelong addiction to letters.

Every type class I've taken has only made me like the practice more; it'd be hard to imagine doing a senior project that didn't feature a lot of typesetting. So much about a text can be communicated through how it's presented, I like working with different typefaces to figure out which one tells the story I'm trying to say best. I think that typography is only going to become more important with continued moves towards the screen and video-based worlds. I believe that it'd be interesting to explore an aspect of my project that deals with typography in the physical and digital world; trying to determine which one is more powerful for creating a reaction out of an audience. This is kind of vague I realize, but maybe there is something about figuring out what is better, type physically in front of a person or flashing by them on a screen?

To explore this question, I’m going to need to refer back to “The Medium is the Message” because it might be even more fundamental than screen or space. Typography is the medium of the creator’s thoughts translated into written text. How the message of that text is received is dependent on the medium, questions of scaling and legibility come into play.

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Go Play Outside

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Chapter 8

Lucas, Gavin, and Mike Dorrian. Guerrilla Advertising: Unconventional Brand Communication. Laurence King Publ., 2006.

Lucas, Gavin. Guerrilla Advertising 2: More Unconventional Brand Communication. Laurence King Publ., 2011.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm a fan of ambient advertising. It's easy to find a lot of examples of it online, but it can be hard to tell which ones are prototypes or mockups and which ones exist in the physical world and have been produced by real ad agencies. [Type of source/Audience] So I took to the library to find some projects that were legitimate enough to be put into a two-volume publication. Guerilla Marketing and Guerilla Marketing 2 have many full-color photo examples of successful campaigns. They are organized and defined by five categories: street propaganda, site-specific media, sneaky maneuvers, stunts, and multi-fronted attacks.

For most projects, there is little text, aside from the title, the ad agency, and the client, at most a paragraph or two. The images are pretty self-explanatory and show how the work existed within specific spaces and for particular purposes. It’s definitely more of a coffee table book that could be enjoyed by the general public.

[Author Credentials] The first volume has two authors, Gavin Lucas and Michael Dorrian;

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Lucas worked alone on the second book. Lucas was a Senior Writer at the Creative Review, a communication arts journal. He has also authored many books on design and culture and has written for many magazines and online publications. I wasn't able to find as much information on Dorrian, but he has been a designer and editor for over eight books. He is credited as the art director for the first book, and it seems that Lucas employed the same system for the second volume. [Bias] Lucas has a bias against traditional advertising methods and uses his book to showcase and champion work that he sees as using unfamiliar means that are not formulaic but rather consider the brand what mediums are unique to communicate their message.

(Ah, the medium is the message perhaps? Still not sure, Marshall McCluan's work is a bit of a doozy to digest) He supports a blurred line between consumers being aware or unaware if they are being exposed to advertising in a piece of guerilla or ambient work they encounter in the world, an opinion that may not be popular with the general public. I’ve found in many conversations had with friends, families, peers, and strangers, the overall consensus is that no one likes feeling as if they’ve been tricked by an advertisement.

[Currency] The first volume of GA was published in 2006 and the second in 2011, so I'd say that many of these ads came at a strange time in our world; after the height of television ads and before smartphones truly took over. I got my first iPhone in 2011, and it's how I judge the obsession was taking over for the majority of people.

[Relevance to Project] I'd say one of the biggest challenges I face when telling people what I want to do in advertising is explaining how I want to create work that lives in weird places.

People will automatically assume I'm talking about gas station ads or "captive" advertising, like when you're at an airport terminal. When I'm on the spot, I have trouble coming up with examples because so many of the pieces are site specific and it's hard to go into detail without having to go through an entire case study. I use social media, but the ad experiences there already feel stale and forced. I watch TV online, occasionally live, and will tolerate the ads, but I try to stream on Netflix whenever possible to avoid them. I brush through ads in magazines when I'm even bothered to buy one. I want to create work that people like me enjoy, or at the very least not be utterly annoyed when they encounter it. I also found these publications to have so many inspiring examples of all types of brands and causes; it started to get the wheels turning on the kind of prototype I might want to create for my senior project.

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Space for Rent

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Chapter 9

Wiener, Anna. “The Millennial Walt Disney Wants to Turn Empty Stores Into Instagram Playgrounds.� Select All, NY Mag, 4 Oct. 2017 It has been difficult to locate credible academic sources for one of my areas of interest for the senior project: the age of Instagram and customer interaction. [Currency] There are news sources that have started publishing articles about it, but because it's such a new topic it seems there hasn't been enough time to do an academic analysis. The article I found to annotate was published just today in fact, and I'm glad it was because it deals with the most infamous Insta thirst trap to date: The Museum of Ice Cream.

[Type of Source/Audience] This piece was written for New York Magazine, a biweekly magazine concerned with life, culture, politics, and style generally, and with a particular emphasis on New York City. The magazine has won more National Magazine Awards than any other publication, including the 2013 award for Magazine of the Year. Its intended for a general audience. [Author Credentials] The author, Anna Wiener, has had articles in many publications including the New Yorker, New Republic, Paris Review and the Atlantic. It was difficult to find much biographical information on other work or her education, but based on the short bio on her website, she writes about and works in tech in San Francisco. [Bias] Wiener is skeptical of the vision of her interviewee, Maryellis Bunn, the founder of the Museum of Ice Cream. She

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uses some phrases that indicate a negative opinion of her personally and her work: '“You wanna go in the pool?” Bunn asked me flatly. “Shoes off.” She leaned against the wall and checked her phone.' Wiener also doesn't seem to belive that this project has any true ways to measure its success: 'The aim is to build environments that encourage social interaction between strangers. It’s hard to say whether the museum has been successful on this front: Most people seemed to be moving through the space with family or friends, occasionally turning to strangers to ask for help snapping a photo."

[Relevance to Project] This is the type of article I have been searching for; I have been looking for sources that have information directly from the creators of these new brand interactions.

While I'm not sure, I agree with Bunn's vague vision, reading her thoughts of the future of advertising makes me think about what may end up replacing so many empty retail spaces as more of our consumer habits switch to being online. People are not going to stop being social and gathering together; it's just that instead of an afternoon of shopping maybe we'll be engaging with brand experiences (#buzzwords) that create a more memorable moment in time.

Or at least, a more memorable photo on Instagram. I've got conflicting feelings about the whole social media thing. I'd like my project to be a prototype that explores how this could be done in a way that maybe isn't apparently so much about just taking cute pictures in brightly colored rooms.

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Translation for Translastion forDistribution Distribution

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Chapter 10

Tochilovsky, Alexander, and Athletics. “A Portrait of New York City Graphic Design.� Image of the Studio, 2013, imageofthestudio.com/.

Coming to the end of my initial research phase made to start to think about how I could apply my interests to future jobs, and where. What began as a search for a few Los Angeles graphic design studios led me to the comprehensive 2013 Image of the Studio exhibition, which features work and data from 75 current New York City graphic design studios. The exhibit was inspired by Kevin Lynch's 1960 book Image of the City, which explores cognitive and visual mapping that helps us navigate cities in the everyday. (Side note: Because of this project, I've been reading the original book that inspired it.)

[Type of Source/Audience] This exhibit has two parts: a physical gallery display and a website where all of the data, interviews, and panels have been archived. Since I was unable to see the exhibit, I'm only using this source's online interface. The digital platform feels very modern with a mix of flat background colors and shapes, san serif typefaces, and sparse bright, high-resolution images. It's designed for a general audience; the charts are easy to read and use approachable language, there are clear labels for each header and within each section.

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[Author Credentials] The authors, or collaborators more precisely, are the Herb Lubalin Study Center at The Cooper Union and the design agency Athletics. The Herb Lubalin Study Center is an academic resource that contains the Herb Lubalin's life work, along with the work of many other prominent designers. The collection is curated by Alexander Tochilovsky, a professor with an MFA from Cranbrook who has curated many graphic design related shows.

Athletics is a design agency based in New York City; they approached the HBSC to collaborate on this exhibition. They work on developing products and experiences using the web, broadcast, print and environmental design. The combination of these two forces indicates to me that in order to get as many studios on board as possible, Athletics wanted to pair with a reputable partner from a world famous design school.

[Bias] The most obvious bias in this exhibition is that it only features studios that are in New York City. It would be interesting to see if this exhibit was expanded into other major design markets such as London or Los Angeles. The event was sponsored by Adobe Typekit, and it's clear that many of these studios have a heavy focus on type based work rather than other aspects of commercial design such as film or product.

[Currency] The exhibition was on display in October 2013, almost all of these studios are still operating the producing work today. The website is now an archival space, but that doesn't change the relevancy of the data and acts as a modern time capsule to studio production in the 2010s.

[Relevance to Project] There's something so satisfying about gathering a broad pool of data on a seemingly mundane topic and organizing it into a visually compelling and clear showpiece. This exhibit speaks to me on two levels. One, it contains a ton of practical information from seeing how 75 studios of all sizes operate. I like how many layers the curators asked about in their questionnaires for the studio's working environment structures. And two, the more detailed interviews and videos from designers such as Louise Fili (a personal role model) and Bob Gill give faces and voices to the numbers collected. I think this is something that comes up in advertising often, using data and facts in a way that feels approachable and fresh. I imagine my senior proposal will have some element of the elusive "simple human truth" that all of the best advertisements seem to have. (My favorite example is in the original "Got Milk?" where the truth is so simple, it's easier to eat peanut butter if you have a drink to wash it down.

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Project Proposal

Imagine a world where you don’t have control over what’s happening inside your body; where your future is even more out of your hands. Well, that is the world, but reproductive rights are a prevalent issue in our political landscape. But often, there is a lack of creative or impactful ways to get people to pay attention, have an emotional response, and take action.

I intend to investigate creating experiential spaces in the service of brands and causes. My primary interest is to explore the creation of positive and meaningful experiences in service of reproductive rights. I am profoundly in favor of women being in control of what is happening inside of their bodies and being given safe and accessible methods to plan their futures unrelated to having children. I am pro-choice and believe in the independence of women. I'm concerned that this is going to turn into an exploration in Instagram thirst traps. I’m worried I will miss the mark and go too far upsetting people or not create a strong enough message no one gives a second glance.

I don't think there's a better time than now to discuss the future of advertising and fighting for reproductive rights, particularly amongst a generation that has become so disillusioned with the industry and current political climate. Every great cause needs a good campaign, and I think this project would address critical social factors that might influence their success in a variety of markets.

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When thinking about the categories in which I fall, I know I am a white 20-something Caucasian upper-middle-class woman who is about to finish a college degree. Creating a campaign for people like me and me seems a bit redundant at this point and doesn't reach the groups of people most affected by the loss of reproductive rights. I’m hoping to look beyond and immersive experiences for at least three specific demographics. For example, what works in Southern California probably wouldn’t work in the countryside of Alabama, and I want to explore why that is.

I think that the sites of this project can be flexible, though not entirely so because it will depend on the demographics I choose to explore as potential audiences. It's important to me to create content that can be engaged within underutilized or overlooked locations.

I want this to be a very speculative piece in that I don’t want to create it for it to exist on the sixth floor. I want to imagine it out in the world and bring a much smaller version of that back to Otis to share. I want to find out what works and what doesn’t work regarding getting people to care. For example, is it better to disgust or delight an audience? What colors and physical structures are more inviting? When trying to sell the idea of supporting reproductive rights, who are is a more accessible target and who are ones that will be more difficult or near impossible to convince?

Similar recent examples of the work I am trying to emulate would be Refinery29's 29 Rooms, The Museum of Ice Cream, the Color Factory, and the Broad Museum. While I'm not planning on creating an overly themed cultural space, I want to capture some of the joy and sharability that these exhibits have brought to a broader audience through social media.

It’s easy to ignore advertising online, but more difficult to do so when it exists in an unusual way in our physical world, and even more so if it has the ability to draw out an emotional response. I believe this method of gaining support works because it creates a personal experience for each viewer or user.

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There is no right time, so why not right now?