The Iconography of a Standard Deck of Cards

Iconography is "the visual images, symbols, or modes of representation collectively associated with a person, cult, or movement"(New Oxford American Dictionary). The example of iconography we drew upon in class was the example in the images of Adam and Eve. We did not need to be told who the people were in the images, but based on the iconography used we could immediately identify Adam and Eve. An interesting example of iconography, to me, is that which is almost universally used on playing cards. The design of standard playing cards has gone roughly unchanged for hundreds of years, especially the look and of the face cards: Jack, Queen, and King. I love playing cards, I constantly use them whether its a card game or doing magic tricks for friends I'm always around this iconography. I'm really interested in the fact that these images have had little to no change of hundreds years. Millions and millions of people have played with cards that look exactly the same all over the world for generations. That amazes me. The design of the cards themselves are interesting, and I'm sure there is plenty of meaning and significance in those designs. I think it is so interesting that the meaning and recognizability of these cards surpasses language even.
This summer I went to the Dominican Republic and lived at an all boys orphanage. A deck of cards became my best friend, especially those first few weeks while I was getting used to using Spanish again. I never had to say anything, they'd teach me their games, without needing words, and and we'd play or I could do a magic trick on one of the boys with the cards and I didn't need words to explain what I was doing. He'd see the King of Hearts, I'd slide it in the middle, snap my fingers and then he'd see the King of Hearts on the top of the deck. They loved it and it's that common, recognizable iconography of the cards that make that possible. They play with cards all the time so they know exactly what it all looks like. It's a simple, yet affective design that has created the iconic images of our standard playing cards.

Compare and Contrast: Design in Film Posters 3-'The Good German'

Design in Film Posters! Round 3!

The Good German

This weeks poster comes from a more recent film: Steven Soderbergh's The Good German, starring George Clooney and Cate Blanchett. The Good German is set in post-WWII Germany and deals with the aftermath of that war. The film was shot in black-and-white and was meant to pay homage to the noir genre of the 1940s. I haven't seen the film so I can't comment on the quality of the movie itself but I can talk about how much I love this poster. The poster is meant to be a very obvious callback to the Casablanca poster of 1942. The composition of the photo used and even the fonts between the two posters are similar.

Casablanca

The film itself is a nod to film noir in general but what is so great about this poster is that they capture that spirit of film noir genre in a single shot by making audiences and consumers think back to the iconic Casablanca poster, arguably the most famous noir film ever made. This poster very well sets the film of the movie, a noir-ish film and all the elements that come with that. Even Casablanca was set during WWII and dealt with nazis. The iconography of the old-style movie works very well with this 2006 movie. By calling back something incredibly famous movie, and famous for very specific things (romance, war, exotic locations, intrique) some expectations for the new film have already been set and their tapping into a specific audience. The poster works very well to capture the spirit of a genre using old school iconography.

Design as Conversation: "Give us back our serifs!"

The original logo

Design is often said to be a conversation, a give and take or dialogue between people or groups about design. But who is this conversation between? I immediately think of the recent debate over the Gap logos. Gap is a clothing retailer that has been around for many, many years, and for the last 20 years Gap has been well branded by the famous and recognizable blue box logo.  Two weeks ago, without any warning, Gap rolled out an updated website with a brand new logo. The internet exploded and apparently the apocalypse was upon us because Gap changed their logo. Bloggers all over the web started screaming about the new logo and Gap's facebook page had thousands of comments against the new logo. Both logos are very simple but Gap went sans serif and everyone freaked out! Gap's original plan was to launch the new logo on their website and within the next month to redesign all their in-store advertising. Within a week of releasing the new logo there was so much criticism surrounding the logo that Gap completely scrapped it and went back to their original. Who knew there were such passionate feelings over a store's logo.

The updated logo

This is a great example of design as a conversation and in the case the sides of that conversation are very clear; the consumer and the designer. Gap spent a great deal of time, resources, and money redesigning their logo only for it to have been met with distaste. Something was designed and the people for who it was designed for did not respond well and because of their response the designers have had to back to the drawing boards, so to speak. It's that give and take, back and forth, of conversation that made up this Gap debate. Gap would have been foolish to keep their new logo knowing full well that their very own customers hated it. It would have been bad business and maybe the whole reason for listening and taking part in the conversation was strictly for business but the design still lead to that conversation. What makes this whole situation even more interesting is that had a long-standing company like Gap redone their logo in a similar situation twenty years ago there would have been no real chance for this conversation. A decision would have been made and everyone would have stuck with that. But in today's world with the internet and the prevalence of social networking sites a conversation can happen very quickly and many, many people can be involved. Thousands of people logged onto their facebooks and commented on Gap's own page about the logo. That's a large conversation that can happen and it can have real influence over large corporations. That's the power of design and, specifically, design as a conversation. Conversation got that logo changed, it's powerful stuff.

*Photo Credit:
jmorganmarketing.com
www.zimbio.com

Creativity from Without

Often art is seen as something from within. Within the artist comes expression and creativity. Art allows people to work through emotions and inner feelings, but what about art and creativity from without? This idea I think of as something along the lines of inspiration. What inspires us to create? As I've mentioned before my hobby is photography and I think that photography is an art form that most often deals with creativity from without. When I get out my camera and set out to take photos and "be creative" (whatever that means?) I find what inspires me and photograph that. This is nature and people; things that I have very little control of but things that inspire me to create.
This past summer I spent two months living at a boy's orphanage in the Dominican Republic. Everyday I was inspired by what was around me whether it was  the sunset over El Morro in Monte Cristi or the joy on a little boy's face after he poured water on someone's head. These things inspired me and everyday I had my camera around my neck ready for what I would see. Everyday was beautiful, the country, the people, the emotions. But none of that had to do with me or anything inside of me. What I saw and experienced from outside of me inspired me to create. It was a beautiful two months.

Stone Soup

This week my Design 1 group took part in a project called Stone Soup. We were tasked with doing an quick art installation out on our campus with materials that we all brought and whatever we could find outside. This was a fascinating project because it really teaches how to work in a community with each other but it also forces us to ask the question: what is art?

We began stone soup with a pile of supplies that included an empty cereal box, a copy of TIME magazine, lots of construction paper, and, of course, glitter glue! After a few minutes of brainstorming each group member quickly began working on something. It was an interesting group dynamic to see us all working on our individual small things before bringing them together for the final product. Each of us not only contributed supplies to the project but we all worked on our own section. This was great because each of our unique styles was able to come out and really be seen in a group art project. We worked really well as a group, all of encouraging each other and we all really wanted to work everyone's style and creativity into the final project. It was a great environment to work in, especially considering how easily this could have become all about one person's vision.



Stone Soup was a great team building exercise, but what does it say about art? Is something thrown together in such a short amount of time art? Is it art if, only minutes after finishing it, we began tearing it down? Was Stone Soup even art at all? To me it was art, it was creative and thoughtful, it was something to look at and it was something to experience. As we were finishing work on the project we noticed we had a whole cardboard box left unused and we thought we should somehow incorporate into our design. Maybe we were out of ideas, or out of time but we quickly just stuck the rest of the project on top of the cardboard box and called it a stand. But we wanted it to be something more, maybe decorate it too. One of said that we didn't need to do that and we should just leave it as a pedestal for the project. So we road "pedestal" on the box because that's what we do with art, we, often as a society, put art on pedestals and honor it. Then someone offered the word "altar" on the other side of the box because not only do we honor art, but we use art to honor something else (I think of religious art to honor God). Then someone thought of "soap box" for another side of the box because many artists use their projects as places with which to preach a message or an idea. And finally we used "launch pad" for our fourth side, mostly because our project looked like a really cool and out there space ship. But I think, beyond that, that art projects, and especially a project like stone soup can be a starting point (or launch pad) for ideas and creativity. Pedestal, altar, soap box, launch pad. It was art.

Design in Film Posters 2-'Pulp Fiction': A Sensational Magazine Poster

It's time for round two of movie poster design fun!

This week I'm looking at the theatrical poster for my favorite movie of all time: Pulp Fiction. The film is an epic, interwoven story of the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles, complete with gangsters, a hit man or two, boxing, and, of course, Uma Thurman overdosing on heroine. What more could you want from a movie? Quentin Tarantino, the film's director, was inspired by pulp magazines from the first have of the twentieth century. These magazines were cheap to make and featured weekly stories often involving crime, drugs, and violence, much like the film itself. The film makes reference to this as it opens with a definition for pulp ("popular or sensational writing that is of poor quality") so right from the start we know what we're in for. What follows is three intricately connected stories that tell the tales of crime and violence.

Now what does the poster tell us about the movie? This poster is one of my favorites, just like the film; it is so creative, simple, and completely effective in what telling us about the film. It's been designed to look like an old magazine complete with a ten cents price graphic. The corners and sides have been seemingly torn and crumpled to further get across that poor quality of product. The actors credits look like typical teases as to what's inside the magazine. With so many names listed we have a preview of all the different stories within the magazine, or film. And then, of course, there's that picture of Uma Thurman. In a single, static shot we see the femme fatale of the film, dressed all in black, while smoking, reading a trashy magazine, AND holding a gun. I love it. The poster owns up to the trashiness of it all just like the old pulp magazines were self aware of their quality (or lack thereof). Once again, this is a perfect example of how good design can do exactly what a movie poster needs to do; convey the spirit of the film in a single static image. This is a great poster that plays on the conventions of the film and pays homage to Tarantino's inspiration. Even in a photo of Uma Thurman smoking with a gun can be great creative design.

First Encounters of the Design Kind

This one took a bit of time for me. I really had to search for a time, early on, when I was conscious of design in something that I was using. And then it hit me, and as silly as it may sound, when I was younger I was all about video games and I can clearly remember the design that went into the games I was playing.

Design in Film Posters 1-'In the Loop': Zeitgeist for Hope and Change!

As I've mentioned before I am a Film Studies major and movies are a big thing for me. The last few days I've been thinking about how I could incorporate that passion for film into this blog about design. This is the first entry of what I am planning on making a weekly tradition about film posters and the design behind them. I'll be taking posters from some of my favorite movies and some posters of movies I've never seen (like today's poster) but I understand and really like the design behind them.

Movie posters are, on a very basic level, advertisements for the films. But beyond that I think that posters are really artistic pieces, I have quite a few of my favorite posters hanging on my walls. What makes these pieces so interesting to me is that a poster must, in a single static image, convey the spirit and feeling of the film it advertises. Many posters are simply images or stills from the movie with a title and a release date thrown on it. That works when your movie is "Clash of the Titans" and your poster can be a still from the final action-packed climax. But take, for example, a movie like "Dr. Strangelove", a black-and-white film made when color was the norm, and a movie that mostly takes place in rooms where men talk. A still shot from any of that would not attract an audience, thus comes in the designed and stylized film poster.

Today's poster comes from a British 2009 comedy called "In the Loop". A comedy about the American President and British Prime Minister who through mistake end up in a war that they never wanted to have in the first place. It was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay.

The poster from "In the Loop" is a zeitgeist, clearly referencing and parodying the now iconic Obama "Hope" campaign poster. Here we have the "In the Loop" poster that has the British Prime Minister looking aloof and unsure compared to the often distinguished and pensive Obama. The slogan for the movie further parodies Obama's campaign slogans such as, "Yes we can!" and the ideas of Hope and Change. The poster immediately sets the film up as being a political satire but also being something current and relatable. The film, like the poster, will play off of people's expectations of government and politics, in fact the plot of the movie is a direct satire of the circumstances surrounding the beginning of the Iraq war in 2003. This poster is simple, using modern iconography. A simple play off of a very famous poster from current events. But in its simplicity it is able to capture the essence of the film in a single, static shot. It's an incredibly effective poster that not only advertises the film but works as a great piece of design.

*Photo courtesy of 4outof10.com

Introduction to Intentional Design

It's my first blog of Design 1 and I thought the best way to get things started would be to simply talk a little bit about me and then what design means to me in my life.

My name is Matthew McCleary. I am a fourth year Film Studies major here at the University of California, Davis. Movies are kinda my thing so expect plenty of blog entries about film and design. I love photography. For being a creative person I can't draw to save my life, but I can take a good photo. One of my favorite feelings is that of taking a picture and knowing it's a great shot without even having to look at the digital camera's screen or the final print. And finally, and this is where design is most present in my life, I am the Tech and Media Coordinator at my College Church group.

My biggest project right now as the media guy for my college group is the complete overhaul and redesign of our group's website. The current site (eremedy.org) was designed six or so years ago and it hasn't been updated in over two years. It looks like something that's ten years old and has very little intuitive functionality. I get a knot in my stomach when I have to look at it. For the past month or so I've been slowly working on a complete redesign (the only reason the new site isn't live yet it because I've got to move through leadership and bureaucracy as if I worked for the US Government. My design (eremedy.org/beta) is simpler, cleaner looking, more streamlined, and actually useful. It is still certainly a work in progress and we need a new logo (though I'm not allowed to change that right now...).  When I look at my work and what I think is important in the website (or any website in general) I'm getting at what is important to me in design in general. I hate things that have been over-designed (this does not necessarily mean lots of elements in the design). I hate things that have been designed and have little functionality. Simplicity and functionality, to me, are incredibly important to design. My goal in my position is to create some consistency in the design and look of the College Group. It's all about design and I love it.