My chosen question for assessment one was, ‘The contemporary self could be said to be quantitative. We produce a constant stream of data that is collected, projected, and stored which determines our daily existence. To what extent has this ‘quantitative turn’ changed our understanding of self?’
Upon completing assessment one I came to the conclusion that it is the combination of social media paired with social, economic and cultural expectations that pressure us to dived, split and fracture our identities in order to ‘fit in’.
For assessment two I began by turning about the original question and exploring it in more detail and depth. I wanted to uncover why it is that we all feel this need to adapt, appropriate and filter our true selves online to become one of the crowd. Why is today’s contemporary self consumed by this idea of social media and how we portray ourselves online and to the rest of the word? Are we all just a bunch of pretentious assholes who compete for the greatest amount of praise by our peers? Why do we make certain decisions online to represent our selves in different ways?
After asking myself questions like this I came to the conclusion that I wanted to generate and spark the same curiosity within my viewers. That is why I decided to chose the medium of graphic design as I would create a poster campaign questioning these certain values. I then began my research into graphic design and what I needed my campaign to have in order for it to be successful. I came across the prestigious works of Stefan Sagmeister and his business partner Jessica Walsh. I immediately loved the way in which thy represented their ideas through graphic media and knew I wanted to travel down a similar path for my campaign.
One of the main characteristics of Sagmeister’s work that I felt worked well in communicating a strong message whilst also being visually intruding. This was the way in which he used typography in his advertisements. This then led me down the path to develop a slogan for my campaign, ‘Do you reflect your true self online?’. I wanted the slogan to be direct simple and effective because it was the way in which I would represent each piece of typography that would give the work more depth.
I decided to break the slogan up over five separate posters and represent one or two words on each. On the first poster I chose to use the first two words ‘Do you’ because they were short and I felt they were simple enough to be on the same poster. I represented these words by creating them out of plastic eyes, which were stuck to two different arms. I acquired the idea from my experiment I did on ‘value’, the multiple eyes represent the numerous people found online that we attempt to impress through our online profiles. The world of social media is so broad and vast that we cannot possibly know how much of our information is spread or who is looking at it.
In the second poster using the word ‘reflect’ I decided to create the word out of reflective glass placed onto a persons face. This poster has a more direct link to my first assessment where I used reflective surfaces also. I wanted to explore the pressures we put on our own self-image when expressing ourselves online. A mirror reflects all, is that what we do online?
The third poster, which reads the word ‘your’ I created by using keyboard keys. This poster is highlighting the implications our words and actions have online. With the click of a few keys a certain view, opinion and idea can be blasted across the world. The Internet and world of social media can be very influential in people’s lives and I don’t really think many people understands the power it has.
For the fourth poster ‘true self’ I decided to concentrate more on the setting of the text and not so much on the physical text itself. I based it around the idea that we all wear this Internet and technological mask when using social media sites. We project us but it is only the ‘us’ we want others to see, a filtered, edited and distorted version of ourselves.
The fifth and last poster demonstrates to word ‘online’, similarly to the ‘reflect’ poster there is a sense of the literal as a line physically represents it. But I also chose to use a computer cord because of the technical connotations and the unplugged socket at the end indicates an unfinished ending. Making the viewer question the purpose for its existence as well as questioning their own existence online at the same time.
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Narcissism on social media tells us a lot about ourselves, Elliot Panek, http://theconversation.com/narcissism-on-social-media-tells-us-a-lot-about-ourselves-18308
The Social Media Effect: Are You Really Who You Portray Online?, R. Kay, Green, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/r-kay-green/the-social-media-effect-a_b_3721029.html
Sagmeister inc. graphic design, Stefan Sagmeister and Jessica Walsh, http://www.sagmeisterwalsh.com
Physical typography, Behance, https://www.behance.net/search?content=projects&user_tags=1162585
Typography, 99 Designs.com, http://99designs.com/designer-blog/2013/05/21/25-mind-blowing-typography-art-projects/
What’s on your mind?, Higton Bros, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxVZYiJKl1Y
The happy film, Stefan Sagmeister, book, Institute of contemporary art, Università of Pennsylvannia, 2012