Monday 19 December 2016

Consumer identities

Products are designed to be an external representation of one self. By acquiring it, it reinforces or establishes social roles that give a sense of belongness to a group or ideology.

This products help in the intern negotiation everyone is carrying on between the actual self (who a person actually is), the ideal self (who that person deserves to be or want to be [directly related to the ego]) and the ought self (who that person thinks that should be). People is negotiating this triad to find a balance by consuming products.

There are two main social comparisons consumers carry on when deciding what product to consume: upwards comparison (for instance, comparing one self to a celebrity) or downwards comparison (for instance, comparing one self to someone considered less intelligent, successful, etc). This creates a feeling of community, making easy to identify which values or tastes certain people have by the products they own. They are symbolic representations.

Some examples of this can be Apple, which associate personality types with products. Nespresso uses George Clooney for an upwards comparisson, selling coffee more than just a drink, but a lifestyle.

Some of the ethical issues of how consumerism uses these techniques to sell are that, as a result, people stereotype others into categories, which makes consumerism a necessity for self-validation, which is a lie. Frustration will eventually happen for the self-fulfilling prophecy that will never be fulfilled through consumerism. This would be not so bad if there was a consciousness about it, but these associations happen unconsciously, making society chained to unnecessary and unrealistic expectatives as well as making its individuals narcissistic and negative about how they look.

These ideas, despite how unethical are, helps designers to  better connect with the target audiences. In title sequences design, this could be applied from the perspective of what a person means by saying they like a certain movie. They might want to say how curious they are, how funny or how brave.

Research for the design process

1x design sheet outlining relevant contextual research

The contextual research mainly focuses on the semantics and psychology behind title sequences, but culture, history and typography are other important aspects that inform what is being discussed. Designing title sequences is a typographic work, but also a work where time becomes a basic element to be considered. In order to understand how the interpretation of title sequences work the history is very important to inform why certain decisions have taken place throughout time. This decisions have been informed by,  amongst other things, the contemporary culture of each time.


1 x design sheet outlining target audience research

As can be read in the essay, the genre dictates the style, and each genre has certain target audience(s). Taking in consideration that the work produced is probably going to be the title sequences of a thriller or a drama the target audience will be mature, people that have the age and attitude to learn a lesson from the problems exposed in the film in question. An audience interested in culture with an open mind to be impressed and change their opinion. This kind of people can be found in any country, but it's probably that countries with better economies allow people to worry about dramatic situations as their primary needs are most likely covered.

3 possible personas: 

1.- James, British. James is a young accountant and he is single. He enjoys watching movies while he has dinner. He likes films and TV shows that challenge his beliefs or dramatic situations that teach him lessons for life.

2.- Marie, French. Marie is a young single mother who has not much time for herself. She likes to read books before bed and she is fascinated by auteur cinema. Whenever she has the time, she likes to watch slow dramas that take her away from her rush-paced life and be delighted by actors performances.

3.- Karl and Birgit, German. They are a couple in their 40's with no children. They work hard and their time is not conditioned by children. They have very good incomes and they enjoy spending time with each other. One of the things they do is watching films as a way to relax and be together.


1 x design sheet identifying and analysing relevant and related visual examples.

Breaking Bad opening title sequences.

These title sequences don't show the names of the people involved in the show. They just focus on creating certain atmosphere. The dark green in the background encourages chemical thinking reinforced with the formulas shown and the use of yellow colours (which reminds of radiation), followed by the periodic table. From this table, two elements remain and both construct the title of the show, [Br]eaking [Ba]d. This animation goes along with a guitar played in a country manner, as the show takes place in Alburquerque and it's been called a contemporary western by its creator Vince Gilligan. This guitar plays certain chords that hints about the bad decisions the main character makes, finishing in a transition made with smoke to show the director's name and a sound that reminds of the desert. The percussion that goes along with the guitar is more tribal, which refers to the stalking danger that mexican cartel (and others) is throughout this show. The typeface is serif excepting the letters taken out from the periodic table, which are in sans-serif probably to show that transition from simple to complicated, good and bad. Formulas are also in serif, which already have an implication of complexity.


Lost opening title sequences

This simple but deep work only shows the title of the show, which is Lost and not a single name. The word is written in 3D and the camera moves towards the "O" (probably because it looks like an island, which is the real main character in this show) with an irregular music that conveys mystery. It is out of focus and just for half of a second is in focus, but it's impossible to see the whole word when that happens. This is a hint of the pace the show has, showing parts of the puzzle in a very blurry way, making the audience believe they understand what is going on just to be dissapointed when they are shown it's not that simple. The typeface is sans-serif without any kind of ornament, which looks weirdly friendly, maybe to create more confusion.


Black Mirror opening title sequences

This show aims to show the dark side of the technology contemporary culture praises and how it is making human beings less ethical than ever without realising about it. The sequence, once again, doesn't show any names. It starts with a loading icon that loads the title of the show written in sans-serif probably to emulate a computer lack of personality. The text starts to digitally shine with more intensity until the screen breaks. This looks like a metaphor of how the excess of technology can be counter-productive. Then the text fades out not like going away, more like telling the audience that it will be back, and this is reinforced by the "monster" sound that goes with it, another hint of how the director wanted to represent the technology: a sibylline monster.


Luther opening title sequences

In this example the designers do show the names of the members of the team, which makes the sequence longer, but not much different from the other examples. The uses of black colours, close ups of crime scene elements, London maps, etc conform the dark part of the main character's life he has to deal with, but the music is soft, even romantic, and singed by a woman, humanising this character and hinting his deep, complex but benevolous personality. The dirty style conveys this complexity of the character, and his poses and looks balances this showing a mindful person. It creates a portrait of Luther, a person that has to deal with crimes, complex situations with serenity, showing his vulnerability.

Design boards:





Wednesday 14 December 2016

Title sequences: no one talks about it

Thinking with type, type matters, motion graphic design and fine art animation are some of the books that this research began with. After looking for more content on google books and jstor (and other websites) it was interesting to see that there's almost no content regarding title sequences.

There's almost no theory about the semantics, no discussion. Only instructional texts, overviews and historical facts that repeat the same.

In order to improve the project one of the ideas was to investigate about a particular artist or genre. It was also considered exploring the connection between traditional graphic design and this sub-discipline. But after reading more texts and seeing how they approached this topic it was easy to see that semantics is always barely mentioned, but in different texts they say different things that they might be not necessarily contradictory, but they add up to each other.

These analysis put together with the text written by Georg Stanitzek, which goes into very much detail, should give an even more detailed and expanded vision of this topic that hasn't had the attention it deserves.