Twitter and internet …
The Studio Unbound thing is very interesting however I had already realised alot of what they were saying through blogging and our lectures and seminars. I am very glad we are doing this as it will hopefully help us in the real world.
I am on twitter and I am starting to get into it. I love looking through evrything that people have said and looking at new designs or hearing about events. I have now got twitter on my phone as I think it will help me to write more posts.
I also got feed demon which I really enjoy scanning through to see what new articles are up. I do find that all this technology is starting to take up a lot of time which is why I haven’t wrote a post for a while simply because I have been too busy. It is very easy to spend a long time looking through information, new ideas, tweets, other poeples blogs and then realise you have spent a good few hours sitting in a cold room staring at a computer screen. I am going to try and divide my time to incorporate the internet but not let it take over.
Bye for now x
Tweenagers and Branding
It is sicking to think about the way brands target a younger market. I watched a panorama video on the way tweenagers are not buying brands. However there is always going to be advertising and people that target the the vunerable. Yes there should be something done about advertising to young children but maybe it is easier to educte children and for parents to install a sence of value on personality instead of looks and trends in a child.
I remember having to have a Gap hoodie when I was about 11 and then begging for a mobile phone and I always kept up to date on the latest trainers. I remmber shopping with my mum and she would tut about the price and telll me that she didn’t mind buying quality but didn’t want to buy a trend. She used to get me these things so I wouldn’t get picked on which I think is a big fear for everyone. However I am not a brand junkie now. I buy my own clothes so I can’t afford to buy all the designer labels. I think if you parents are a good example then even if you go through a phase of having to have the lastest thing you grow out of it and come out the other side.
Brands are just playing on the fact that people like to fit in and don’t want to be isolated, even people that think they are going against the trends are just following a different one. Its instinctive we buy what people around us are wearing. The people we associate with tell us things that they like and give us advice which will influence your decision on what to buy.
I hope that the branding of children will calm down however the more celebrity babies wearing DKNY and gucci are the biggest advertising for companies and all that companies are going to see is the profit going up so they will not see the bigger picture.
Bye for now x
Hello world!
Hello I am going to try and change over from Blogger to WordPress… fingers crossed!
My changing opinions (my last seminar until after Christmas)
Yesterday was our last seminar until after Christmas and even though I am not looking forward to reading the two texts and writing an essay I will miss the seminars. I will also miss being in my group.
Even though I started of being quite scared to speak and didn’t have much of an opinion, as I always used to just except what a tutor told me, I am now much more relaxed in that environment and I could only see me getting more confident and having more of an opinion as time went on. Hopefully I will be able to build on this next semester.
I have always thought the blogging and social networking is a good idea from when they first told me about it, but I didn’t realize how much I would enjoy blogging. I have also joined twitter and I am determined to use it more if I can find the time as I nearly always find something interesting on there which I have now started retweeting for my friends to read about. I have found twitter socks and anti theft bags. I have also read about a job going in a creative industry. It is a great way to find out things in the real world and I am going to see if I can keep it professional outlet and have Facebook as a link to my personal life.
I have also started forming my own ideas and philosophy about jewellery and hope this will progress with more design studies.
I do feel more feedback is needed though it is easy to get if you ask for it. Other people have been asking me what feedback I got so they can compare and think about how to do their blog. I think some people are too nervous to ask in front of people in case they get a negative response.
I would greatly appreciate feedback from my whole blog, even though the assignments are the most important thing right now, later on my overall blog could be a big part of my career.
Bye for now x
Artist, Designer or Craftsperson?
I personally at this point in time beleive myself to be a designer working in a craft discipline. I do not beleive that I have enough skill to call myself a craftsperson. Designers have big ideas and then have to try and make it. Were as if I knew the skills and just made lots of items without thinking hard about how it would look or work or what the meaning behind it is I would be a crafts person.
I do beleive however that if when I have done more work my jewellery become impratical and more like sculptural pieces I would be bordering on being an artist. This is not what I would like to do but I do not want to limit myself.
I would like to be a designer who is good at the jewellery craft.
Bye for now x
Is there More at Home than the Heart: The Psychology of People and Places with Mhairi Bowe
Tonight, the 11th November, I attended a very informative lecture about what people think about home and various places. She talked about how attached people were to places. She spoke about how people felt a sence on loss if they went back to where they had grown up and their school had been destroyed or a faveourite tree cut down. She said it felt like their past had been taken away. She spoke about the way some people thought of there home as in their mind, memories that would trigger happy emotions of safety and comfort.
The idea of memory and lose made me think about my own thoughts within my discipline. I think jewellery should be an object that triggers a memory. This is something Hazel White had to think about when designing interactive jewellery. She had to make sure that when the technology stopped working, an object would be left to trigger memories related to that jewellery.
This has lead me to think that maybe impractical jewellery isn’t really jewellery, it is sculpture. Sculpture can be admired for its form and design. However, Jewellery should be something that has a story and can be taken with you easily from place to place to remember good experiences.
I will come back to this after a bit more thinking and reading. Any comments are greatly appreciated.
Bye for now x
Samples for my Wire project
I spent all day today in the Workshop making samples from wire. I hand knitted, machine knitted (the long piece), braided and weaved wire. I had a lot of fun using these textile techniques. I hope to try french knitting tomorrow. I haven’t got a picture of my weaved wire sample yet because it is still on the loom, it will be cut off on Thursday. Enjoy the pictures and have a go it is quite relaxing when you get used to the techniques.
Researching further into Unemployment and Crime
We discussed our brainstorms and solutions to the problems we have considered in small groups of 5 on Friday the 30th October. Doing this was very useful as it throw up ideas I hadn’t pursued, like concentrating on the health and wellbeing of the unemployed and tackling illnesses like depression. Another idea was making a box of tasks to complete on the way to getting a job. This idea would make the information easier to access and not be overwhelming as you can put it back into the box. It would make the subject more engaging and therefore easier to learn and remember.
We then spoke about where we might go or get help in designing our ideas. I came up with going to job centreās, the Employment section in the government to find out more about schemes available, Service/product designers to help improve the box idea and the experience the unemployed get, physiologists to help understand illness and confidence issues and employers to get a better idea of what they look for.
For assignment 3 we were asked to find books and journals relating to the topic we had discussed in our brainstorming. Since I had thought about Unemployment and crime and how to prevent it I started to think about this topic and tried to think of subjects that relate to it that might give a better idea of the problems in general.
Ideas I looked into were:
- Recession
- Other causes of Unemployment
- Poverty (how it effects people’s lives)
- Homelessness (exetreme poverty)
- Depression, alcohol/drug misuse (other health issues)
- Crime
I looked through the “Accounting, Finance and Economics”, “Psychology” and “Social Science” sets on Cross Search to try and get a broad perspective on my subject.
I would say this is quite pacific. I had other thoughts like, bullying, child abuse, taking a broader look at crime and how people cope after getting out of prison (if offenders can get out of the crime loop).
The biblography of some of the books and Journals I found and the top 5 websites for my discipline and general up-to-date information on the world are attached below, just click on “read more” to view.
The books and journals I choose to write about are:
ā¢ Becker S, (1997), Responding to Poverty: The politics of Cash and Care, New York, Addison Wesley Long man Limited
The book describes about how poor people are socially excluded by the labels put on them because they are on benefits. It talks about Social Security, community care and the effects of poverty on peopleās lives. It would be a good book, to give an understanding of the problems caused by being unemployed. By understanding a problem fully you can solve it, with a bit of luck.
ā¢ Braithwaite J, (1989), Crime, Shame and Reintegration, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
This book tackles how to stop people from committing crime. It explores how shaming people in a community can work in certain situations but counterproductive in other environments. It presents new theories about the crime and justice system, showing this theories clearly telling the reader where the theory works and testing that has been done. This is useful for getting someone elses theory and seeing how they tested it. The method of testing in this book could maybe be applied to other peoples theories or work in this area.
ā¢ Carlen P, (1996), Jigsaw: A Political Criminology of Youth Homelessness, Buckingham; Bristol, Open University Press
It talks about extreme poverty in Britain, the homeless. The author interviewed 150 young people when writing this book and looks at the consequences of homelessness. It touches on the fear people have of the āwandererā and how damaged the young people become because of being socially excluded, unemployment, cuts in welfare and lack of housing. The book goes on to talk about crime and citizenship and homeless people. This gives a good understanding for a designer and about what people think and how they live. By exploring this it could point out to a designer the main problems so that they can help the homeless.
ā¢ Hall T, (2003), Better times than this, London; Sterling, Pluto Press
A highly informative book about what it is like to be homeless in Britain. The author spent 12 months with young people in hostels, bed-sits and on the streets. He discusses how these young people live estranged from their families, unemployed and with little security. He starts to talk about whether it is the personās own problems that keep them homeless or if it is a housing problem. I have started reading this book as it is an easy read and in-depth book. It is very useful for anyone wanting to work in this field as you canāt help or solve the situation until you have a deep understanding of the problems.
ā¢ Harvey J; Lilly J D; Mckee- Ryan F M; Prussia G E; Virick M, (2009), Life after the Layoff: getting a job worth keeping, online, wileyintersciene (accessed on 07/11/09)
The article describes the effects of being laid off has on an employee. 149 technical employees who had lost their job were examined over a year to discover their stress levels, the fairness of losing their job and any employment gained. It shows how people deal with unemployment and also discusses the likelihood of depression for the unemployed and the underemployed (people who are in jobs lower then their work potential). This journal clearly explains unemployment and how some people cope. This could be useful for telling other people what to do if they find themselves laid off work. It could also help people prepare for losing their job.
ā¢ Krugman P, (2008), The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008, Great Britain, Penguin Group
This book is a great insight into the recession and what causes it, it even has a short section on steps on how to stop the recession. If we manage to tackle the issues which cause the recession we can stop the unemployment rate from increasing. It is a very useful book for anyone like me who doesnāt quite understand politics and financial information that led to the recession causing a lot of unemployment.
ā¢ Lister R; Strelite J, (2008), Why Money Matters, London, Save the Children
The book talks about how unemployment and poverty can effect childrenās eduction, welfare, health and life chances. It also discusses the psychological effects of struggling without money to make ends meet. The psychological effects are very important in getting people into employment and generally be happy in their lifes. So a better understanding of this could be useful for everyone including the children of the unemployed. It shows how it is not just the person that has no job that suffers, it has a detromental effect on many other people.
ā¢ Pages C; Pierre G; Scarpetta S, (2009), Job Creation in Latin America and the Caribbean: Recent Trends and Policy Challenges, New York, Palgrave/ The World Bank
This journal discusses how to keep people in jobs by better working environments and focusing on protecting workers not jobs. It also talks about how skills, gender and age effects employment. The solutions it comes up with are incentives to create jobs and training for the unemployed. Unfortunately it is focused on a particular area and the problems and solutions might not apply in Britain.
Top 5 Websites for my Discipline:
- www.ganoksin.com/
- www.howtojewellery.co.uk/
- http://www.a-n.co.uk/
- http://www.michaelgood.com/
- http://www.dsgnwrld.com/category/jewelery/
Top 5 Websites outside my discipline but still help in the Design world:
- http://www.nationalgeographic.com/
- www.newscientist.com/section/science-news
- http://www.wired.co.uk/news/technology?zed
- www.bbc.co.uk/
- http://www.sustainablescotland.com/
The websites are not in any particular order.
Bye for now x
Designs – just a little fun
While looking for websites for assignment 3 I found an article about anti- theft bags, because my friend is researching hand bag security I had a look.
http://www.dsgnwrld.com/anti-theft-lunch-bag-by-the-5608/
It tickled me, I thought about how silly it seemed but it is actually genious. Someone has designed bags that have black splodges on them, so when you but your sandwich inside no one will want to steal it because it looks mouldy. I am sure these would be useful and fun for any student moving into a flat with strangers.
I have also fallen in love with these paper lanterns.
http://www.dsgnwrld.com/cloud-lamps-by-yu-jordy-fu-2-12309/
I highly recommend http://www.dsgnwrld.com/ even after finding all the websites for my assignment I kept looking through it, it has designs for all different disciplines. You can also follow them on twitter, facebook and you can subscribe on many different readers.
Bye for now x
Leanne's Design Blog 