Studio Brief 02 - Instagram photoshoot

Studio Brief 01 - Screen print colour research and process

For the colours used within the screen print I have decided to experiment with a gradient, which is something I haven't explored before.

I  have researched into how the process works, from the video tutorials it just rather simple. The paints are literally just placed next to one another and blended with the tool that pushes them into the screen and thus onto the paper.

Reasons for screen print method:

• Will be able to achieve precise design (from a digital)
• Would not have been able to develop any typography as the same font was not available
• Would not have been able to develop the gradient with other traditional print methods e.g. monoprint

Reasoning behind the colour choices:

"The rainbow flag, commonly known as the gay pride flag or LGBT pride flag, is a symbol of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) pride and LGBT social movements. (Other uses of rainbow flags include a symbol of peace.) The colours reflect the diversity of the LGBT community, and the flag is often used as a symbol of gay pride during LGBT rights marches. While it originated in Northern California, the flag is now used worldwide."

• Strong connection to gay pride
• Through a survey conducted by myself was found to be meaningful

Some of the colours has to be mixed to achieve a more precise correct colour of the flag. I wanted to get as close as I could to the original flag colours to create a strong connection.

I often mixed three or more colours to achieve one I was happy with. 

I also had to tone down some of the colours as they mixed darker than they appear from the bottle. Achieved this by adding white bit by bit to create a lighter shade.

• One thing I have learnt from past experiences with screen printing is to stick down the paper before printing begins
• I stuck each piece down with tape onto the base so they wouldn't move or smudge and then after each one was printed removed it swiftly so I could quickly print the next

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Responsive Report

http://issuu.com/domcxrt/docs/inspo

Studio Brief 02 - Campaign distribution

Social Media

Creating a hashtag is a great way to access the social media platforms as a form of advertising and awareness. As people use the hashtag it creates a connection between the people that use it as it can be accessed by anyone and easily distributed. It is also free meaning no expenses effect the campaign.

Physical products

These products target the younger audience of 16 - 24.

Studio Brief 01 - Mini crit and further poster development

These are the two choices for the final outcome. As part of a group crit with student peers in college I asked them which suited the style of "Pride" and which one would be better suited for the gradient screen print.

Using Bebas Neue font

The type on this design has been specifically chosen to co-exist with the type for the "YEAH!". Both are quite tall, although Bebas has a smaller weight to it.

Using Bebas Neue and MV Sans font

In contrast to the first design I wanted a more bolder one that could emphasis the fact that it the poster is indeed about Leeds gay pride. With the "YEAH!" being the main focus of the design it doesn't necessarily indicate it is for pride as it doesn't say "GAY" or "PRIDE". So bringing more attention to the bottom text was an aim within this design.

Feedback:

• Second one is more bold, expressive and "proud"
• Second stands out much more which will especially be needed if you are print will be gradient
• First design using Bebas Neue is much more easier on the eye and if the colours are going to be vibrant it might be an interesting idea to keep the first design as the kerning on the type makes it defined and bold in its own way 

Final poster design

Here is a digital mock up of how the gradient will appear like once screen printed. 

Collaborative Practice - Group communication

Facebook

We communicated mostly through Facebook messenger, organising meet ups, having general conversation about where we was up to with our own individual work and even critiquing work as we went along. 

Meetings

Meetings were definitely the most beneficial as we got to go back and forth more smoothly with ideas. We mostly met at uni, although Meg came round to mine and Alice's house a few times as well as she lived close. In a way working with a friend was very much beneficial as we could talk about the project as we pleased, which meant a stronger communication and better grasp on the project.

Google Drive

We also communicated through Google Drive as we could easily share each other's work and edit certain aspects if we needed to.

Studio Brief 01 - Further poster/type development

• Compared to the initial designs for the main body of text for the poster 

combo of type

Studio Brief 01 - Initial development

From the brief's mini book of ideas, drawings, thoughts, designs etc... I chose to bring to life a few of the drawn out designs to help see what direction is best for the final outcome.

Themes I want to be evident within the design:

• Gay pride flag
• Bold text - to represent a bold community
• Simple imagery that will translate well over traditional print
• Simple message that established the first event, put can be used for any year of pride
• Positive message

• Waves is suppose to represent a waving flag
• Basic design
• Possibly too militant/structured?

• Inspired by post modern design that experiments with type and image manipulation
• Each word would follow each other - each time becoming more distorted and wavey

• Bold type to draw in attention
• Good to capture colour well

Studio Brief 02 - Ted Talks

Studio Brief 02 - Social media 3 day experiment

I'm an avid social media user and for this project I will be withdrawing myself from social media for three days. Each day I will keep a diary of how I feel and how I am coping without my beloved.

The reason I want to explore this is to prove is my campaign of the illusion of social media and its negativity is worth it. Although my campaign does not express that social media is bad or shouldn't be used, it does support the idea that it often better not to let it become a main focus in ones life.

DAY 1

10AM - ALREADY WANTING TO CHECK ALL MY SOCIALS AS IT IS A MORNING HABIT
12AM - BORED. FEEL LIKE I'M MISSING OUT EVEN THOUGH NOTHING AMAZING IS PROBABLY HAPPENING.
3PM - TRYING TO RESIST THE MEMES MY FRIENDS KEEP TALKING ABOUT
8PM - ALMOST LOGGED ONTO FACEBOOK AND HAD TO RESIST - ITS SO HARD, WHY???

DAY 2

9AM - WALKING UP AND CHECKING WASN'T SO BAD, RESISTED THE URGE. FRIENDS ARE ALREADY ASKING WHY I'M NOT ON SOCIAL MEDIA. APPARENTLY I'M MISSING A LOT OF GOOD MEMES.
1PM - FEEL LIKE I'M MISSING OUT AGAIN, ALL MY FRIENDS ARE ON THERE PHONES. ITS MAKING ME REALISE HOW MUCH EVERYONES USES THEM, INCLUDING MYSELF.
3PM - FINDING MYSELF BE MORE INTERACTIVE AND SOCIAL AS I'M HAVING TO TALK TO PEOPLE INSTEAD OF HIDING BEHIND MY PHONE OR USING IT AS AN EXCUSE TO NOT TALK TO ANYONE

DAY 3

9AM - USED TO NOT CHECKING MY MORNING FEED - BECOMING LESS CURIOUS AS TO WHAT PEOPLE ARE POSTING
5PM - REALLY BORED!!! REALISING I SPEND A LOT OF TIME SCROLLING WHICH IN A WAY IS REALLY TIME CONSUMING WHEN I COULD BE DOING SO MUCH MORE
6PM - BEGUN TO READ AGAIN WHICH IS SOMETHING I HAVE BEEN MEANING TO GET BACK INTO
8PM - LEFT THE HOUSE (SHOCK) TO GO MEET A OLD FRIEND I HAVEN'T SEEN IN A WHILE WHICH WAS REALLY NICE AND I CAN IMAGINE THIS PROBABLY WOULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED IF I WERE NOT OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Afterthoughts

• Found it really hard to resist social media as I am addicted to it, although I know I don't need it -  confusing? 
• Gives me so much more time to do other things
• Shows how much time I actually spend on it each day and I know from myself it isnt always a positive experience - for the most part it is negative 
• Feel it is really relevant to practice the opinion of social media as a threat to us as a society (in some ways) and the fact that it shouldn't be taken so seriously 

Studio Brief 02 - Steven Fry social media rant/essay

English writer, presenter and activist Stephen Fry has urged his fans to abandon social networks, comparing such platforms to 'dystopian' forms of government seen in 1970s sci-fi films such as Logan's Run and Soylent Green. In a 2,600-word essay, the comedian, who had over four million Twitter followers prior to deleting his account in February, also compared the 'surveilled conformity' of social media to the unreal state of society depicted in The Matrix. "Who most wants you to stay on the grid? The advertisers. Your boss. Human Resources. The advertisers. Your parents (irony of ironies -- once they distrusted it, now they need to tag you electronically, share your Facebook photos and message you to death). The advertisers. The government. Your local authority. Your school. Advertisers," he writes. "Well, if you're young and have an ounce of pride, doesn't that list say it all?

OFF THE GRID

This shouldn’t be a blog. It really shouldn’t be a blog. But it has to be a blog I think. So here is this blog.

JACKING OUT

What might be the proudest boast of any young person now, teenager, or twenty-something? They have been given, willy nilly, demographic tags like ‘millennial’, ‘post-millennial’, ‘Generation Z’, ‘i-Gen’ — not out of anybody’s acute cultural observation, sympathy or understanding but either to bulk up a HuffPo article or to delineate convenient advertising categories, within which many sub-categories can be established. You are not a person, you are an algorithmic assumption, a mould into which hot selling-jelly may be poured.

So. What might be the proudest boast of these young?

I’ve got this app.

I’ve written this app.

My YouTube Channel won an award.

I’ve got xy followers on thisdotcom?

Well maybe. But I’m going to suggest that if I was young now, my proudest boast would be: ‘My friends and I, we disappeared ourselves. No social media, no email, no chat, no wifi, no selfies, no SMS, no smartphones. We did it. We did this thing. We Got Off The Grid.’

Why should anyone want to dissociate themselves from all that connectedness, fun, convenience, reach and power? Well, because it would be – and I can’t be bothered to search for a better word and anyway perhaps there isn’t one – awesome.

 The great William Gibson (he coined the word ‘cyberspace’) wrote about ‘jacking into the matrix’ with an awareness, I think, that ‘jacking’ carries a druggie connotation. Jacking out of the matrix will entail plenty of cold turkey and I don’t propose it lightly or without a sense of how difficult and disruptive it would be. But then, when I was young, being difficult and disruptive was more or less what I lived for.

Jacking out of the matrix would cast one as a hero of the kind of dystopian film that proved popular in the 70s, Logan’s Run, Zardoz, Soylent Green, Fahrenheit 451 … on the run from The Corporation, with the foot soldiers of The System hard on your heels. We really are starting to live in that kind of movie, mutatis mutandis, so surely it’s time to join the Rebels, the Outliers, the Others who live beyond the Wall and read forbidden books, sing forbidden songs and think forbidden thoughts in defiance of The One.

Remembering what I was like at fifteen, I wriggle pleasurably at the thought of how it would feel in 2016 to tell a teacher that, no, I couldn’t possibly ‘e-mail’ my homework, because I don’t have e-mail:

‘I’m not on your email, miss/sir.’

‘Don’t be absurd, Stephen. Email me the essay as soon as possible.’

‘I will write it and bring it in to class tomorrow for you to mark. I’ll do that happily.’

Sudden sympathy. ‘Oh. If there’s an issue … if your parents can’t afford broadband or a computer, there are government schemes…’

‘My parents do have the band that is broad of which you speak, miss. They offered me one of the machines that understands the language of the “e-mailings” that so excites you. But I want no part of such elec-trickery.’

And so on. What larks. They couldn’t force me to have an online presence after all. These days, while there may be much talk of digital connection being a civil right, that doesn’t make it a civic duty, or a legal compulsion.

My friends and I, liberated from all digital shackles, would giggle at those sheep who flee to the playground to fire up their devices every time the break bell sounds, like addicted smokers lighting up in a theatre interval. We would watch them as they gaze, lips parted and eyes glazed over, at their Snapchats, WhatsApps, Tweets, Tumblrs, Boomerangs, Meerkats, Vines and Periscopes and how lucky we would feel to be above it all and out of it all. Out of the bullying and wheedling and neediness. Out of the invisible selling, the loveless flirting and cowardly mocking. Out of the unbearable long silences and the ceaseless screaming chatter. Out of the vengeful rivalries, the frenzied desperation and the wrenching loneliness.

We would turn on our heels and go to the park, the town library or a greasy-spoon café. One that doesn’t plead to be liked on Facebook. We would talk of God and guitar chords, poetry, fashion, sport and sex like any teenagers, but we’d do it lying on our backs looking at the sky, gigglingly whispering in reference libraries or coolly nudging the pinball machine into a replay.

I know, I know, I know. This is just maudlin, nostalgic mush. You can’t go back. But all my imagination can do when picturing a life off the grid is summon up the life I had before the grid existed, so I cannot help being retrospective. Signing off and logging out may seem to some like a move back, a fatuous attempt to disinvent the wheel, a modern equivalent of The Good Life, digging up Wikipedia and planting cabbages over it or steampunking the new to create a simulacrum of the old, but what I am talking about is a move forward for those who have never known anything but the digital world. Generation Z (it brings vomit to the gorge even to type that) must invent their own reality, not replay mine. No, this is not about the retro chic of analogue, it is about forging a new reality outside the – for want of a better word – matrix.

33 RPM

But first, what would motivate any young person today to pull the plug?

Well maybe they should consider this for a moment. Who most wants you to stay on the grid? The advertisers. Your boss. Human Resources. The advertisers. Your parents (irony of ironies – once they distrusted it, now they need to tag you electronically, share your Facebook photos and message you to death). The advertisers. The government. Your local authority. Your school. Advertisers.

Well, if you’re young and have an ounce of pride, doesn’t that list say it all? So fuck you, I’m Going Off The Grid.

 We all know vinyl has made a comeback. That has been deprecated as a feeble, self-conscious example of retro nostalgia, or applauded as a finger jabbed up to the contemptuously poor quality of MP3 and the so-called ‘lossless’ codecs in which music is almost universally served up these days.

Vinyl reminds us that, before the days of the internet, digitisation and streaming, musicians were perfectly able to create extraordinary new sounds and write immortal songs. It’s not helpful for me to suggest that the music that came from people meeting up in garages and sheds and bedrooms was better than the music being made now, because such a claim would rightly be put down to the obvious preference we all have for the music of our youth – but no one surely can deny that it was possible to create marvellous sounds and write marvellous songs without the help of MIDI synthesisers and Protools loops.

Magazines were put together by friends who had something to say, trivial or profound, it didn’t matter. They wrote out their articles and drew their illustrations and cartoons in exercise books and on notepads and then laboriously typed and pricked them out them onto stencils that were stretched on the drums of intricate duplicating machines. The run-off pages were manually stapled or bound together into something that could call itself a magazine. Maybe two hundred were produced in one run, which might be exhibited on the shelves of a kindly local newsagent who had been persuaded to carry them ‘sale or return’.

Things that were necessary in this world were paper, pencils, typewriters, diaries, cash, dictionaries and maps.

I don’t know what would be needed if you decided to go off the grid today. I imagine the same instruments – musical and graphical, from pianos to Rotring pens – would be helpful. A lot more walking: walking to leave notes at friends’ houses, walking to post-boxes, walking to the library, walking to shops that sold goods but did not deliver, walking to rendezvous points like pubs, cafés, parks and public spaces because the only way you could all assemble and talk would be to meet face to face.

All the junk that would get cleared away! Computers, drives, printers, USB hubs, webcams, ink-cartridges, keyboards, phone chargers and miles and miles of cable. Spray it with resin and create an art installation.

You’d learn the joy of writing again … “poets love their handwriting, it’s like smelling your own farts” W. H. Auden wrote. Everything would be physical. Everything would be tactile, real and atomic. Everything would have heft and feel and touch and brush and swish and mass and heart.

I am not cursing the internet, Savonarola-like, and calling for a bonfire of its vanities, nor am I decrying it for the usual reasons – concentration span, over-simplicity of access to knowledge, softening of the brain, blah-blah-blah. I don’t really subscribe to any of that.

Rota Fortunae

Swings and cycles. I sometimes subscribe to the Boethian idea (so beloved of the immortal Ignatius P. Reilly) of the Wheel of Fortune. The wheel (think London Eye) takes people round, they have their time at the top which they enjoy all the more because they have come from the bottom to get there. But they must always remember that they will soon be on their way down.

I hopped aboard the digital wheel in the late 80s as it was just rolling upwards. To change metaphorical horses midstream, we felt like frontiersmen heading west, west, west in search of gold and new land.

At first this was a text-driven, not a graphically driven world, but all that changed when in 1993 or thereabouts Mosaic arrived, the first program available for general use that could browse Tim Berners-Lee’s new invention, the worldwide web.

By the mid-nineties, and yes it really did take that long, the online services like CompuServe and America Online offered their subscribers an ‘internet ramp’ which meant you could dial into them and find a door out into the free world of the internet. This is important. The internet, as opposed to AOL and the others, was like a great city. It certainly had slums and red-light districts and places you wouldn’t want to visit after night, but the museums and art-galleries, theatres, cinemas, squares, parks, post-offices and streets were packed with excitement. AOL though, was a wipe-clean, family-friendly planned community, a digital Milton Keynes. Ample cycle-paths, parking and street-lighting – but fuck me how dreary, safe and bland. AOL hated having to provide the internet ramp out of its closed system, but it was inevitable. So they upped their game and started to sell themselves as a true internet provider. Higher they rose on the wheel.

Every movie poster or commercial for the next few years had an AOL #keyword printed on it, along with the now standard web URL. Every shop counter and every magazine was adorned with AOL membership CDs. I once gave a party in the 90s for 40 or so people and managed to ensure that I distributed about the surfaces at least 40 AOL CDs to use as wine coasters.

At the same time all the talk was of ‘portals’. Alta Vista, Yahoo, Excite, Lycos, they had their moments at the top of the wheel too. They provided your homepage, crammed with personalised tidbits and primitive widgets. Your commitment to them kept them big. They were sometimes service providers and search-engines too. The battle was on to keep you from being an individual roaming free in the big world and to keep you on the paved streets of their city.

THE WILD WEST

Two internets developed. The real internet, as I would call it, was that Wild West where anything went, shit in the streets and Bad Men abounding, no road-signs and no law, but ideas were freely exchanged, the view wasn’t ruined by advertising billboards and every moment was very very exciting.

The other internet was an environment packaged supposedly for your safe, simple navigation and convenient access. First AOL led the way here, next came the portals and after a few misfires (MySpace and Bebo) Google arrived and blew all the other portals and search-engines out of the water while Facebook established itself as the new AOL.

AOL was once so mighty that it was the senior partner in the merger with Time Warner, at the time the largest of its kind in history. Now it is so embarrassing an entity that it is no longer included in the name of the media giant that owns it. The wheel came round.

The wheel does not stop. Ever. Not for any one or any thing no matter how mighty. It didn’t stop for the real Wild West, which soon had its day, nor did it stop for its online successor. The digital Wild West may have been rough and lawless but folk were politer to strangers and knew their manners better than the ruthless, ambitious citizens who took over. The pioneer territory has now had its shitty streets and crooked boardwalks paved over. In place of saloons there are strip malls, fun fairs and multiplexes. The telegraph and train killed the stage coach and the pony express. The wheel turned.

And Facebook will be dust one day. Hard to imagine perhaps but obviously and happily true. ‘Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.’

For now, Facebook is of course all powerful and finds itself busy eating the internet (thereby preparing its own extinction) and of course parents are on it. That’s how crap it is.

I and millions of other early ‘netizens’ as we embarrassingly called ourselves, joined an online world that seemed to offer an alternative human space, to welcome in a friendly way (the word netiquette was used) all kinds of people with all kinds of views. We were outside the world of power and control. Politicians, advertisers, broadcasters, media moguls, corporates and journalists had absolutely zero understanding of the net and zero belief that it mattered. So we felt like an alternative culture; we were outsiders.

Those very politicians, advertisers, media moguls, corporates and journalists who thought the internet a passing fad have moved in and grabbed the land. They have all the reach, scope, power and ‘social bandwidth’ there is. Everyone else is squeezed out — given little hutches, plastic megaphones and a pretence of autonomy and connectivity. No wonder so many have become so rude, resentful, threatening and unkind.

LOG OFF, JACK OUT, POWER DOWN

The radical alternative now must be to jack out of the matrix, to go off the grid.

If this blog is read by 10,000 people (which will be a lot fewer, off course, than might have read it if I had stayed on Twitter) well, fine. Strangely, if I printed it samizdat style, by way of an old-fashioned Gestetner duplicator and it was read as a physical pamphlet by only 100 people, I would feel that it had connected far more and with far greater purpose and meaning. It is not about the numbers. It is never about the numbers. Don’t let them tell you otherwise.

I live in a world without Facebook, and now without Twitter. I manage to survive too without Kiki, Snapchat, Viber, Telegram, Signal and the rest of them. I haven’t yet learned to cope without iMessage and SMS. I haven’t yet turned my back on email and the Cloud. I haven’t yet jacked out of the matrix and gone off the grid. Maybe I will pluck up the courage.

After you …

Thirsty Planet - Poster design

Meg started to create the posters first to hopefully set the tone for the way in which our campaign heads visually. However, her designs were equipped for screen print and I wanted to perhaps take this further and develop one that could be printed digitally too.

Meg's design for screen print

My design

I digitally drew the elephant. the world outline and the splashed using my wacom tablet. I wanted to incorporate the logo (that is specified we use within the project pack) by involving it more within the design. Simply by making the water drip onto part of the lettering ties them together more.

I personally felt that my design was more aimed towards the current aesthetics of the recent rebrand.

Taken from the new Thirsty Planet website - the fact that this was only recent put up and was not included within the brief is really quite confusing for us. When I noticed the website update it kind of threw me off in a way as it made me realise they perhaps weren't looking for new aesthetics, but for something more.

In another meeting we presented each other's designs and discussed the design aesthetics that would be chosen to represent the campaign.

In a way it was quite difficult to decided as we all felt quite passionate about each of our designs. It became apparent we needed to choose one elephant design to take forward as it could be confusing for the consumer to be visually met with a number if different elephant designs. As graphic designers me and Alice understood this best and in an effort to create a stronger more impactful elephant design. I edited Alice's elephant design to my poster to see if this was a better outcome. Ultimately we couldn't decided as a group and this kind of let us in limbo.

Studio Brief 02 - Quotes, opinions and phrases about social media

- Zygmunt Bauman

Studio Brief 02 - Black Mirror - Nose Dive

Black Mirror is a Netflix series I watch and episode "Nose Dive" quickly become one of my biggest inspirations for this project.

It explores the journey of character Lacie, a young woman who is evidently unhappy with her current social status; which is a 4.2. In this near future world social status is the utmost important thing and is ruled by digitally rating each other through an app/device. Everyone is living in a fake world were online image is everything to them, often some characters letting their personal lives slide all to appear perfect.

Say one bad thing to someone = bad rating

Look at someone the wrong was = bad rating

Be a friend to someone who everyone doesn't like = bad rating

Everything is judged and it was so interesting to see how the story of Lacie's social downfall occurs in this strange, creepy near future Earth that scarily parallels social media habits and addictions that seem to have become more evident for us humans today.

Here are some notes of my thoughts I wrote down as I watched:

• the fact that people are rated is really creepy to me - it kind of reminds me of Uber - as soon as you leave you rate your experience
• her strive for success in the social media world is something that a lot of people strive for today through instagram/twitter etc...

• here she takes a perfect/aesthetically pleasing photograph of a coffee and uploads it to receive lots of praise, likes and happy responses - she feels good - she gets that hit of dopamine 
• interestingly when she tastes the coffee - it tastes bad - which is a reflection on the theme of "not everything is as good as it looks"

• This scene here is something I actually think is a common sight today
• People often stand there using their phones, not communicating with each other

• Things really go bad for Lacie as she tries her hardest to please everyone in order to gain her a higher rating, which takes her nowhere 
• her online social life, which is ultimately her only social life is ruined as her rating takes a "nose dive"
• she mentally breaksdown in front of a big crowd of people which brings her rating to an all time low of ZERO - this could reflect on mental health and depression social media can often be a part of

• she gets arrested for her public outburst of emotions and ironically is set free
• with no phone she screams with joy in her cell and begins a conversation with a fellow prison inmate - her most genuine human interaction for the duration of the whole episode

My overall summary and thoughts

• Although very dystopian, this episode is very reflective of modern society today which is a something that shocked me
• Maybe is isn't about the future? but is preying on the things we take for granted for in the present and the things we rely on too heavily for "happiness"
• Social media platforms put so much pressure on people to lead perfect, interesting and engaging lives, especially young people who have been brought up with these technological advances 
• The symbolism was extremely inspiring - amazing photo of coffee, contrasting with it tasting bad - only becoming free when she's locked in a cell phoneless 
• This type of imagery is something I want to explore within my final outcome
• Watching this episode made me think... is the chase of popularity over social media worth it? Is the acceptance through "likes" of friends and strangers through necessary? Ultimately it isn't

"The episode also suggests that the only way to approach the coveted 5.0 rating is to project a Martha Stewart Living illusion of graceful, plastic beauty. Pride and Prejudice director Joe Wright gives Lacie's pre-nosedive life a peach-and-pastel glow that's luminously pretty on-screen, but so flavorless and fake, it's impossible to imagine it's the only standard for five-star life. And yet there's no hint that anyone but the most low-rated outcasts in Lacie's world value any other form of achievement or art. In the real world, at minimum, there would be ways for people to degrade themselves for quick bursts of approval, like in the mesmerizing first season Black Mirror episode "Fifteen Million Merits." In "Nosedive," the only option for people who like grit or grunge is to drop out of the system, and take the consequences.

But "Nosedive" isn't out for reality. It's out to extrapolate the endgame of customer ratings systems, which turn the world into a lopsided giant prisoner's dilemma of applied power. And as exaggerated and unlikely as it is, it's also an effective story, because even in the broadness of its metaphor, it's relatable. Howard's performance goes a long way toward making the story work, because she projects such a fragile, brittle form of happiness when she's working hard for validation, and she's so rawly naked and afraid when her tricks stop working, and her real self starts pouring past the dams she's built. That feeling should be familiar to anyone who's censored their own image on social media out of fear of exposure, or just in hopes of a sparking a particular response from a particular person. It should be familiar to anyone who's ever had someone else post an unflattering photo of them, or fielded a hateful comment from a stranger."

https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/24/13379204/black-mirror-season-3-episode-1-nosedive-recap

Studio Brief 02 - Presentation feedback

• Is a very relevant topic of today as social media usage is increasing

• Don't tell people not to use it or to put them off as it is such a huge part of the modern life - fighting something that is inevitable - use of social media

• Been told to check out a Ted Talk that discusses my topic within depth

• Something we all experience whether as a graphic designers or within our personal lives