Rachael Swedenborg: Art 470
Hello there! My name is Rachael. I study graphic design at Portland State University. This Blog has been created to show the progress I make through my Art 470 class in the spring term of 2011. Enjoy!
“Clear transmittance of information occurs when the encoder shares the same culture as the decoder.”
This article discussed a problem that faces many challenges and the approach taken to address the problem. The overview is in Africa is that strong awareness of AIDS prevention through visual communication is weak. To outsource the advertising to U.S is problematic since the is lacking understanding of African culture create successful campaigns. The solution is to join with the Kenyan people and work together to solve a design problem.
A virtual design studio was setup between Audrey Bennett’s team and a design workshop in Kenya. They would communicate through interactive technologies such as Elluminate, LearnLInc and Yahoo groups. Bennett developed a three phase practical approach to graphic design. This was used to guide the design process from start to finish. Starting from concept development, to thumbnail sketches, revisions and final printing.
The posters produced by the Kenyan people were far more successful at communicating an accepted message to their target audience.
I thought it was interesting to see such scientific method applied to the design process. One aim of this group was supposed to be to educate the Kenyan participants so they would be able to design on their own once the project was over. Its interesting to consider the difference approaches different designers take given their cultural background.
Create interest
Create information
Create intelligent design
The concept of cultural probes is the concept of smart and caring design.
There are a variety of techniques that can be taken to further your understanding of a client. Watching people at their activities over considerable periods of time, often supplemented by video or audio recordings. This can be difficult even in a work environment but is far more difficult in personal and domestic settings. Also observations can tell you about what people do, but less about what they feel. How do you find out what is really important to them and what just mundane? Cultural probes are one way to access environments that are difficult to observe directly and also to capture more of this ‘felt life’.
