Lecture: Type-production & Distribution

Typography exist because of historical context, it is the art and technique of printing. It is the art of how language looks like illustrative picture have sound.

The origins of writing: the first true alphabet was the Greek Evolution development pictures into symbol alphabet.

Johannes Gutenberg (1450) worked on the printing press in 1436, it is not language, but effectively present the culture and religion. The elementary education act (1870) is when reading became mass culture, where form and function of type are considered. The idea of design of type starts with Bauhaus (1919-1933), function and mass production started. Typography does not only appears on printed word, but as picture art as well.

Lecture: A 20,000 Years Non-linear history of the Image

Historical and contemporary visual communication
Lascaux Caves in France might be the very first attempt of visual communication of human found in the world. "Not just record but unconscious of human", I agree that human unconscious include the record of information, and at first when languages was not developed, imagery is the most direct recordable information.

Speaking of purpose, image is also a tool of displaying the power of the owner, one of the identical example is this one.Even if speaking of the contemporary information convey, imagery is still the most direct way of communication. What's different from the past is image contains political, culture involved in different area, and cult culture. Contemporary art involves reproducing of primary pieces which impact on different aspects, such as political purpose.  Contemporary adverts, a form of communication, demonstrates ideal lives and situation,  critics of being incomplete.

Lecture: Modern animation

Early modern animation introduced during the lecture.

Fantasmagorie: Deconstructive abstract animation made in the period of 1908. It reflects on animation development of central character, reflects on process of animation as well.

Our of the inkewell: people in the past dreaming and imagining about the future. It connects between animator’s personality and his/her character.

The term Culture Industry is introduced, which came out because some think under capitalism, culture is just made through “production line”, the cultural products is more about selling than impact.

Study Task: Compare the two Animations

The two animation I have chosen are the Short Vision and the Duck Amuck, which after viewing both of then, I found share less similarities but have huge differences on varies aspects. I am going the compare these two animations, and to conclude the differences and similarities of both of them.

The Short Vision is an animation with a water colour painting style vision, with old fashioned audio track and a narrator with deep voice. The first half of the animation were comparatively quiet and narrates the same message recurred 3 times but just the shifts of the character. It used the technique of redrawing on the previous painting in order to create the continuous effect when filming each painting. It is deconstructive and touches lightly on political, and slightly abstract at the same time. The meaning of the animation depends on what the audience interpreted. It contains some sensitive and horror scene, therefore restricted the audience by age.

The Duck Amuck is a formal animation with a suitable length that is mainly made to amuse the audience, whilst the age group of the audience is considered lower. It is a digitally drawn animation, with amusing sound effect and a voice cover of the main character, and again it reinforced the point that the purpose of this animation falls on entertaining mainly. It conveys the information smartly to the audience by having the main character talking in the first person to the audience out of the screen, he interacts with the background of the animation as well.

In comparison of these two animations, the style of drawing are totally different when one is hand-drawn whilst the other one digitally drawn, the Duck Amuck face a younger age group of audience, oppositely the Short Vision faces a comparatively mature age group. It has a clearer story line though it is wild, and the Duck Amuck does not have a main story but to serve the purpose of entertaining instead. Both animations have got a narrator either behind the scene or the voice of the character.

Lecture: Visual Literacy

Visual literacy, interpreted as the language of design, the communication of design. It solves problem of communication through motion and image, it includes all sorts of media such as words, language, message and meaning. Visual literacy effectively communicate ideas, concepts and content to different audience in a range of context.

What is visual communication? It is the process of sending and receiving messages using type and images, which based on a level of shared understanding of sign, symbol, gesture and objects. On the other hand, it is affected by audience, contexts media and method of communicate. Visual literacy is the ability to construct meaning, to interpret images of present past, range of cultures.  The capability of interpreting, negotiate from information and to present it in the form of an image, that includes all kinds of image, is how visual communication is applied. It is the ability of manipulating the known samples based on image can be read.

A set of sign is what a group of people agreed that stand for the same thing, it is how language can exist. Although, symbols has multiple meanings, the meanings are indicated by the context of the symbol where it is placed.