designing the proposal

working on the design of the proposal has taken a lot of refinement and playing - here are a few screenshots from during my process:

Cover image

Having a play with some ideas for a cover image I tried these:

I wasn't sure about this so also tried the Barbara Kruger style:

I really liked this but wondered if I needed to try some different colours as this was so clearly a homage of Barbara Kruger and maybe I needed to make it more my own?

However these colours were nowhere near as strong as the red.

Visual generation

I wanted to continue with creating some of my own visuals but wasn't sure what I wanted to try next. I thought back to the Smokefree campaign and used this to try and create some visuals resembling alcohol and its relationship to identity. These didn't turn out quite as I'd hoped tho

So to move on from that I tried another stylistic avenue - that of Barbara Kruger. This really got my creative juices flowing and I enjoyed playing with these ideas. I think this will help my visual direction for my proposal.

Workbook

After presenting the Smirnoff ad at suprcrit I decided to look at it from a semiotic view and found it contained a lot of surprisingly similar elements as water ads.

Following that I decided to re-look at the Absolut style and try creating some of my own versions.

Kalle Lasn / AdBusters

Following up on Karl's idea to re-look into Ad-Busters in a bit more depth and Kalle Lasn (one of the founders) I gathered some interesting research.

I also watched a lecture by Kalle Lasn however he was more focused on designers and our role rather than on advertising and commercialism.

https://vimeo.com/56821945

The points I did take away from it were:

* designers are corporate slaves to their clients
* aesthetic at the moment is quite organic (unclear lines, script type). This is because of the 'green' way of thinking and environmentally/sustainable ideas present in society.

More looking - focus on design tools

I decided I needed to go back to looking at design stuff rather than my topic directly so read David Crow's book: Visible Signs. This was an interesting book and so I went on to look at some more visual things to try and get some inspiration.

When this didn't get my creative juices flowing I decided to look over everything I'd collected and analysed these screenshots, along with the data from my survey:

Survey

To try and help myself get some perspective I put a survey to my peers which consisted of 3 quick simple questions about why they drink and when they drink and any other comments they have on New Zealand's drinking culture. I shared it with young people on social media as this I have done a lot of analysis into this platform already so it made sense to spread it this way and only this way.

WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY PROJECT?!

I think this week is stress meltdown week for me! I know I need to start writing but I also haven't neatly packaged my idea and am therefore struggling to even get started.

Am spending a lot of time writing down thoughts/ideas trying to find that little gem. Spent a lot of time talking on the phone to my mum, and had a massive brainstorm with my boyfriend yet nothing quite feels just right yet.

I've gotten to a point where I feel like my research question is more fitting to what I want to do:

How can design critique the way advertising has normalised and glamourised a binge drinking culture, in order to encourage a shift in young people's attitudes towards excessive consumption of alcohol?

So I guess now that I've somewhat cleared this up for myself, I will start writing and see where it takes me.

more looking

Trying to think up a solution I've spent some time just looking and I came back to the comparison between alcohol and tobacco and how this played to the idea that alcohol is part of your social identity and who are you without it? This reminded me of the really successful ad from a while back that humanised the cigarette:

http://www.hpa.org.nz/stop-before-you-start

Alcohol ad

Whilst I was out at the mall in Porirua on the weekend I noticed this Wither Hills ad on the digital board:

I thought it was noting that these ads are in a place where people of all ages are and its a leisure space which seems inappropriate.

#supercrit (+advisor session #5 - Lee)

Supercrit today was really good and really bad at the same time. I worked really hard to get my project up to speed, but I still don't feel like it's there yet.

The research question I presented was: how can design critique alcohol advertising on social media to encourage a change in the normalised heavy drinking culture amongst young people?

However looking at this - I myself struggled to ideate some ways to respond to it - and I call myself a designer!!!

Given my research into Smirnoff, I used them as an example to start conversations with people and find out their perspectives on alcohol advertising. I had some really valuable discussions with people about the image - yet I'm not sure what I now want to do with this.

The feedback from Lee was equally helpful and unhelpful as I need someone to give me my "ah hah!" moment of how my research and perspectives can tie together into a neatly packaged design idea - yet nobody seems to want to give it to me!

He did however give me some perspective on how to take my research question and mould it into a central proposition without being wishy-washy about it.

He also mentioned to look into algorithms and I found these interesting articles:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4214264/How-algorithms-secretly-run-world.html
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/cover_story/2016/01/how_facebook_s_news_feed_algorithm_works.html
However I don't really understand them myself and it's not a path I think I'd like to go down so am going to try and steer my project away from this.

Critiques from other peers also didn't provide much guidance into where this could all lead so I guess I need to try and take the bull by the horns and give myself a strong proposition.

Smirnoff

Also to follow up on feedback I looked at Smirnoff as a case study and analysed both their US and NZ channels:

https://vimeo.com/62428115
Video of the Smirnoff Nightlife Exchange Project

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc8UWYAXoKs
The video portion of the Smirnoff Drinks Engine campaign

http://www.campaignlive.com/article/case-study-steps-smirnoff-took-revive-its-flavored-vodka-business/1412711
And the accompanying analysis of the Smirnoff Drinks Engine

Detournement

Thanks to Karl's little gem last Friday I looked into detournement and it's a really interesting strategy similar to satire that I think could be really influential in how I start to think about designing my work.

The weekend

I used this weekend to try and catch myself back up in order to use time during the week to move forward, progress my project and prepare for #supercrit.

I had read a fantastic book on youth cultures in a digital world that was extremely relevant for my project so I made lots of notes from this. I also went over all the other books I'd had out and reading I had to make notes however some of these were no longer relevant now that my project has developed from binge drinking to more specifically alcohol advertising and the way it impacts drinking culture.

From my notes I now have more to look into around existing case studies, and some more factual pieces of information to use to back up my project.

I also had a look at an app that promotes drinking!!!
It's absolutely insane - it's a drinking game with the sole purpose of getting wasted!

Now I need to read into the new things that have been brought to light by my research, generate some ideas/visuals, and start considering how I want to structure my research proposal.

Friday class + Advisor Crit #4 with Karl

Friday was such a great day for me! I met up with Lee in the morning as I have had a rough time over the last couple of weeks for personal reasons which has left me feeling a bit behind with my project.

He was really reassuring about it all but also very straight up with me that yes, I am behind. But I can still catch up and get back on track. We discussed my interest in alcohol advertising and the critical analyses of alcohol marketing on social media. My concern was that I wasn't sure what my outcome will be and haven't been developing any visual systems yet. He suggested that I think more about who specifically I am talking to and look at specific brands. We also discussed the massive amount of potential of different platforms - website, campaign, hand-outs - really anything! And rhetoric might be a great way to play and have fun with my project (Absolut(ely terrible) Vodka).

Then I had a really great advisor group session with Karl!

Don't Turn a Night out into a Night mare

Really interesting Aussie campaign:

http://www.drinkingnightmare.gov.au/internet/drinkingnightmare/publishing.nsf/Content/order-form

Background:
Alcohol-related harm is a major cause of mortality and morbidity in Australia, causing around 3,000 deaths and 65,000 hospitalisations every year. After tobacco, alcohol is the second largest contributor to drug-related harm in Australia, causing harmful effects in both the short and longer term.

Target audience:
The campaign’s primary target audiences are teenagers aged 15-17 and young adults aged 18-25 years. Evidence shows that a high proportion of the alcohol consumed by both adolescent and young adult drinkers is at risky and high risk levels. For these reasons, 15-17 year olds and 18-25 year olds represent important target audiences for a campaign targeting the harms associated with binge drinking.

Campaign message:
The National Binge Drinking Campaign and key tagline ‘Don’t turn a night out into a nightmare’ is designed to encourage teenagers and young adults to think about the choices they make about drinking, and particularly the possible negative consequences of excessive alcohol consumption.