Stress Pitch & Feedback

Pitching my proposed issue and research to go along with it was incredibly useful in finding out other people's thoughts/views on it and any suggested more research to look into. One thing that was pointed out was to focus on one particular area that stress effects, e.g. just in the workplace or in everyday life. I originally suggested focusing on stress within the workplace as this is very common but a suggestion was put forward by another student to potentially look at things such as bills or parking tickets as examples of things that cause stress and how these could potentially be reimagined and redesigned to relieve/decrease stress rather than causing it.

Another point was put forward as there was a case of stress a couple years ago from a teacher who ultimately sued the college due to a serious amount of stress put on her. The result was a lifetime of paid salary after a court battle proved she was overworked and stressed out. This brings up the issue of how maybe the environments we work in couple with our routines can bring more stress to our lives, so potentially looking at the environments we work in could be a potential idea. Google for example, have separate rooms for chilling out, gaming etc. where staff can take solid breaks to enjoy themselves and it benefits each individual. Maybe the changes can't always be as extreme as those in the Google office, but visually and physically the environment could be altered to relieve pressure and stress, which is something I could look into.

"And the perks, she added, are “amazing.” In the course of our brief conversation, she mentioned subsidized massages (with massage rooms on nearly every floor); free once-a-week eyebrow shaping; free yoga and Pilates classes; a course she took called “Unwind: the art and science of stress management”; a course in advanced negotiation taught by a Wharton professor; a health consultation and follow-up with a personal health counselor; an author series and an appearance by the novelist Toni Morrison; and a live interview of Justin Bieber by Jimmy Fallon in the Google office."

(Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/16/business/at-google-a-place-to-work-and-play.html)

Stress Stress Stress

STRESS

Stress can be cause by a lot of things but generally it's because we're overworked, copious amounts of work and the penultimate deadlines. But I think we just overtime get used to it and take it on the chin as a fact of life, that there's not a huge amount we can do about it to release some pressure of our minds and be more at peace.

Overtime stress can lead to both mental and physical problems which can progressively get worse if not dealt with. This is where I want to be able to solve some of the issue because there are a lot of ways to relieve stress but they aren't discussed enough amongst people.

Meditation

Meditation is something well known to not just relieve the effects of stress but also anxiety and depression. Along with this other known benefits include:

- Helps with pressure and therefore deadlines
- Improves focus, attention and ability to work under stress
- Improves process and decision making
- Fosters creativity
- Increases compassion and decreases worries, which could lead to a friendlier work environment.

Exercise

- It pumps up your endorphins. Physical activity helps bump up the production of your brain's feel-good neurotransmitters, called endorphins.
- It's meditation in motion, often people find that they've forgotten about the day's irritations and concentrated only on their body movements.
- It improves your mood. Regular exercise can increase self-confidence, it can relax you, and it can lower the symptoms associated with mild depression and anxiety.
- Exercise can also improve your sleep, which is often disrupted by stress, depression and anxiety.

These ways are especially useful to relieve stress along with other things but thinking ahead to my practical piece I'm not sure if I want to entirely focus on creating something that quite literally informs people of signs of stress and how to relieve it. Instead I want to focus more on 'designing for stress', reimagining things that can cause stress and through design finding how this can be altered for the better.

Product, Range & Distribution Brief

Examine graphic design outputs relating to social, political and ethical change.

This brief is something I've been looking forward to mainly because of how topical it is, issues are something that are everywhere and finding a way to solve them can always come out with some interesting results.

One big issue I think with our every developing society is technology, or at least certain aspects of it. Things such as AI and our own privacy on things such as laptops, phones etc. can be issues. There have been numerous accounts in the past of webcams being breached by hackers which begs the question of it we really have our own privacy when technology is involved.

A couple of other issues I thought of include procrastination, social media, materialism, ocean waste and stress. Stress was the main one that stood out to me as something that affects pretty much everyone but isn't addressed or dealt with as it should be. I think stress is something that is ubiquitous in the design industry with thing such as looming deadlines, stressful clients and heavy workloads. So I feel this is something that could be interesting to explore and maybe to try and tackle to the best of my ability, it's something that would hopefully help myself and others to deal with stress better in everyday life.

Collab: Further feedback

I proposed our idea for the campaign to another student over in Oslo who I met a couple of months back, he said:

"I like the second one best. The "don't just watch the ballet, watch an athlete" doesn't work for me because I don't watch the ballet. By saying "don't just" your implying that their already watching the ballet - witch I guess they don't since their your target audience. Like that you've narrowed it down to athlete, craftsmen and musician. Cause that for me is making something high-class cultural more middle-class in a way. Your a craftsman, come see the work of other craftsmen, in a way. It for me washes out some of the lines between performer and audience witch is nice."

He also suggested a way to develop it further to consider maybe taking athlete, craftsman and musician and showing how ballet is a visual form of all these roles.

"Could you turn it into; 'see music made visual/movable', 'craftsmanship made movable', athletes made sensual/emotional/movable. Like the line moveable because ballet is movement and emotions, and emotions that move you are moveable right? Or music in movement, athletes in movement, craftsmanship in movement?"

I think this was really vital feedback for the development of our idea from where it currently stands. The idea he suggested takes into account the emotions that go into ballet which is what we're aiming for, so possibly a combination of this idea and our current one could work together.

LoveParade 2000 - Roundhay Park

Given my interest in electronic music, more specifically techno and music festivals themselves this was a perfect opportunity to explore in more depth into the field of music. The parade itself is predominantly trance, techno and house and in Berlin was a huge well known event until it was stopped in 2010 for accidental deaths from overcrowding. Some of the world's biggest DJ's would come to play to hundreds of thousands and in some years, over 1 million people would turn up. It makes you wonder what it is that we all have in common to come together to such an event, aside from the love for the music itself, people of all classes, races and genders come to enjoy what's being played.

Techno originated in Detroit in America, but soon became more known throughout Europe, more specifically Berlin where it was supposedly the bonding glue between east and west Berlin after the wall came down in 1989. Soon after, LoveParade was born out of Berlin and is considered to be a political demonstration for peace and international understanding of love and music. According to Beatrice Aaronson, 

'techno transcends racial & class boundaries and takes us back to our tribal roots.'

This is an interesting thought, something that's never crossed my mind before but I think it's something that definitely makes logical sense. Christina Goulding makes another closely related point of how

'we rave to escape and dance among other like minded individuals who form an exclusive community.'

"The dancefloor generates a sentiment of community that virtually satisfies the sensation of isolation and constraint engendered by society due to its percussive and repetitive nature that recalls the frenetic drums of African tribal dances. Due to the out-of-body experience dance can generate, it is suggested that someone who dances to techno, moving to percussive and repetitive music ‘is freed from society’s rules.’”

This has inspired me to look deeper into techno and our tribal roots because I think this could create an interesting concept and visual for my poster design. Using traditional print methods could do a good job of replicating the tribal-y theme and style I'd be aiming for, techniques such as monoprint and linoprint would create a roughed up, abstract look.

Collab: Feedback on Ideas

Having a critique session for this brief I think proved useful in terms of pinning down exactly what our concept is so we know going on from this point, exactly what we need to be aiming towards.

What we're doing:

- Showing all aspects of a ballet production.
- Recognising the work that goes into the music, costumes, set design and dancing itself.
- We are highlighting specifically that athletes, craftsmen and musicians are all part of the ballet.
- Through the use of athletes, musicians and craftsmen the campaign makes direct link between ballet and the cultural activities that our target audience are already engaged with.

Collab: Questionnaire Results

We published a questionnaire to get a rough idea of how people already perceive ballet and also their thoughts and opinions on it. But also to get an idea of what these people already engage in culturally, to see if there could be potential for people to experience ballet the same way they would go to gigs, exhibitions etc.

The majority of these results showed appreciation for ballet with words such as artistic, skilful, elegant etc. but with the occasional person still seeing it as the stereotypical girls in tutus, swirling around on stage; this is something we will aim to dispel.

Comments this time were referring more to the fact that they see ballet as traditional (which means boring to some) and because ballet is seen as something different that doesn't always involve talking, people will often straight up dismiss the idea before giving it a try. This is why an appeal to other professions and relating them back to our target audience could work.

Again, the majority of the responders still consider ballet to be very much traditional and old fashioned, which often would be associated with tutus etc. A lot of ballet is contemporary, which is something that needs to be addressed to those who think otherwise.

These results are something I think that supports our idea so far of relating ballet to other professions with people associating athletes, musicians, dancers, composers etc to ballet.

Emotions are something we wanted to bring into it also because with something like ballet, I think a lot of raw emotion goes into it most importantly passion, love, joy etc. This is something I think people can relate to most, whether it be in their profession, or other professions they appreciate e.g. football, music gigs.

Collab: Idea Sketches

Our idea at this point is to suggest to people that they aren't just watching the ballet, they're going there to appreciate every aspect of ballet, the musicians, the athletes etc. I experimented with predominantly type whilst the two illustrators in the group experimented with lines and shapes in the hope that we could have an end result as a combination of the two.

A few rough ideas I came up with different compositions etc. 

The idea is to have a close up shot of the athlete, musician, artist in their element showing the passion, grit and hard work that goes into each role, coupled with the type would hopefully make for an impactful campaign visual.

We extended this idea further to bring in more emotion, by using powerful words such as passion, talent, pain, dedication etc.

Watch an Athlete. Feel their Passion.

With this idea it allows for the words to be interchanged to emphasise how each role within the ballet, all express these emotions. It'll also create a running concept through the advertisements allowing us to do a series of billboard ads, short, simple animations for social media which will all create a strong campaign.