Print Communications

Mark Roxburgh’s research over the past decade has focused on the evolving conceptualization, discourse and development of research methodologies for design. This has lead him to question the historical pattern of design whereby the methods and epistemologies of other disciplines are used without addressing the differences between them and design. Design is a complex activity enmeshed in many aspects of our lives. In his article in Design Issues (1992), ‘Prometheus of the Everyday: The Ecology of the Artificial and the Designer’s Responsibility’, Manzini foregrounds the relational nature of this complexity by conceiving design (the artificial) as having an ecology. Roxburgh has written about these matters but his critique has conformed to the conventions of academic publishing and he has found articulating aspects of such complexity constrained by the limits of written language. Increasingly, in design, visualization is used to map complex relationships between things, ideas and actions. In this essentially visual essay, Roxburgh is attempting to graphically identify and explore the relationships of some of these concepts in a manner that echoes these trends and his own research practice. He is aware that sketches of complex phenomena, through a process of interpretation and abstraction, become somewhat reductive. The moments he draws on in crafting the depictions of his views are presented episodically rather than chronologically.
Roxburgh sketches out three key historical conceptions of design and the ramifications they have had on our perceptions and practice of it. He depicts these conceptions as being drawn from traditions outside of design and suggests that an alternative strategy may lie within design itself. This strategy calls for an engagement with what he calls the aesthetics of research. He suggests that it is imperative that design encompasses an aesthetic engagement with the world at all levels, and most importantly at the point of design research and conception, for our experience of design is fundamentally aesthetic. He is aware that there is an apparent irony in his use of non design theories to frame aspects of his view but this is a necessary strategy to critique the ontological assumptions inherent within the conceptions of design that he characterizes (one could even say ‘caricatures’). Roxburgh takes the position that there is nothing essentially given about design consciousness. Rather, the characterizations of design consciousness that he outlines all carry (usually implicit) ontological assumptions that may be inappropriate and/or limit design practice. The depiction of design that he offers is based instead on an alternative ontology. While this cannot be empirically verified (no ontology can), he proposes it as a way of extending and critiquing usual conceptions of design practice. No doubt this in turn will be found to have shortcomings of its own.

Copy writing is a process where advertisers convey the product information to customers. Copy is created to fulfill the needs of its user. In the market, copy should also represent the brand vision that companies want to communicate to their customer. Companies can create strong customer relations and recall by creating memorable messaging. Copywriting is the use of creativity in words or ideas with the focus of selling products through the creation of brands. For copywriting to be effective, one has to be original and interesting in order to influence the buying decisions of millions. In this paper, current theories of copy and models of the copy process, importance of copy in advertisement are discussed.

Over the last years, the development of the periodical press in early modern Germany and Europe attracted a lot of scholarly attention. This report is dedicated to highlight and discuss the current state of research on the early modern periodical press in German speaking Europe. From the relevant literature on the topic published between 2000-2013 both the most ambitious and dedicated studies, and the most characteristic activities in the field have been selectively chosen and reported on.


Die Erforschung der periodischen Presse in der Frühen Neuzeit hat in den letzten Jahren, insbesondere bezogen auf den deutschen Sprachraum Europas, erheblich an Konturen gewonnen. Der vorliegende Forschungsbericht zeigt jüngere, charakteristische historiographische Tendenzen in der Erforschung und Kontextualisierung der im deutschen Sprachraum periodisch-seriell erschienenen Druckerzeugnisse seit circa dem frühen 17. Jahrhundert auf; der Berichtzeitraum umfasst, mit wenigen Ausnahmen, die Jahre 2000-2013. Als Gliederungen für den Forschungsbericht dienen vier bedeutsame pressehistoriographische Tendenzen, welche mit den Schlagworten ›Grundlagenarbeit‹, ›Vernetzungsarbeit‹, ›Zeitschriften‹ und ›Theorie‹ gekennzeichnet sind.

Strickler argues that the growth of visual communication as an academic discipline can only occur if there is an “empirical bridge between theory and practice” (1999: 38). Such a bridge is also a precondition for the evolution of visual communication as a forward looking and reflective industry as opposed to one that simply responds to the dictates of the market. However, building this bridge is no easy task; visually articulate and practically oriented students are reluctant to engage with theories that may challenge their passionately held understandings of design. All the more so when the commonest mode such inquiry is conducted through is reading and writing. The challenges and problems of writing for visual thinkers has been well articulated by Grow (1994). That such students are resistant to forms that they are generally not well equipped for or confident in is hardly surprising. Couple this with a seemingly near universal questioning of the relevance of theory by aspiring practitioners and it would seem the odds are stacked against such an enterprise. In this paper we will reflect upon efforts to build this bridge through design theory curriculum using visual mapping tools drawn from constructivist education theory. The efficacy of these efforts is explored through both quantitative and qualitative student feedback.

Until recently, visual communication was the province of highly trained specialists who saw little need for methodically and analytically explicit approaches to design, relying instead on creative sensibilities formed during their education and professional experience. The historical link between design and art education has reinforced notions of design as an artistic activity. This perpetuates the myth of creativity by placing undue emphasis on the formal characteristics of design, intuition, and self-expression, resulting in a preoccupation with design intent and outcome, what is called the mimicry of attitude and action.

With the availability of cheap personal computers and graphic software, the production of “professional”-standard visual communication by do-it-yourself enthusiasts is ubiquitous. Design intent and outcome is no longer the sole domain of the visual communication expert. In the past decade attempts have been made to address this problem through a renewed interest in design research. In visual communication this has resulted in the wholesale adoption of critical theory and semiotic analysis. Such tools alone, though useful in dealing with issues of meaning or critiquing ideologies, are poorly suited to the empirical dimensions of design practice. The preoccupation with intent, meaning, and outcome has been at the expense of exploring the world of design use—the realm of everyday experience. This highlights the problem of importing modes of inquiry from other disciplines without addressing the differences between design practice and the disciplines from which it borrows. For visual communication, as for design, the problem lies in the diKerence between the apparently analytical frameworks from which it borrows and the synthetic framework in which it operates. It is the difference between observing, documenting, and understanding aspects of the world (typical of social inquiry) and transforming this knowledge into a meaningful visual communication experience, beyond a presentation of well-crafted visual data with social commentary.

This article seeks to explore the social and negotiated nature of design practice through an analysis of conversations held between clients and designers working on visual communication projects. Of specific interest will be the way in which these conversational participants try to control the outcomes of these conversations through the strategies of rhetorical substitution and subject positioning. I will argue that by regulating access to conversational codes these participants seek to regulate the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion in the decision making process in an attempt to legitimate their authority. Thus the design process can be seen as producing a material outcome as well as a set of social relations both of which are inherently ideological.

Drawing upon recent theories of the social construction of technology, actor network theory, discourse analysis, cultural studies and design as rhetoric, I will argue that design practice is a form of cultural production that is social, contingent and negotiated. Furthermore, I will argue that these social circumstances relate to the roles that a range of 'actors', not just the designer, and the circulation of numerous codes through discourse, other than the codes of aesthetics, play in the negotiations that characterise the design process. Little attention has been given to these complex circumstances in which the design process is located and less still has been given to the specific negotiations that occur between the client and the designer within that context. This essay explores such negotiations through the analysis of two case studies.

"Three years ago here at AWP I discussed how technologies like the Kindle, cell phones, brain computer interface and virtual worlds like Second Life had changed fictive possibilities, and how they might continue to evolve the future of fiction. Consider this an addendum, projecting into the next 15 years and beyond.

By the time a child born this day reaches the age of 20 she will consider a Kindle as archaic as most of you consider 8-track tapes. Ditto laptops, cell phones and computers in their current manifestations.  There are many innovations in progress but I'm going to talk about those in some way changing or intervening in the future of fiction.

FICTION AS:

OTHER AESTHETIC DISCIPLINE

VIDEO GAME

APPS

REAL-TIME INTERACTION SIMULATION  ("ARTIS")

IMMERSIVE BRAIN COMPUTER INTERFACE

PROGRAMMABLE MATTER
"

This brief essay is part of the project called "Writing with Images." Initially this is a course to be taught in Chicago in spring 2014. I is the second of a pair of course, the other is "Experimental Writing on Art."

The two web pages explain the context of this essay, which is unpublished.

http://writingwithimages.com/

and

http://305737.blogspot.com

American printers in the 19th century employed a variety of types of printing technologies. Two major streams of technical practice are represented by the Adams power press and the Hoe press. The latter press has been well documented, but the Adams power press -- which produced the majority of American books for half of the 19th century -- comprises an equally important technological trajectory. The author documents new ways of identifying the place of publishers who also have been marginalized in most histories of American printing. The artifacts left behind by entrepreneurs such as William Berry can be read as evidence of how gendered labor practices and a profitable market for erotica intersected with the widespread use of the flexible-production Adams power press.

Although we’ve been living in a digital world for two decades, the bulk of our literature, unlike all other art forms, clings stubbornly to 19th Century aesthetics. Social networking, gaming, smartphones, tablets… Technology has changed our culture in ways both subtle and dramatic.  Unlike conventional authors, innovative writers use these mediums as their message, or let a medium influence the shape and substance of their message.
Yet today’s technological innovations seem archaic compared to what’s coming down the pike. All signs point toward the merging of human with machine.  Indeed, it’s already happening: cochlear implants wired directly to the brain; optigenetic brain implants that control behavior merely through light impulses; Brain Computer Interface that allow us to send email by thinking them. How will these changes further affect and inspire literary possibilities? 
Using audio/visuals, I’ll give examples of contemporary innovative fiction being written in technology, such as multimodal literature, app literature, and gaming literature. The bulk of my presentation, however, will focus on the aesthetic relationship of literature to technology – and vice versa.  Especially critical to this topic will be summarizing the distinction between writing as creative process (art) and writing as product (consumer item) and how the former allows fiction and poetry to enter technologies without loss of literary value.  The medium is relevant only in the way it might shape the message symbiotically.  I’ll conclude by predicting the “shape” of future literary works and how the reading experience will – and will not – change.

"Beauty is on the study and reflection in the search of the rule, as "structure". It finds concept of "structure". After studies of the sixties, the concept of structure/architecture is migrated from the language of media communication. The concept of beauty can now be defined as code structure of design knowledge. This means using the abstract and formal complexity. They are based on a comparison between the terms: role, correspondence, reports and network.