Graphic design/Fashion/Photography [session 1]

Graphic Design

Graphic design is a discipline of art and working to solve a visual problem or creating visual solutions. It  is used to promote a message visually. It can be made up of type, imagery, colour, photography or illustration. Graphic design can be found in print, web, motion and typography.

Common uses of graphic design include identity such as logos and branding, web sites, publications (magazines, newspapers, and books), advertisements and product packaging. For example, a product package might include a logo or other artwork, organized text and design elements such as shapes and color which make the piece unique and help to identify, such as a packet of walkers crisps; the colour helps us identify with the flavour and the logo helps us identify with the brand. Graphic design most often has a purpose and is all about communication and conveying a message.

David Carson

Ray Gun magazine

A graphic designer has a strong imagination and pays good attention to detail. David Carson is a famous American Graphic designer, who is best known for his innovative magazine design, and use of experimental typography. He was the art director of Ray Gun which was first published in 1992. It was an alternative rock and roll magazine that explored experimental magazine typographic design, known as the 'grunge typography' era, which nobody had ever seen before. During the period of 1989–2004, David Carson has won over 170 Awards for his work in graphic design. http://www.davidcarsondesign.com/ 


Fashion

Fashion a general term for a currently popular style or practice, especially in clothing, foot wear, or accessories. Fashion references to anything that is the current trend in look and dress up of a person. For centuries individuals or societies have used clothes and other body adornment as a form of communication to indicate occupation, rank, gender, sexual availability, locality, class, wealth and group affiliation. Fashion is also a form of free speech.  It not only grasps clothing, but also accessories, jewellery, hairstyles, beauty and body art. What we wear and how and when we wear it, allows others to subtly read the surface of a social situation. 

Fashion design is the art of the application of design and aesthetics or natural beauty to clothing and accessories. Fashion design is influenced by cultural and social latitudes, and has varied over time and place. 

An example of a fashion designer is Coco Chanel. During the 1920s, Coco Chanel became the first designer to create loose women’s clothing use jersey, traditionally used for men’s underwear, creating a relaxed style for women ignoring the stiff corseted look of the time. They soon became very popular with clients, a post-war generation of women for whom the corseted restricted clothing seemed old-fashioned and impractical.Coco Chanel worked until her death in 1971 at the age of 88. Karl Lagerfeld has been chief designer of Chanel's fashion house since 1982. His ability to continuously mine the Chanel archive for inspiration testifies to the importance of Coco Chanel's contribution to the world of fashion.

Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. photography has many uses for business, science, manufacturing, art, and recreational purposes.
A photograph is a picture made by photography. Photographs allow us to preserve history, capture memories, tell stories, educate and much more.


Photographers are the people behind the camera who capture and create the final photograph. There are many different types of photographers who capture different types of photography; fashion, wedding, portrait, action/events, food objects, wildlife, papparazi, night and many more.

Sight savers by Rankin

Fashion photographers work in the fashion industry, which includes fashion shows and fashion magazines as well as industry publications for hair and makeup design. Fashion photographers might also specialize in photos for the movie and/or music industry; they would take photos for album covers, band publicity, and related publications. Rankin is a current famous fashion photographer. Rankin first came to prominence when he co-founded Dazed & Confused with Jefferson Hack. One of the most important magazines of the 90’s, it established its stylists in the fashion elite, broke some of today’s top designers and nurtured the budding careers of a generation of creative photographers.Earning a reputation for creative portraiture and a talent for capturing the character and spirit of his subjects, Rankin quickly became a formidable force in photography, shooting Brit-pop bands including Pulp and Blur and darlings of pop such as Kylie and Madonna. Rankin’s career continued to blossom and covers for German Vogue, Harpers Bazaar, Arena and GQ quickly followed.

What ethical questions are raised in the creative industries? [session one]

Fashion

• Fur - Animal cruelty and the use of animal product
• Thin catwalk models
• Plus size models
• Design brands exploiting cheap labour

Fashion has gained a bad reputation. It's known for being animal unfriendly, it pushes unhealthy body trends to the masses by pushing an ideal of beauty that is unrealistic to most people and produces images that can sometimes be misleading to certain groups of people. Some fashion designers such as Stella McCartney don't use leather or fur which raises the question about how modern fur is, however, it is rare to find many more fashion designers that will follow the same discipline as Stella McCartney. The death of a living creature to achieve a luxury good design is a disturbing idea all together.

Graphics

• Promoting anything bad for health
• Personal beliefs
• Airbrush and edit of the human body
• Deceiving images

Magazines and advertisements have long been criticized for promoting unrealistic, airbrushed images of beauty that no man or woman could possibly live up to. The main worry about these images is that they are putting pressure on young people to achieve an unachievable body stereotype which can cause problems such as anorexia and depression. In 2004, Dove launched 
a campaign that was very successful for real beauty which features real women, not models, to advertise Doves firming cream.  The advertisements focus on promoting real, natural beauty, in an effort to raise awareness of the unrealistically thin and unhealthy archetypal images associated with modelling and celebrities.


Photography 

• Nudity
• Airbrushing
• Permission and law issues
• Paparazzi

Photographs usually have more impact on people than words which is why for example images of a poor African children in the nude have been used as they help to illustrate the true problems and lifestyle that the people live and is also more likely to have an emotional impact on people, which is why those sort of images are used to promote charities. However many photographers fear that no matter how much care and consideration is taken in filming and photography, there is always going to be someone out there who thinks their violating the rights and disrespecting their subjects.


Ethics of digital image manipulation

Each newspaper, newsgroup or press association have its own rules and regulations regarding ethics in photojournalism. Today photographic manipulation is seen to be a new art form, but when it works its way into photojournalism and the media, there is an issue of fakery. How far can we take digital image manipulation and still maintain photographic integrity?

An example of what was has been seen as unacceptable photo manipulation is a fake photo on the cover of Newsweek magazine showing Princess Diana walking alongside Kate Middleton, this was widely criticized as being in poor taste. The cover photo was created to illustrate a story by Tina Brown speculating on what the future may have held for Princess Diana had she not died in 1997. However Tina Brown defended the cover when she stated “we wanted to bring the memory of Diana alive in a vivid image that transcends time and reflected my piece.”

When creating what could potentially be a good photograph, photojournalists need to take care that when they edit or stage a final image they ensure that they are doing it for technical issues and not for the purpose of altering the actual meaning of the image. Overall this can become difficult to decide where to draw the line, as every situation is different and this may not be as obvious to the person capturing the image at the time. 

Any industry that has such a heavy hand in image making has a certain responsibility in what image they make. All Designers hold responsibility for what message they send to the public and every consumer is responsible for their decisions.