Anti -Smoking Advert
Children perceive their parents from what they do, not for who they really are!
Traditional Notion of middle age relatives from children’s perceptions.
MDes Project: Interesting Notes
BIBLIOGRAPHY NOTES
- Oldfield,A. And Flower, C., 2008. Music Therapy with Children and their Family. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
“Music therapy has been shown to assist bereaved people cope with grief, loss, pain, anxiety and a feeling of hopelessness, and it brings relief. Shared improvisation of music gives expression to deep feelings and brings them into a form that can then be discussed. p162 (Aldridge 2004)”
“Finding the balance between shared music –making and solo improvisation is a matter of making intuitive responses…
…Solo playing enables the young person to have individual expression and to feel heard and appreciated, whereas shared playing encourages co-operation and connection. p169”
- Philpott, C. And Plummeridge, C., 2001. Issues in music teaching. London: Routledge Falmer
“In any age of transparency and accountability many teachers report that they are often required to explain, to different audiences, why music is of value within the context of a general education. p21”
“…it is often asserted that engagement in music promotes the growth of intellectual capacities and worthy dispositions: accordingly, this is taken to be an indisputable reason for its inclusion in curriculum programmes. p21”
“Nobody, with experience of teaching in school would want to deny that music can be ‘good’ for children in any number of ways and that participation in music pursuits can contribute to their personal and social education. p24”
“Education is a process that enables children to adapt both cognitively and effectively to their environment. The Arts have an important function in this process since they are seen as being directly related to the life of feeling; for this reason early progressive thinkers such as Rousseau, Pestalozzi and Froebel all attached an importance to musical activity in their educational theories. P26”
“Finally, for many people, music helps in defining their identity as an individual within a group or groups. Individual members of peer groups and sub-cultural groups, for example, use music as one way in which to affirm their identity within the group. This, in turn, aids group cohesiveness. Once again, the music itself is not arbitrarily chosen, but it carries appropriate meanings by dint of convection, it affords certain responses and behaviour, and it is suitable to different degrees, for certain uses and meanings.p51”
- Kathie Barrs,1994. Music Works. Twickenham: Belair Publications Limited
“Creative work in music develops the skills of decision making and selection; and sharing in the creative processes of their friends can teach children sensitivity and respect. P4”
MDes Project: Focused area
Large music projects and music services run by local authorities and the government have become another area I want to explore in-deph during the first draft of my final brief.
I moved my focus toward the field of education and music services which are supported by the city council.
After done some research I found out that the Sheffield City Council have a specific service that deals with music and is also part of the Children and Young People’s service called Sheffield Music Service:
“We provide opportunities for young people to aspire and develop both musically and academically. It is no secret that music and success in life go hand-in-hand.” (S.M.S)
The Sheffield Music Service happened to have published an action plan for the year 2010-2013. This action plan was last updated on the 28th september 2011, by Mary Heyler, who is the Music Strategy Adviser and Head of Sheffield Music Service. Is supported by the Sheffield City Council, Music Educational Council and the Federation of Music Services.
Principles:
“The Music Service works with schools, families and partners to bring high quality musical experiences to every child’s personalized learning. It is currently working with a range of customers including young people, parents and schools to re-shape its service into a hub which works closely with other music organizations.”
Interesting Action plan points:
- Establish a new music centre in NE of city for 120 children (Identity/Branding)
- Create Music Service Newsletter especially for ensembles members (Design)
- Provide a guidance leaflet for school (Design)
- Continue with the new images of the music service on all communications (Illustration/Design)
After reading about their future strategies and action plans, I wanted to get in touch with Mary Heyler myself.
I managed to reach her on the telephone and explained her who I was, where I am studying what is the MDes Project about and what areas I am interested in.
I stated her a couple of points that she wrote on the action plan that would have involved design experts and more graphic design orientated practices and observations.
She sounded very interested in what I was focusing.
I was explaining here that would have been worthy to consider how other cities/music services and communities are dealing with those same issues and aims.
She was very intrigued by me offering some basic research based on what other centres and services visually represents themselves. And she invited me to take part of their next meeting which is on the 9th of November 2011 at the Bnnerdale Centre. The meeting will be held by all the representatives and members who are fully involved in the development of the Music Service Action Plan.
Miss Heyler asked me to come up with some interesting research based on the comparison and contrasts between the Sheffield Music Service and other music services. The research should highlight areas of improvements in visual identity and design schemes.
MDes Project: Overview
The MDes project is seen as the longest and most important module of this final year. It runs all the way from September to the end of the academic year. It requires us to provide an extensive body of work that would reflect our professional practices, design skills and expertises supported by an in-depth research based project- brief.
The brief it must be designed by us and self directed.
The aims of this modules are the follows:
- To bring together the theoretical and practical skills, knowledge and experiences gained during my course.
- To apply further analysis and judgements of intermediate design development in support of the final design proposal.
- To consider issues of visual quality and design details.
First considerations:
When designing the brief and selecting a specific area to focus my research on, I have decided to look into projects that were mostly related to my personal interests in life.
One of my finest interests and passions is Music. As well as being a design student I have always been a musician, a singer, playing piano and guitar, participating in choirs projects, being in a variety of bands and live contests and much more.
Music is an important and essential element that I consider beneficial to my life’s balance. Music changed me and my life in so many ways and I am very thankful for this.
Nevertheless my musical interactions are not less than my artistic and design engagements. Graphic Design represents my favourite artistic discipline to communicate visually with the society I interact with everyday.
My initial and natural attitude toward this final brief’s design was to join these two subject areas together. To find an exciting project that would involve both of my passions to be the leading inspirational forces .
So I started to look at different aspects and backgrounds related with music.
MUSIC INDUSTRY
MUSIC TECHNOLOGY
MUSIC INTERACTIONS
MUSIC EDUCATION
I stared to write a set of questions based on these areas and look into them in more details, to see if I could find interesting facts and statistics that could have stimulate and strengthen my conceptual developing skills at the time.
Set of questions:
What are the main issues that the music market is facing?
How people interact with music in this new technology era?
What is visual music and how does it work?
How people navigate through music?
What tools are out there that allowed people to navigate through music effectively?
How do you add value to music?
How do you experience music, and what are the different ways of doing it?
What are the music trends?
Who are the most successful music artists and why they have succeeded?
Which are the new and old ways society adapts to interact with music?
How do we engage with music?
What is the free market? Free vs Pay.
How has the music accessibility changed through time?
What is that you cannot find in the internet market that music can give?
How do people create music?
How people perceive music and sound?
Other points of interests:
Music related projects, successes and failures.
Music museums, schools and services (public and private)
Music as a time machine or a strong tool to connect with our memories.
Music therapy
As part of my initial considerations, my thoughts start moving towards the musicians need. As a graphic design students that plays and is involved with bands everyday, I find myself involved with projects and briefs that are often related with band logos, posters, flyers, t-shirts, banners, most of the stationary and identity design related to promotional materials.
So my first idea was to go for a possible infographic, illustration or guideline that band could have follow in order to generate their own identity and promo materials. Not only for them to gain a better understanding of the process making but also to understand what’s behind a design study communicate more efficiently with designers they work with.
But after the first meeting I have realized that this whole idea was not strong enough to be carried out as a main project. This was because of the basic research that would have been involved. At the end this idea was not considered valuable to be undertaken for an MDes study level.
I was reflecting about my comfy zone and that might would have been worthy considering to step back from it, a little, to step into something new.
So I’ve decided to browse through other types of media and to observe how people experience, interact and navigate through music now days.
I was interested in the new smart phone’s and web applications for ipods/ipads.
That would have been a good an exciting idea to start with, learning and about new programs and applications interfaces. Moving towards the motion graphics and digital devices.
After looking at some videos online and reading more about the market my willing to create something strongly visual and interactive was rising.
A Social Media and Networking research from Mintel from 2011 highlighted some interesting statistics and bullet points:
“Mobile social networking and location-based services will become an entrenched part of everyday lives within the next decade, certainly for the younger generation aged 16-24 today, aided by near field communication (NFC) technology.”
“Companies need to explore how they can use social media to interact and engage with customers, weather it’s through branded games, live customers service, or interactive puzzles, to build customers loyalty.”
I have started to consider the ways people interact and perceive music, to find some ideas that would have lead me towards new design concepts.
It happened to me several time to hear the expression “People listen with their eyes”, and when I asked about the meaning behind that sentence, I was often told that music is often captured and related to something visual. During a Tribute act, for example, the crowd enjoy the show as the band is trying to emulate the real act, both musically and visually, and it’s the relation in between the two that engages the audience the most. I’ve had an experienced myself once when I went to a Gun’s and Roses tribute band show in 2005 at the Boardwalk Venue in Sheffield’s city centre. I was aware that the band did not sound much like them , but they lookalike so well that they have managed to mask it so well winning the crowd based on their image.
I was told to consider Synaesthesia, which is an armless perception condition :
OXOFORD DICTIONARY DEFINITION of SYNAESTHESIA
noun
[mass noun] Physiology & Psychology
the production of a sense impression relating to one sense or part of the body by stimulation of another sense or part of the body.
Synaesthesia is a neurological condition that distort and alter people’s perceptions. Was interesting to find out that people who have this condition can somehow hear colours and see sounds.
See this video to gain a generic overview about what synaesthesia is and how it works:
So I’ve decided to look at the variety of aspect of this condition, finding out that there are more than 100 different types of synaesthesia that I could have analysed during my research.
I was thinking that studying how extraordinary people view and perceive the world, differently form how most of the society view it would have maybe helped me finding some interesting results and new methods to include in my design research practice.
After a consultation with Pam Bowman during a tutorial meeting on the 6th of October, she pointed me out that focusing on the idea of the synaesthesia would have been in-appropriate poorly related to my expertises, and she suggested me to focus on my areas of interests, to identify a niche market and do decide which direction I wanted to go and focus my research on.
At the meeting I was considering three ways:
1. Navigating applications
2. Playing applications
3. Educative applications
Mdes Project: Ideas Source - Media/Music Interactions
MDes Project: Ideas Source - Synaesthesia
Competitive Design: TV Programs based on people’s perceptions
During the last decade the British Channel 4 have concentrated in designing brand new TV programs based on changing people perceptions of themselves as well as how others perceive them.
Two of these TV porgrams are HOW TO LOOK GOOD NAKED and 10 YEARS YOUNGER, both based on beauty perceptions. These programs are the exact demonstrations of how sensitive people are towards their physical outlook and how this affect their personalities. Is interesting to see and to study from these programs how designers interact with people who are very sensitive about their image and struggle to open themselves to big changes as well as letting things go. See the videos below.
Looking at the HTLGN clip notice how that lady perceptions about her breast’s size in comparison to the five casts changed as soon as she realized that the ones she liked the most were two or even three bra’s size larger than hers.
Competitive Design: Some interesting articles about Middle Aged & Mid-life
BBC
Mid-life crisis begins in mid-30s, Relate survey says
Why it’s hard to measure happiness
Middle age weight link to dementia risk
Thousands more ‘living a lonelier life’
Why are Britons so gloomy in middle age?
Actor Tim Robbins - why a mid-life crisis is ‘inevitable’
Woody Allen’s woes over ageing and death
Dementia link to ‘mid-life ills’
The 80s are still top of the pops
Depression risk ‘highest in 40s’
Middle-age most miserable for men
The Telegraph
More middle-aged are living alone
Daily tipple boosts health in old age
Women more than twice as likely to be depressed
Middle-aged women discover binge-drinking: the pathetic plight of the Sex and the City generation
Brands need to become ‘friends’ with customers on Twitter and Facebook
The Guardian
Middle aged spread
How to be middle-aged
Beached in middle age
Mid-life crisis
Mid life moves
Mid-life change
Mid-life crises
Mid-life, Morrissey style
Rock Camps: perfect for anyone seeking a mid-life crisis
Forever young? Crisis of sorts for the mid-life clubbers
Far more than the routine fable of male mid-life turmoil
Untangling the Web: Life stages
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Competitive Design: Observations
As a first step into my primary research I wanted to observe my target audience, to understand how do they actually look, what do they wear, movements, expressions, emotions, feelings and much more. If my aim is to find solution to problems within that rank, I have to start to put myself in those people shoes and get the feeling of what is it like to be in that age.
One of the main aims of this brief is challenging designers to change people’s perceptions, therefore I thought it could be a good idea for me to take some risks and go out asking people for some opinions in regarding middle aged, so I was targeting mainly students, as I am firstly interested to see how younger people view middle aged people. Then I went through the city centre observing people and filming them acting naturally on the street, to reflect and grow more personal sensitiveness towards my target audience.
The first part of the video attached above is a brief survey that I have started and I am currently working on with youth generations. From what can be seen already, it is clear that young people think of Middle Aged people as old and dusty. Why is that? Is it because of the way they dress? The way they walk? The things they do? Is it because they recognise that age as the same age as their parents? Or even the age of their grandparents? Young students and teenagers seemed to not be so sceptical about their answers. These strong and probably wrong preconceptions are partially perceived by the middle aged and certainly have an influence on the way they feel about themselves.
I was interviewing one of my dearest friends Dave Horton who is now 65 years old and at the very edge of the middle aged phase of his life. He told me an interesting story. “A few months ago I went down to the Sheffield Interchange Bus station to re-new my travel-pass. Dressed pretty casually, a nice pair of jeans a simple black cotton top and a wind jacket, salt and pepper hair and a big smile on my face, I reached the desk and I was welcomed by a nice young lady who must have been in her late 20’s. I explained her what I was there for and she was talking to my with a friendly, smooth and welcoming attitude, which I kinda liked. But as I handed to her my ID and she looked at me in the face, then looked at my ID again and her attitude toward me changed completely and suddenly started to talk slowly and loudly. As I am a very polite charming man, I didn’t want to show her my disappointment at that time. All of a sudden I felt older and quite offended. She must have thought that just because I am 65 I am stupid and have hearing problems.”
I hired a camera from the university and started by walking in the Sheffield city centre filming what I believe or perceive as middle aged or mid-life people. I happened to film a few interesting characters and moments which it made me reflect about loneliness. This intrigued me so I did some research on the internet and found this article by Tim Ross published in The Telegraph 2011 which speaks for itself by its title “More middle-aged are living alone”.
“About one in five people in their early 60s is living on their own, with the sharpest rise among men, according to a study published by the Office for National Statistics.”
Why do people of that age put themselves in those conditions? UK is well know as a country with a weak sense of family compared to Mediterranean countries, but it has a strong culture of individualism says Philippa Roxby in her Health report for the BBC News “Why are Britons so gloomy in middle age?”, is this due to the fact that parents let their children out of their home to undertake their studies since the age of 16? Or is it because women are preferring more and more to enjoy more their life style and have fun delaying maternity, like it says in the BBC NEWS article from the 2007 “The women who choose not to be mothers”
“Today, there are many more choices - or more openness. To have a baby out of wedlock. To have a baby without a father. To have a baby and return to work. To have a baby and give up work. To have fertility treatment, and then a baby (or not).”
It’s true, probably we are now facing a much more distracting world. Everything by far much more disposable than it used to be 10 or 20 years ago.
This is an interesting topic I would like to concentrate my focus on to gain a better understanding.
Competitive Design: Associating words
I am currently running a variety of online surveys through SURVEYMONKEY designed to understand more about what people perceive as Middle Age and Mid-life. As well as asking opinions about this age range I am trying to find out what words people associate with these terms.
So I have selected a variety of words extracted from online articles magazines and related backgrounds and put them all together and I have asked people to select the most relevant words that to them would relate to Middle age and mid-life.
20 people so far, from the age 20’ to 60 have responded to the question:
Which of the following words would you associate with Middle Age or Mid-life?
Family , Home life and Experience are the words that are standing out so far.
Here is a simple typographic illustration that I have created based on the initial results. 
It is starting to become obvious that general people’s pre-conceptions and perceptions about mid-life lifestyle are strongly linked within the concept of the family, responsibilities and home lifestyle.
Experience is another word that stands out quite predominantly.
The older you get the more experience you gain, of course, then why people don’t often use this as an advantage and selling point for themselves to step into somewhere new? Margaret Cooke, volunteers for the British Charitable Organization Parent Lifeline, she has come across many parents from the chosen age range that have had many difficulties in dealing with their children. This might be caused by the fact she said, that people are sometimes scared to let things go and accept the real circumstances, and live their lives with higher expectations which often lead to big disappointment. She mentioned that there have been several cases in which the parents expected their children to behave like adults and treated them as such. Like for example, kids don’t perceive the sense of time in the same way that adults do, what is 5 minutes to a 40 year old are not the same for a 5 year old. This example on observation shows how parents and their children miscommunicate with each one another due to the lack of understanding about each other’s time perceptions. Here is where I can easily see this problem happening to middle aged people where youth find difficulties in understanding why people that are in their 50’s might take more time to learn about new technology than they do. So, sense of time is an issue I will consider to look at into in more detail alongside my research.
