M5 – End of Term Review

Attached is the pdf of my presentation.  The pdf presents the work I have done this term, M5 followed by proposed next steps for M6.  The pdf includes the slide notes from the presentation.  The videos presented in the pdf are posted in previous posts.

youtube collage

I have been looking for a way to present the youtube videos I collected which are tagged with denim brands.  I tried using them in a designed context in the video for drug/denim connection(see previous post: chasing the next high).  The dancing at the end of that movie is one of the youtube videos I found tagging cheap monday jeans.  At the same time, I wanted to clearly present what is out there first, before re appropriating the videos, so I collected them all into a collage.  Similar to what I did with the Flickr images.  The soundtrack is from one of the videos in the collage.

Chasing the next denim high.

Here is the short motion piece I designed to communicate the similarity I have noticed in people’s relationship to their jeans and social drug use.  I used only drug imagery along with quotes from people I interviewed and found online.

Meeting with Lisa Krohn 7/18/08

upto minute – no agenda

what will be the deliverable

hand-me-down communication
document yourself
* provenance
magical / superstition / irrational
risks: not a community fetish
BE-LONGING
Series of rituals: With Jeans, mark / notch
Swaparama
Geo-Cache
System

Meeting with Sean Donahue 7/15/08

What are the insights?

1-Method
2-What is it revealing?

reference: sneaker culture.

Branding >

• Parasite
• emergent
• immersive

A new word for brand?

What are the outcomes?
> Who could these be valuable to?
> Who does it pose questions to?

Reacting to immediate community
Models of adoption
->creative narrative – rethink

-How do you represent addiction?
-Behavior that’s emerging – with what we already know.
-How to make this available
-This is not marketing.
-body image representation
-contradiction as a finding
-fantasy/engagement of candid

Review Presentation:
- Linear process that I went through
- 3 rhetorical questions
- Relate to my experiences
- anectodal, design towards conventions, “6 years ago I would have done this..”
define conventional branding.
- Understanding the community: how does it challenge our expectations of branding
– Emerging qualities: themes and patterns, unique to that particular group
Larger opportunities

Put together a rough presentation – what are te potential outlets -part of processing

What are the outcomes I want to design?
End of term: Scope, plan, schedule > want to make/address/answer this

Communicate these things
Books that present the work & possible outcomes
Invert / Change the brand

Explain why I am unconfortable – what is the value?

Categories > experiende > ?

What benefit is it going to provide me as a maker?
branding / engage community

Meeting with Anne Burdick 7/9/2008

I need to explain what I am doing.
I have done a lot of analytical work – I need to do more interpretive work.
Find the idiosyncrasies.
A compelling narrative.
What about people in Kansas?  Their experience of brands is fully mediated
Compare 3 people’s tags, what are their tags.

Meeting with Peter Lunenfeld 7/9/2008

- Repurpose youtube
- Terry Richardson style, lowres, you can identify, you can see yourself as lowres.
- methodolgy is what makes my work unique
- asking people to tag themselves in the interview was trying to get them to start being folksonomists.
- part of a system
- pleasure of lowres / danger of technology
- What’s the expansion out? My next thing? 3 scenarios
- I’m a media design folksonomist
- new technology / new tool
- new social spaces
- Electronically mediated visual sociology
- Series of methodologies on contemporary social media and brand space that lead to interesting results
- A) how social media works B) distill & translate the inf to make use of it.
- PRO / AM

Meeting with Lisa Krohn 7/1/2008

My meeting with Lisa focused on a different aspect of my research.  She was encouraging me to bring denim into referneces in art history and use this metaphor to explain what the culture around jeans are.  I had my doubts about the naked body in art history as this metaphor.  Then I watched “Requiem for a Dream” and the drug meatphor was like a light bulb.  The way the participants described their feelings about their perfect pair of jeans, was similar to descriptions of drugs.  The metaphor is to feel better about ourselves, we can use drugs and feel better from the inside out and get the same rush on the outside with jeans.

Interview at American Rag 7/28/2008

http://tagdproject.wordpress.com/

We set up outside American Rag in Hollywood.  I was asking the questions, and taking the polaroid.  One person videotaped the interviews, while one more person took pictures.

I started with taking the polaroid and asked the questions while the picture developed. Then when they were done, I asked them if they were putting the picture online, how would they describe it.

•What’s your name?
• How old are you?
• What do you do?
• Do you have a blog, flickr, myspace, facebook? If yes, what kind of stuff do you post?
• What are you wearing?
• What makes you hunt down a pair of jeans?
• What makes a pair of jeans perfect?
• How does the perfect pair make you feel like?

There were some setbacks.  It’s the beach season so it wasn’t very crowded.  And, not as important but.. it was very hot so not many people were wearing jeans.

First couple of things noticed were none of them had blogs, flickr or other online sharing.  Some had social networking profiles.  And girls look at other girls with similar body types rather than celebrity images and magazines.

I posted the polaroids online, on the project blog.  I was hoping maybe some comments would show.  The only activity I could observe was that one of the participants used the polaroid for his myspace profile picture.

Tag’d Project

I designed my interview process and put it in a Design Brief format for my Branding Strategies class with Sherry Hoffman. It’s available as a pdf at this link.  The detailes of the project are:

OBJECTIVES AND DESIGN STRATEGY
Grand Strategy:
• To understand peoples habits of self-tagging and associations with brands and how this insight could play a role in the design process.

Strategy:
Create an opportunity for people to participate and analyze

Tactics:
• Hangout in front of American Rag on a saturday afternoon.  Take pictures to upload on flickr/or a new site.  Ask them to tag themselves.

Demographics:
GIRLS, with ATTENTION TO FASHION and PERSONAL STYLE.
Early 20’s: just out of college, first job, first freedom of paycheck.

DETAILS

• Give out cards with the blog url, where they can see their pictures, comment and participate further.
• On the back, a little description of the project.
• Get consent form signed.
• Take a picture and ask for 5 tag words. (Or ask them to go online and tag? )
• Ask Questions:
- Do you have a blog, myspace, facebook, flickr?
- What do you do?
- How old are you?
- What are you wearing?

BLOG

• tagyourself.wordpress.com/ (OR Flickr Page?)
• About: explain the project.
• Links: My portfolio, MDP, Art Center.
• Each person is a new entry.
• Email each person their link.