Ceci n’est pas une pipe.

 

 

THIS IS NOT AN OFFICIAL LAB ASSIGNMENT.

 

IT’S  A PIECE OF PAPER OR A DIGITAL COPY OF AN IN-CLASS PRACTICE

 IN PROFESSIONAL COLLABORATION.

 

http://www.centcom.mil/galleries/leaflets/showleaflets.asp

 

This is not a collection of leaflets dropped on Iraq. This is a web site housing digital images of some leaflets that were dropped on Iraq this past spring.

 

ONE  Form a group with those five classmates sitting in your row. Your group should have at least one technical expert and a bunch of design students with varying degrees of design sense and technical expertise. 

 

TWO Appoint a scribe. Your scribe should have a good “hand” and a good sense of humor.  Your scribe will take notes on your discussions and decisions. She or he will edit and clarify your plans (see below) and post them to the blog no later than Thursday at 5 pm. Scribes will be duly praised and remembered by instructors for good work.

 

THREE  Your collective goal is to sketch out a plan for RECONTEXTUALIZING one or more of these images. 

 

FOUR    Now you’re ready to go.  Scribes should be positioned before keyboards. Group members can cluster or use several computers.

 

 

  1. Prowl around on the site and talk about the difference between the “author” or responsible party, the leaflet designers, and the website designers.  What kinds of writing decisions does each entity make? What kinds of authority are connected to these positions? 
  2. Keep prowling and talk about how the targeted readers received, read, and might have used these leaflets. Talk about how you “experience” the reading of a digital copies of sets of leaflets. What are your initial responses? What do you have to say about them to your groupmates? (What is their meaning for you in your current context?)
  3. Put on your designers’ hats and talk about some of the design decisions executed specifically for this situation AND some of the design decisions that may have been more context independent (that is, rote decisions that did not take audience into consideration)?

 

FIVE   Now comes the hard part:

You’re going to create with voice, paper, and pencil, with your group mates, a NEW CONTEXT for one or more of these images.  Your plans should include manipulating the image(s) using graphics software such as PhotoShop. Be sure to include in your plans audience, purpose, genre or medium, reader’s context, and the capabilities that software like PhotoShop gives you to manipulate images.

 

Decide who will read your document, why they will read it, and how best you can facilitate the kind of reading and response you desire (think about Fred Noonan in K&R, Chapter 1). No less important, consult with your technically enlightened group member to figure out what kinds of image manipulation your decisions entail.  Note: You need NOT be conservative; indeed you may design a wild and humorous thing, dreaming big about the changes you will make in these images and the associated reasons and effects.

 

A list of possibilities:  A set of Neiman Marcus placemats in tastefully coordinated colors; playing cards (e.g., Go Fish); a middle school history textbook traditional or new design (pull out quotes, etc.); Sharper Image greeting cards; coffee table book on unusual instruction sets;  website demonstrating the uses of color to novice web designers.

 

After you finish this in-class exercise, you will have had some practice in thinking about a large project in collaboration with other thinkers.  This experience will facilitate your individual planning for a large project later on in the semester.  Ideally, you’ll envision project work that is beyond your technical reach in order to articulate what you need to know about image technology in order to execute your ideas.

 

For Wednesday of next week, enjoying your pleasantries and imagination, Stephanie and I will devise Lab Assignment 2 based on some of these ideas.  We are asking, in essence, for you to help us design the next assignment by way of your brainstorming.

 

Please check your mail for notices of when the Tyler and Horton readings are on ereserve and for update on our blogging adventures (those questions that still need answering).