topic time.

i've been in grad school now for ten months and i finally sat down for couple hours to gather all my crazy ideas. my topic is huge, like life-huge, and i'll have to delve into it over the next 2 1/2 years until death, most likely.

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so now for the refining process, step one: topic possibilities.

in the commercialism and advertising arena.
how deep are brands engraved into our lives. “too bad there’s a million of me out there.”

call for bedrooms - submit photos of your bedroom (teen-aged). spot where commercialism had infiltrated into our most private areas.

logo language - ask 3 and 4 year-old kids (who can’t read) to read the names of products by holding up flash cards with logos and without telling them the brand. create a sentence with logos only.

product placement - brands dictate the script. give brands a star in hollywood, not people. call for a separation between entertainment and advertising.

look for signs - find unexpected meanings and reasons for existing signs in our culture. find ways to provoke thought in public areas. do signs really work? or do we need human direction/assistance? lookforsigns.org

anti-advertising - defend humanity. create an ad campaign encouraging people to think before they buy. assist viewer in a process to make a decision based on rationale, not impulse. tell consumers that they really don’t need “it.” the largest commodity one can have is nothing.

in the literary arena.
for centuries, writers have been expressing. (period) “words don’t have brands on them the way cattle do.”

welcome to... - create a new vernacular that cannot be described in words. using symbols, braille, a constanant test, concrete/shape poetry. having no legend or key, just decifering the message by feeling or mood in which the graphic language presents. aim for provoking areas such as healing, positivity, anger and hurting.

silence - experiment with sound and how the senses react with eachother. verbal, visual as one. adding sound and touch creates another dynamic. conduct a voting pole consisting of same verbal/visual but with different sounds.

poetry paradigm - scientist come up with formulas so they can test an experiment over and over. what is the process to create a certain type of poem? what is it about a particular poem that others want to create one with the same exact format. can we design with that formula? will the same processes work with visual elements having the same viral results?

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after all was said and done, i only found one that is personally worthy of any attention. and it's a subject that many graphic designers would shun from: literature.

i think that that's it though. the poetry paradigm... i can see myself interested in this topic for many years to come. i have a few months before i take my thesis writing class which will give me plently of time to really wrap my head around it.

delimitations: this is not designing poetry, not calligrammes, not concrete, not even writing poetry. it is the capture of the formal/informal techniques/feelings in written poetry translated into a discipline for design.
far-fetched, right?
perfect.