Assignment 4: Reading And Reviewing

For the last assignment we were asked to pick a book and a journal about our chosen topic which in my case is smoking but after looking for journal I found it better to use two books . Then we were write about a summary on both of then then conclude with how they compare to each other.

I have chosen the book ‘Does Advertising Increase Smoking?’ by Hugh High, as it relates to my chosen area and will help me gain more information on whether advertising really does influence young people in particular to smoke or not. From the start of the book it talks about how the law has been proposed to be brought in to ban all tobacco advertising, which was not only happening in the United Kingdom but also in America. The writer is saying that advertising is not used to increase the number of people who use the product, but to inform people of new products not to promote the brand.

Through out the book there are a number of different studies/reports that have been used to help support what Hugh High is trying to get across. He is also saying that looking at such information to prove that the ban should be put in place for example New Zealand Dept. of Health, Toxic Substances Board, Health or Tobacco: an End to Tobacco Advertising and Promotion did not contain the right data and has been flawed in the way the percentages have been reached. There were further studies taken after these reports by The British Health Department which reveals the weaknesses within the studies before 1993. It has been said that tobacco advertising induces people to smoke especially young people but there are no facts that state this is 100 percent true. Although it has said if the ban came into action it may lessen the chance of young people to smoke as the point of the ban would be to protect them.

It moves away from advertising to what really determines the young to start smoking which mostly came up as family and peers, there have been a number of reports and articles that suggest if one family member is a smoking the child is then more likely to also take up the habit. In many studies is states that if one parent smokes the child is twice as likely to start than if none of the parents smoked, but if both parents smoke then the chances increases to four times and 90 percent if the child’s best friend smokes. These opinions have been strongly backed up with a number of different resources which makes them seem a lot more accurate.

The books comes to conclude in the end that there is not enough information to state that the advertising campaigns are what makes young people smoke but that it is most likely that the influence from family and mostly peers is why there is such a large amount of young people smoking. Although the writer has written has this is an assumption as there are not enough facts to say this is true. It is good that it has ended at that comment as there does not seem to be enough information to state it as a fact that it is advertising that makes young people smoke.

After looking at a number of journals, I did not feel that they were very relevant to my chosen topic so I chose to look at another book. I chose ‘Persuasion in Advertising’ by John O’Shaugnessy and Nicholas O’Shaugnessy. The book looks at advertising in general for most things and says that if anyone is disappointed in a product not only cigarette/tobacco this is because they have been let down with the expectations of the product. From reading the whole book I decided to look in depth at the part which specifically talks about smoking and the way which packaging, and advertising makes people what to smoke. Also why people want to buy that specific brand of cigarette. It talks about the way people see smoking, and how the advertising will make you look, this gives off a positive emotion towards smoking as many companies try to avoid going near the point that it kills you.

There is a point in the book where it talks about the entrepreneur B.J. Cunningham who started a tobacco company called ‘Enlightened Tobacco’ in 1991 which instead of having a standard package it was completely different and was introduced to get the point across that it will kill you in the long term. The companies identity was designed by Denison Design, they made the packet look like a small coffin in black. These packets were such a change to the way others were designed and received a lot of attention. With those who bought this brand of cigarettes they were saying,

‘yes I’m kidding myself, but at least I know it, and I smoke a brand which doesn’t try to hide the fact.’

This brought the company a small amount of customer as most people did not want to be seen thinking that or taking that type of packet out of there pocket. Cunningham also brought up the point,

‘..expose the hypocrisy behind the smoking industry: governments cannot afford to ban smoking because they receive huge amounts of money from it in tax:’

This statement does not have any information to support this, but it is mostly likely to be true as it is such a harmful substance why has it not been banned yet.

Back to the advertising side of smoking it has been said that the reason anti-smoking campaigns were such a success was because especially in America they were about what passive smoking was doing to others health. It seems that people care more about others health rather than there own, but is saying this the book does not have any statistics to support this comment which could therefore mean that this statement is incorrect.

The points made in this book about advertising in regards to smoking and tobacco make since but it would be better if there were articles or reports giving facts to prove that some of the things said were in fact correct. There are some points where there has been relation to an external source in the book but nothing from it has been included which I think would have more effect on the information being given.

After reading both of these books, they talk about different areas concerning smoking but both relate back to the advertising side of it. The second book I chose has really went into detail about the advertising of the packaging of the cigarette packets where as the first book talks about advertising campaigns and how they relate to why people start smoking.

In the first book it comes to conclude that maybe there is more to the reasons behind smoking than just advertising and the law, which although the second book is saying that advertising and design has a lot to do with it. It is also saying that people want to have there own opinion on things as well as saying something about themselves. People don’t want to buy a certain packet because of the way it looks not because of the way it is advertised. I feel that advertising do not play a vital part in depending on if you are going to smoke or not. I think that it is partly down to what they first book was saying about peer pressure and family influence. With advertising campaigns on smoking being banned I can not see how much of a difference it would make as there is no facts in theses books to support this but you can still get influence to smoke by seeing the packets in shops the anti-smoking campaigns etc.

Each of the books talk about different things which makes it hard to bring them together but they are both saying that there is a lot more to the influences rather than just the advertising. The first book thinks people around you are the most influential and then the second book thinks its more to do with the design of the products. Neither of the books state that they think specifically advertising is the main source for influencing people to smoke.

From both books I have found that it is hard to be able to decide which information is correct and how to know which sources to believe. Although in the first book there is evidence to support some of the statements it then points out that this evidence is not correctly worked out which therefore does not support it. In conclusion it is hard to work out and believe if advertising really does influence people to smoke or could it be down to the people that they are round on a day to day basis.

Bibliography

High, H. (1991). Does Advertising Increase Smoking?. The Institute of Economic Affairs. London.

O’Shaughnessy, J. O’Shaughnessy, N. (2003). Persuasion in Advertising. Routledge.

Snow Fun

So today got into university for exactly two hours and were then told to leave again, was good getting to the workshop but you can only get so much done in a certain period of time. Fingers crossed it open and for a bit longer tomorrow, hopefully get a bit more work completed. Got some work completed earlier so tonight was definitely intended for having some fun in the soft new snow.


Making a snow lady is very difficult with this type of snow/ice but it looks not bad considering.

The snow angels turned out out good although it didn't help in trying to stay warm.

My new wellington boots to keep my wee feet dry!

But the best way to warm up again is with a hot chocolate with marshmallows and chocolate on top.

Yum Yum

Snow!

On Saturday night the snow started in Dundee, in the early hours of Sunday morning the thunder, lightening and hail stones started and kept going until Sunday morning which I never thought they could all happen at the same time. But I can say it was not a very pleasant sound to be woken up to.

Snow on Saturday morning.

 It was so exciting on Sunday when the snow/hail was pretty deep, so me and my flat mates  thought it was the perfect time to start decorating the flat with Christmas decorations. Here are some pictures of the living room and the view we get from out bathroom window of the town centre.

Caird Hall

Ok so today (Monday) the whole of Dundee University has been closed due to severe weather conditions, which when I first heard I was pretty happy but when I actually thought about the amount of work being missed out on due to not being able to get into the workshop started to freak me out. Although it was a good day of doing work and enjoying the snow, I can't see the weather getting much better. I am worrying that it is more than likely that the university will be closed tomorrow again. Fingers crossed it isn’t as there is still so much to get done for this project!

Assignment 3: Looking Up, Looking Down

For this assignment we were asked to research further into the topic which we had chosen for assignment 2. The area I had chosen was smoking so is the area which I focused on. To start of this research I wasn’t totally sure what it was I had to complete and now I am still not one hundred percent sure if I have done it correctly. But before I started researching I made a brainstorm of some of the key words that I might want to use.

Brainstorm 

I then to start with looked for books and journals on why people/teenagers start to smoke in the first place and then I looked at the campaign and advertising side to cigarettes and smoking. These are some the books and journals that I found to be useful.


Altstiel, T. (2006). Advertising Strategy: Creative Tactics From the Outside/In. Sage Publications.
It says about how certain ‘magic’ words and headlines help with the selling power of the advertising campaign. He/they are saying that its all about the way you say things in advertising to communicate the right message your wanting to get across. 

Flay, B. (1994). Journal Of Health and Social Behaviour. Differential Influence of Parental Smoking and Friends’ Smoking on Adolescent Initiation and Escalation and Smoking Volume 35.
This journal speaks about they have discovered that teenagers whose parents smoke or the people around them that there is a higher risk that they will become users themselves. Then this is brought into the behaviours and attitudes of theses people to see how they relate.

Menning, C. (2006). Journal of Health and Social Behaviour. Nonresident Fathers’ Involvement and Adolescents’ Smoking Volume 47.

They are trying to find out/predict what makes adolescents become smokers at this age and how family life relates to this, research has shown that households that are unstable have a higher percentage that the child will become a smoker. It goes into detail about how parents come into the connection between them and smoker.

O’Keefe, T. (1971). The Public Opinion Quarterly. The Anti-Smoking Commercials: A study of Television’s Impact on Behavior Volume 35.
It talks about the methods which were used in the anti-smoking campaigns and did they work to the best way which the advertisement could. It says that communication, messages and reinforcements are the big parts of advertising campaigns for them to be very influential on the viewing watching them.


O’Shaughnessy, J. (2003). Persuasion in Advertising. Routledge.
The section in this book is about the way cigarette packaging means so much to a person who is smoking them or well at least a number of years ago this was the case. So if the packets looked more upper class they seemed to get sales and that it doesn’t matter if the government changed it will still stay the same.


Vaknin, J. (2007). Smoke Signals: 100 Years of tobacco Advertising. Middlesex: University press.
This book talked about so many area of smoking and advertising etc,I picked up that it was saying smokers received such advantages from it but then goes on to say how it has changed over the years. Now in advertising you wouldn’t be able to show someone smoking.

Furniture Project (Pallets Pallets Pallets)

Since starting this project it has been pretty full on and I haven’t had much time to be able to update this about it too much. So after deciding in the group that we were going to use pallets to come up with a piece of furniture. We got a number of blue pallets and broke them number to make them into different forms and to help with the design process. Whilst doing this we found it was hard to break them down into individual pieces so that put a restriction onto what we could do. We had been told the best option would be to saw them apart and use them that way. After getting four basically new pallets we were thinking of designs. We had planed at one point to incorporate growing/living plants into the furniture but this has now been decided against, along with a number of other ideas.

The reconstruction of a tree like shape out of the pallets.

It has been hard to think of a design and communicate it with everyone in the group and for it to be decided for or against. But different designs have been put to the table but have gone to make room for new ones.

Four basically new pallets

Ok so we have just under three weeks left of this furniture project. We thought we had eventually made some progress, which helped me to de-stress but then today our tutor basically told use, not in so many words that our design was crap and that were not getting enough out of the pallets. Which means now that we are back to the drawing board for the third time after initial ideas have been scraped previously. With not much time left lets just stay its going to be a very hard and stressful few weeks.


After hearing this me and Shona went down to the workshop to start working with the machinery and built some sort of structure out of the planks of wood cut from the pallets we have at the minute. It was good getting to terms with the machinery again before we start our actual design which is the only plus at the minute.


Tomorrow we are going to collect the new pallets which we have found, which will hopefully make it easier to come up with a design. I will try to keep this updated as much as possible over the next few weeks.

Assignment 2 - Mind Map/Poster

After discussing with my group about how design relates to the area of the tipping point which we discussed. The part of the book I chose was Suicide, Smoking and the Unsticky Cigarette but after discussing with my group it came across that smoking related more to design than the others did. I took smoking and came up with ways which I thought it related to design which you can see in the mind map below.

The ways which people would have to have come up with designs for so many parts of cigarettes and smoking campaigns, is I feel much more than what you would think from just looking at a packet of cigarettes. People have to think of ways to sell a product but in some parts of my mind map it is more a factor of selling to people that smoking is bad. There are so many areas that have been designed from, the packet they are kept in, the images on the packet, the campaigns, the advertisements and so many other things. Below is a poster of a number of the things that have been design to try and put people off smoking.

Assignment 2

For this assignment which we have to complete before our seminar next week so Vikki Sonia and myself got together to discuss and make a brainstorm on the ways that the topics chosen for the last assignment relate to design. The areas that we had to discuss was, the Stickiness factor, rise and fall of NYC crime and Suicide and Smoking. We took a few minutes on each topic and all three of us came up with different words that we thought related to design. Here are some of the images that were taken through out our brainstorming and the words that we came up with.

The next step is to create a mind map/ poster on the results we have come up with.

Lecture by Hazel White

Today’s lecture was taken by Hazel White, she talked about design but when she was talking about different types of jewellery and how technology has been applied to it. She then discussed about how a help button was put onto a necklace type object, which I have seen before and thought it was very interested and a good way to help elderly people. Hazel was talking about how people won’t wear this item due to how large an obvious it was, its as though those people wearing them are being labelled that they are incapable of looking after themselves. Which I feel is understandable, if it was me I would not want to wear it as it really states something about them.

I feel that with the amount of money and time being spent on making technology in jewellery as much as people may feel it’s a good thing, they could be using there time to design this much better. If the necklace or even a bracelet had a smaller button which they could press for help that was not as noticeable amongst the rest of design of the piece of jewellery, people may be more willing to wear it. If the item was an accessory rather and an object needed just to get help, it would become more of a success and would help more people if they did have an accident as I feel people would not have a problem wearing a piece of jewellery that has this technology incorporated in it.

Nadia Plesner

Today in our Design Studies lecture was about Good Design Bad Design, Jonathan Baldwin talked through a number of different things along with visual literacy but when he discussed Nadia Plesner it really stuck out to me. She designed a t-shirt with the image of a darfurian child who was holding Chihuahua and on the other arm he had a Louis Vuitton bag. The issue raised behind this top was that people focus on such meaningless things such as a bag compared to major issues across the world. After hearing about this story in the lecture I researched it a bit further to find out certain details on it.

Once the campaign started she got a copyright lawsuit from Louis Vuitton saying that the each day she continued to use this image she would be charged $20,000.


When I first heard this I was in shock that they would do this and on such a large extent, as for a student or most people $20,000 is a lot of money to spend on a campaign. The image on the bag I felt was a good way to raise attention that there are much more important things happening around the world at this time. If I had done this myself I would never have considered that it would be going against the law.


Jonathan had said that they can’t be picking in what copyrights they let slide n which they don’t. Even if the Louis Vuitton thought it wasn’t that a major breach of copyright they had to use a lawsuit other wise it could lead others to do the same thing.


Although this may be true I still think that a campaign like this is a lot more important to raise awareness than for the sake of someone breaching a copyright in a small way.

Assignment - Second Mind Map

After doing the first mind map I then picked an area in the book to go into further detail on. I chose chapter seven as while I was reading the book it was the part which I liked the most and enjoyed reading. I think I liked it so much was because it talks about such real topics which are really relevant at this time in many places. I had never thought that if one person killed themselves that it would have the same effect on others who are in the same mind. I found it a very interesting chapter in this book.


This is my mind map.

Below is my annotated bibliography for this section.


Page 216
Rubinstein,D. H. (1995). Contemporary Pacific.
Rubinstein,D. H. (1983). Social Science and Medicine.
It tells you about the suicide of a boy in Micronesia and then starts to give you information about suicides in that country.


Page 221
(1998). Journal of the American Medical Association. Harvard School of Public Health
Providing information on statistics about smoking amongst school teenagers and is to show that even to the extent of strategies done can’t make people stop smoking.


Page 222
Phillips,D. P. (1974). American Sociological Review. University of California San Diego.
He looked at different suicides and links them to there area and puts all the information on a map to work out if there was a relationship between them.


Page 230
Eysenck,H. J .(1965). Smoking, Health and Personality. New York. Basic Books.
Eysenck,H. J .(1991). Smoking, Personality and Stress. New York. Springer-Verlag.
It is being told that there are different personalities for those who smoke and not smoke, it explains these types of people.


Page 242
Rowe,D. C . (1994). The Limits of Family Influence. New York. Guilford Press.
He is expressing that although parents may do stuff in front of you i.e. smoking, doesn’t mean that their children are going to pick it up in there life.


Page 246
Glassman,A. H . (1990). Journal of the American Medical Association.
It is used to show how people link smoking and depression together as a means to help.

Assignment - First mind map

At the start of design studies we have been told to get and read the book “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell. Once I received the book I sat down to start to read it, I found it hard to get into on the first chapter or two as I thought that everything kept being repeated in the same context. After restarting the book I found that although the author repeated stuff it started to all make since. I found that with everything being talked about in different situations, it explained and made me understand it better than my first attempt of the book. In the first seminar we started in groups to make a mind map of the whole book and were told it was to be finished for the next seminar along with a mind map of a specific section in the book.

The image below is of my mind map of the whole book.

Furniture Project

Since we have finished the last project it is time to move onto a new one, the project we are starting on Monday is a furniture based project. This is going to be something completely new to me, I am excited to get started and think it'll be very interesting whilst being something totally different but at the same time it'll be a big challenge. I've started to looked into furniture and product design over the past couple of days, its started to get my mind thinking about this area.

I came across a furntiure designer called, Lui Honfay. These images below are of some of the work he has done.

I am continuing to look at a number of other different designers to get some inspiration as I am not totally sure what aspects we are meant to be focusing on. I will keep this updated the whole way through this project and how I am getting on.

Presentation sheets

This image above is of all the presentation boards the way they had been displayed all together.

All the images above our of the six sheets we created with the information about are project we wanted to be shown. The images I have are not the best as they were taken whilst on the curved wall, I will take better pictures and upload them at a later date.