Blog #4: Reflections…..

I don’t think my general impression of the media has altered tremendously as a result of my taking Digital Media 150. What I would say though, is that my level of appreciation of it is proportionate to what I have learned.

 

Being bombarded by the media 24-7, it can easily be taken for granted. One can choose, as I have, to limit your exposure. In my case that means no television (at the significant (?) cost of falling out of the cultural loop), but being surrounded in an ever-growing array of formats it is impossible to escape its effects entirely. What this class has taught, or at least reminded me of, is the complexity involved in even the most mundane aspects of making media. Who knew that so much time, money and thought, in fact, entire careers went into something as mundane as font type? My limited exposure to the applications we’ve begun to explore has given me a better understanding of the work that goes into perfecting print images via Photoshop. Our initial attempts at  3-point lighting have given me an appreciation of that overlooked but ever-present aspect that touches everything we do in the media. And our foray into the world of the blog has made me aware of and personally responsible for the content one is creating. And finally, this class has reinforced that producing media, regardless of the format, is most often a collaborative process.

 

Here’s looking forward to Digital Media 2.

 

Blog #3: “Design I Like: JAWS Vs. WSS”

Two movie posters that I think work particularly well are from West Side Story and Jaws. Fourteen years separated these films (1961/1975) and the posters reflect that stylistically.

 

This West Side Story poster was released after the film won 10 Academy Awards. It is very busy graphically but I think it is arranged in a cogent manner considering the amount of information they put forth. My eyes were first drawn to the red text, which made particular lines and words ‘pop’, most notably the word best (sell that film!). Red also symbolizes the film’s themes of passionate love within a fiery Latino community. The bold and gritty title graphic stands up well to the red and cleverly utilizes the lovers dancing on a fire escape, echoing the New York locale of Spanish Harlem. All the text is logically connected, sized and grouped. The addition of photographs, placed on a diagonal as they are, have the effect of giving the illusion of depth to the poster, the z axis at work. I’ve also included a Japanese poster that I liked for the simple linear perspective it employs.

 

The Jaws poster achieves its intent in a very simple but effective way. It creates and plays on our fear of what’s lurking beneath the surface? This poster answers that question with a ridiculously oversized image of a shark, mouth agape, with rows of razor sharp teeth making it’s way toward an oblivious swimming woman. There really is no need for text, aside from the bold, blood red title that dwarfs the swimmer. The actors credit placement mimics the upward thrust of the shark and terrifying appears twice in 2 short lines of copy.