Developed as part of my Credo project, I now have an online portfolio.

Find it at: http://www.ayartidesigns.com

Its been a busy month. My credo project has expanded well beyond what i originally expected. I have finally sourced a good printer for my dvd sleeve. I have finished redesigning it, and it is looking a lot better than it originally was.

I decided that the objective of the box, the dvd case and the booklet should be to entice people to explore the digital content on the 2 disks. Therefor, i decided the booklet would simply be a visual piece exploring who I am and what i am interested in. It contains no uni work, it is simply there as a quick flick through before you dive into the 2 disks.

I have also decided that rather than filling a cd with a pdf folio, i’d rather put something on there with lasting value. Therefor, i have decided to design a folio website that will be branded with the credo identity, but will also be my active, live online folio once the project is over. I have commissioned a friend to code the site for me, but the form and functionality is all being designed by me.

Here are some links to my final credo prints:

outer box.pdf

dvd case.pdf

booklet.pdf

I’ve almost finished reading Unspeak (yes i’m a slow reader). It has really opened my eyes about what governments can get away with. Its quite sickening really. For example, the word ‘Global Warming’ was decided upon to describe the state of the earth heating up, mainly due to pollution. However, the term ‘Global Warming’  could be interpreted to imply that there were parties responsible for the act of ‘warming’ the globe, and most people would assume that the parties responsible to be oil companies. The oil companies wanted none of this, so they essentially pressured the government to change the wording to ‘Climate Change’. This term was less frightening, and didn’t point the finger at anybody.

I find it disgusting that governments will use over the top language in instances like the Iraq War, to try and convince the public that their cause is just. They use terms like ‘Weapons of Mass Destructions’, ‘Terror’ and ‘Freedom’, which are all highly emotive words, to whip up support to their cause. It seems with environmental issues, like global warming, the government is doing the opposite. Instead of using frightening language, they use dumbed down language. They replace Global Warming with Climate Change. Is making it less threatening really going to help get people to take action? If it doesn’t sound like an immediate threat, why would people want to do anything about it? I guess essentially it all comes down to who’s really pulling the strings.

Today i watched Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, as i was interested to see what type of language he used and whether any evidence of this ‘Unspeak’ came up. And sure enough, it is covered. Towards the end of the film, he talks about how its pretty much unanimous across all environmental scientists that global warming is happening. The only doubt and controversy over it just being a theory is brought up by the media, who are influenced by higher powers.

All this is making me very interested in how people perceive language, how they respond to it, and to what extent they believe it.

I haven’t updated my blog in a while as i’ve been quite busy with other work, but here is a run down of what i’ve been up to and some thoughts on things.

Last Tuesday, our initial poster group presented our literature review for the Methods class. We presented language as a topic very broadly, which was good, and bad upon reflection. Good because it revealed lots of start points for further research, but bad because it sort of left us a little behind other groups who had already picked a somewhat refined area within their topics.

I have joined up with Nadia Hisheh to form our group for the major project of the semester. We formed with a shared interest in a few of the areas that our group looked into. We are yet to come up with a title, or a well defined phrase to describe exactly what it is we are doing, but we are getting there.

Essentially our topic extends from some of the reading i was doing by the author Steven Poole, who i have mentioned in other posts. We are interested in the way people perceive truth. What is true to someone? How does one come to accept a truth? What makes someone a credible source for truth? We can see some interesting social experiments that could come out of this pathway, we just really need to flesh out a refined direction and work out the best method to research.

Our team blog will be up shortly, so keep a look out for it!

So this is my blog for school. Horrah! In time, it will be filled with lots of useful information (i hope), but for now this is just a hello post.

cool.

alex.