Plug and play: the 'new purpose' of physical consumer space
"an effective physical connection is still absolutely imperative to brand success. Rather than assuming that the physical space is being hindered by the growth of digital activity, brands and designers are beginning to embrace the newer channels where consumers are choosing to spend their time and deliver a physical environment that adds value around these. Get the basic understanding of the 'new purpose' of the physical space right and the physical manifestation of the design will boom from there.
The key is to design interiors that can respond and morph with social and cultural shifts, so that the spaces become a form of 'cultural commentary', adding value to the popular activities of today's audiences. Above all, interior design must be approached in a way that ensures that the brand communicates a relevant message through this critical channel. This can be achieved by considering and responding to three key topics: cultural relevance, social context and technology integration."
(Lucy Johnston, Design Week)
Fig. "The Anthropologist", iloveretail.com
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
The history of the UK Design Council
"The Design Council started life in 1944 as the Council of Industrial Design. It was founded by Hugh Dalton, President of the Board of Trade in the wartime Government, and its objective was 'to promote by all practicable means the improvement of design in the products of British industry'. And that was to stay unaltered through half a century of social, technological and economic change."
(UK Design Council)
Fig.1 "1951 Festival of Britain", Graphic created by: Design Council/Council of Industrial Design | From University of Brighton Design Archives. [JRGS Alumni Society: http://www.mel–lambert.com/Ruskin/News/News_Archive/JRGS02A_News_Archive32.htm]
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Audience Research: Reception Analysis
"Despite the (implicit) nominal link to the work on what is also called 'Reception Theory', within the field of literary studies, carried out by Wolfgang Iser, Hans Jauss and other literary scholars (particular in Germany), the body of recent work on media audiences commonly referred to by this name, has on the whole, a different origin, although there are some theoretical links (cf., the work of Stanley Fish) than the work in literary theory. In practice, the term 'reception analysis', has come to be widely used as a way of characterising the wave of audience research which occurred within communications and cultural studies during the 1980s and 1990s. On the whole, this work has adopted a 'culturalist' perspective, has tended to use qualitative (and often ethnographic) methods of research and has tended to be concerned, one way or another, with exploring the active choices, uses and interpretations made of media materials, by their consumers.
As indicated in the previous discussion of 'The Media Audience', the single most important point of origin for this work, lies with the development of cultural studies in the writings of Stuart Hall at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham, England, in the early 1970s and, in particular, Hall's widely influential 'encoding/decoding' model of communications (see the discussion of 'The Media Audience' for an explanation of this model). Hall's model provided the inspiration, and much of the conceptual framework for a number of C.C.C.S' explorations of the process of media consumption, notably David Morley's widely cited study of the cultural patterning of differential interpretations of media messages among The 'Nationwide' Audience and Dorothy Hobson's work on women viewers of the soap opera Crossroads. These works were the forerunners of a blossoming of cultural studies work focusing on the media audience, throughout the 1980s and 1990s, including, among the most influential, from a feminist point of view, the work of Tania Modleski and Janice Radway on women consumers of soap opera and romance, and the work of Ien Ang, Tamar Liebes and Elihu Katz, Kim Schroder and Jostein Gripsrud on international cross cultural consumption of American drama series, such as Dallas and Dynasty.
Much of this work has been effectively summarised and popularised, especially, in the United States by John Fiske, who has drawn on the theoretical work of Michel de Certeau to develop a particular emphasis on the 'active audience', operating within what he terms the 'semiotic democracy' of postmodern pluralistic culture. Fiske's work has subsequently been the object of some critique, in which a number of authors, among them Budd, Condit, Evans, Gripsrud, and Seamann have argued that the emphasis on the openness (or 'polysemy') of the message and on the activity (and the implied 'empowerment') of the audience, within reception analysis, has been taken too far, to the extent that the original issue––of the extent of media power––has been lost sight of, as if the 'text' had been theoretically 'dissolved' into the audience's (supposedly) multiple 'readings' of (and 'resistances' to) it.
In the late 1980s, there were a number of calls to scholars to recognise a possible 'convergence' of previously disparate approaches under the general banner of 'reception analysis' (cf. in particular, Jensen and Rosengren), while Blumler et al. have claimed that the work of a scholar such as Radway is little more than a 're–invention' of the 'uses and gratifications' tradition––a claim hotly contested by Schroder. More recently, both Curran and Corner have offered substantial critiques of 'reception analysis'––the former accusing many reception analysts of ignorance of the earlier traditions of media audience research, and the latter accusing them of retreating away from important issues of macro–politics and power into inconsequential micro–ethnographies of domestic television consumption. For a reply to these criticisms, see Morley, 1992."
(David Morley, The Museum of Broadcast Communications)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Autumn 2012: Design and Social Innovation
"There is a growing interest in the role that design can play in catalysing, harnessing, spreading and scaling social innovation around the world. This is expressed in two key ways:
> by a growing number of professional designers and design disciplines applying their skills to addressing social issues; and
> by the adoption of design tools, techniques and methods by a growing number of other disciplines focused on developing social innovation.
Perhaps the most recognisable facet of this interest has been the rise of 'design thinking' not only in business, but increasingly in public service and policy fields. Fuelled by design agencies such as IDEO in the US, non–profit bodies such as the Design Council in the UK, and education institutions such as Stanford's 'd.school', design thinking has begun to be recognised as a key ingredient underpinning innovation (whether that be social innovation or not). Indeed, according to Sir George Cox, past chairman of the Design Council, design is what bridges creativity (the generation of new ideas) and innovation (the successful implementation of new ideas). In other words, design could be described as:
'the human power to conceive, plan, and realize products that serve human beings in the accomplishment of any individual or collective purpose' (Richard Buchanan, 2001)."
(Ingrid Burkett, Knowledge Connect)
Fig.1 AT.AW [http://www.at–aw.com]
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Intertextual Enterprises: Writing Alternative Places and Meanings in the Media Mixed Networks of Yugioh
"The media mix of Pokemon, and subsequent series such as Digimon and Yugioh, create a virtual world that manifests in multiple media forms, and though which consumers can craft their own narrative trajectories through play with video and card games (Allison 2002; Tobin 2004a). This is a networked world of expanding reference that destabilizes the prior orthodoxy of children's media (Tobin 2004a). Rather than spoon–feed stabilized narratives and heroes to a supposedly passive audience, Pokemon and Yugioh invite children to collect, acquire, recombine, and enact stories within their peer networks, trading cards, information, and monsters (Buckingham and Sefton–Green 2004; Yano 2004) in what Sefton–Green has called a 'knowledge industry' (Sefton–Green 2004, 151). These media mixes challenge our ideas of childhood agency and the passivity of media consumption, highlighting the active, entrepreneurial, and technologized aspects of children's engagement with popular culture. They also create a proliferating set of contact points between practice, media, and imaginings, as players perform and identify with media characters in multiple and often unexpected ways.
An early draft of a paper published in Debbora Battaglia Ed. Encountering the Extraterrestrial: Anthropology in Outerspaces. Duke University Press. 2005. This paper was first presented at the 2002 meetings of the American Anthropological Association"
(Mimi Ito)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
