PORTFOLIO 3: PERFORM
REFLECTIVE ESSAY
I concluded my last portfolio essay by stating that I was going to dive into a slightly different topic for this project. This was because I was getting a bit blocked by discussing the same message every unit. I definitely failed at that task, but I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing. This portfolio was all about synthesizing multimodality in order to convey a concrete message. I think I have been doing that from the start since all my portfolios have been related. Throughout this class I have shown my clear preference with the visual mode. As a graphic designer, my whole career path is related to this mode. Prints, zines, posters, and spreads are my brain’s default setting when it comes to message delivery. I am happy to say I pushed myself a little harder this time around by making an audio artifact.
I decided to read an excerpt from “The role of values in collaborative fashion consumption - A critical investigation through the lenses of the theory of planned behavior” by Dr. Carolin Viktoria Becker-Leifhold. I explain who she is and why she is relevant to the discussion more in depth in my statement of goals and choices. My original plan was to read a lot more of her journal, but I got carried away ranting about the topic myself. I landed on this idea from doing research for the project. I am constantly adding sources to my list of citations to use when discussing the ethics and politics of fashion. When I talk about this subject I always bring up the phrase “I could talk about this forever”. So I figured I would use that to my advantage. My go to place for sources is the undergraduate library “finding articles guide”. I don’t think a day goes by that I don’t have that tab open on my computer. I spend hours researching and reading things just because I am into educated conversations! I will talk to myself out loud when I research to make sense of my opinions. This audio is exactly what it sounds like in my room on a daily basis. That includes the background sounds of the infamous loud street I mention every class.
The visual artifact, the coloring pages, was a lot more straightforward. It was the starting point for this portfolio. I wanted to make an approachable non-hostile call out post for people who believe they are ethical consumers. I compare fast consumption of second-hand clothing to the over consumption of diet alternatives to sugar. Consuming diet coke every day is worse for you than consuming real coke once a year. The same goes for fast fashion. Consuming from goodwill or thrift stores every month is worse for low-income communities, the environment, and fast-fashion workers than consuming from Zara or Pacsun a few times a year. I go more in depth about this in my audio artifact.
With these two artifacts I hope my audience is able to think about their choices as consumers. I want them to understand that the way they redirect their money and attention will create a lot more change than they think. I am excited to revise this portfolio along with everything else I have created in this class to place it in my “real” academic graphic design portfolio. I am pleasantly surprised by how much content I was able to produce in these short 8 weeks that relate to my independent practice. As we approach the start of the Fall semester, I believe this class kept my artistic momentum going and set the tone of how my work environment is going to look like this fall. I am excited to see how my messages and work progress, keeping all of these assignments as a comparable starting point :)
STATEMENT OF GOALS AND CHOICES
This project is separated into two artifacts: the coloring pages and the narrated stories. Both are meant to create a lighthearted user experience. This was my way of calling out possible unethical choices of the user without being hostile. Starting with the color pages, I was playing with the idea of “the big picture” - who gets to understand the big picture and who doesn’t? As the user starts to answer the questions and fill out their respective color blocks, they will start to see the big picture of ethical and smart consumption. Notice how the questions are not meant to separate people between “ethical consumers” and “unethical consumers” but rather between who understands the consequences of their actions and who doesn’t. I am obviously using the visual mode and the linguistic mode, but I relate these artifacts to the spatial mode as well. The user would have to do this on a desk, with their own art supplies, on their own time. The user experience for a college student would be different to that of the CEO of a company because of their different relationships to the space around them. I then followed this with a reading of a peered reviewed academic journal of consumer theory. I read “The role of values in collaborative fashion consumption - A critical investigation through the lenses of the theory of planned behavior” by Dr. Carolin Viktoria Becker-Leifhold, a project manager for Ecosense. She holds a PhD in Sustainability Economics from Ulm University. My goal was to create something the user could listen to while filling out the coloring pages. I felt like it matched the lighthearted nostalgic theme of my project. Coloring pages and narrated stories tend to be used in elementary school settings, but my target audience is consumers who are in charge of their own money. Particularly people who are into fashion trends, so mostly people ages 18-40. Because my target audience is both part of the consuming population and the voting population, I decided to make the tone of my narration a bit more serious. In the audio recording, the listener can hear me sew as well as read research I have done on the subject. As I read key points from the journal that I find very important, I synthesize my own views and opinions on the matter. When the user is done listening to the narration, it will be as if they just had a conversation with me! A very one sided conversation, but a conversation nonetheless. Both these artifacts work together to educate the audience on their power as consumers. I want the user to understand how their money and attitudes towards consumption hold a lot more power in society than almost anything else.
REVISED FORUM POST
Ostrander’s “Roscoe’s Wetsuit: Metamodern Identity and Existentialism” does an excellent job at organizing Donald Glover’s concept album Because the Internet into an easy to follow format. He breaks down each of the elements of the album including the music videos, songs, characters, lyrics, and even the press interviews Glover did explaining his work. As someone who isn’t very familiar with Donald Glover’s career, both the website and the infographic helped me follow the narrative behind this album without actually listening to it. I am however, very familiar with concept albums. Concept albums, records that effectively combine video, audio, text, character plots, and narrative into something cohesive, are my absolute favorite type of music albums. I think Because the Internet is a perfect example of how multimodality is essential for sending a clear message. Something that stuck out to me from this record is Glover’s engagement with his audience using a variety of social media outlets in synchronicity with the release of the album. He was talking to his audience in code, that once cracked would enhance the listening experience. This technique of world making was especially effective for him because of the topic he writes about, the internet. Like Ostrander claims, “ this transmedia used to address reality in real time, in metamodern fashion, providing impetus for audience members to explore and grapple with their own world as an extension of their exploration of this world”. I also really appreciated the infographic version of this breakdown because I think it does a great job at showing a more linear path of Glover’s narrative message.
The second reading, Marita Growingthunder's Save Our Sisters Walk, addresses multimodality in a different way. Marita Growingthunder brought awareness to the rapid disappearance of Native American women and the lack of media coverage by wearing traditional Native American clothing to school every day as well as organizing the Save Our Sisters Walk. This march shows loads of examples of multimodality - the use of spatial mode as the participants take up space in the streets, visual mode with the use of signs and traditional clothing, aural mode with the use of spoken messages from the march, etc.
For my final project I was thinking of creating a color-by-numbers-book in which each number within a drawing is actually a task or a question that would aid the user to become a more educated consumer. If the user answers all the questions correctly then the big picture makes sense. I relate this to the first reading as Glover’s use of coded social media posts helped enhance the experience of the album. I want to do something similar by enhancing the user’s engagement with the piece by having to do outside research before being able to finish the drawing. I relate this to the second reading as well, as I will be allowing the user to be in control of their own spatial experience. In order to engage with the coloring pages the user must also engage with the space around them. They will need a surface to draw on, coloring supplies, access to the internet to research the topic I will be asking about, etc. All of these variables for this experience are customizable, making each user experience unique. The narrated passage will hopefully enhance the user experience as it will give direct research and opinions on the topics in the coloring pages. Like Glover, I will use the visual, linguistic, and audible modes to educate consumers on how their actions, priorities, and attitudes shape the economy as well as the politics of fashion.
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