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Design 4: Visual Organization and Information Design
Introduction
Reading
Class Project
Week 1: Jan 28
Week 2: Feb 4
Week 3: Feb 11
Feb 18
No Class President's Day
Week 4: Feb 19
Tuesday make up class
Week 5: Feb 25
Week 6: Mar 3
Week 7: Mar 10
Mar 17
No Class Spring Break
Week 8: Mar 24
Week 9: Mar 31
Week 10: Apr 7
Week 11: Apr 14
Week 12: Apr 21
Week 13: Apr 28
Week 14: May 5
Week 15: May 12

Week 10: Storyboards and Propaganda

Class Activity:

  • Critique Brochures
    NOTE Save all your electronic source files for the class activity into a folder and place them in the class drop box on the network before you leave today. Remember to use the naming conventions outlined in the introduction section about How to prepare your work for submission.
  • Storyboarding as a tool for organizing design
  • In class story boarding excercise
  • Discuss narrative and propaganda

Storyboards

There are many ways of telling a story — through words, music, plays, film, games, etc. One way that is particularly descriptive, visually rich in information, easily understood, and interesting to view is the storyboard.

A storyboard is a series of cells (drawings, photographs, etc.) physically arranged to tell a story in a specific sequence. Storyboards can tell the story of what we envision happening, or they can relate events that have already happened. Storyboards can use images as simple as stick figures or as complex as a film frame. They may also incorporate text.

Storyboards have been around since the beginning of recorded time. Early examples of storyboards, from the cave drawings found in France to the hieroglyphics of Egypt and the “story rings” of native Americans, show how picture sequences were used to record events and perhaps even enhance the oral telling of the events.

1. We can easily visualize a sequence of events and imagine the outcome.

2. The sequence and outcome can be depicted extremely clearly using the simplest of drawings.

We all can harness the creative mental energy that we unconsciously exercise everyday to create tangible storyboards — ones that can be incorporated throughout the design process to enhance more traditional activities.

Storyboards are typically a tool used in television and film to help the director give the story to his crew. It helps them illustrate the sequences for the script and actors, visual effects and camera angles.

We can also use storyboarding to produce "page flow storyboards" and "task flow diagrams" to convey design ideas to a large group of people who must work together to ensure planned events happen as envisioned (just as in the movie industry). This is often used in larger interactive projects for games, software, websites, motion graphics, and generally when ever their is a project where a great deal of cooperation is involved across multiple teams and skill sets.

While we are not desigining a film or television program we can still use storyboards to help us as designers to think about the over all impact of the collaborative effort that we will be exerting on the design of a book.

  • As you proceed with your storyboard design think of the flow of the narrative.
  • What is the first impression / idea that the reader should come away with?
  • What elements can be used to communicate an idea on a page?
  • What is the goal of each page in the storyboard? What is it supposed to be telling the reader?
  • How can we use maps, information graphics, and images or photography in the page structure based on a general grid?
  • As a designer look to identify the primary elements (ideas) on the page. Also consider the secondary elements and ideas.
  • Consider where the header, the footer and the page number goes? Are their other elements in the margins such as small blurbs or text? quotes? information graphics? text reference material? What about foot notes, and source references?

When done properly, a storyboard serves as a central design, meeting the needs of many team members including graphics artists, photographers, editors, authors, jacket designers, etc.


Comic book style storyboard created by user experience designers.


Biomedical animation storyboard (excerpt) by Four Square Productions


Game sequence storyboard (excerpt) for Disney Japan's online game Aladdin produced by British digital marketing agency, KERB.


TV storyboard illustrating a concept by Johnny Hardstaff and commissioned by Mother for Orange to direct the 30 second film 'Paint' for television. Below is an image from the resulting film.

 

Assignment - Story Board

Using information design as a vehicle for instruction create a story board of the sequence of your narrative.

Each student will choose an excerpt from the CIA, Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual

Choose one of the many step by step guidelines provided within. Eg.Arrest and Handeling of Subjects for interrogation is outlined with multiple events each with specific guidelines. On pages 48-50 is a section that outlines apprehension into eight simple guidelines begining with the manner and timing of an arrest.

Once you have choosen a specific section of the text, begin to story board your narrative so that it captures each of the specific points associated with that narrative.

Considerations
  • Develop icons, a consistent grid system for your story board illustrations being sure that you are conveying the information in a visually compelling, innovative and coherrent manner
  • Use the visual vocabulary which you have developed for your core issue but apply this to a different topic
  • Print out the storyboard template (pdf) and develop sketches and draw in pencil and/or ink the general structure and sequence of your narrative
  • Include general areas marked for detailed text instructional headings
  • Design using Adobe Illustrator
  • Scale and format is open
  • Be prepared to answer these questions:
    What is this about? Why should reader want to read this? Is your storyboard detailed enough to provide a clear picture of what the narrative sequence reveals to the reader?

Due Next Week

  • Storyboard printed in color
  • Also bring in your hand-drawn story board sketches and your electronic files

Propaganda

Why study propaganda and design?

Propaganda analysis is an antidote to the excesses of the Information Age. Understanding the use and design of propaganda exposes the tricks that propagandists use and suggests ways of resisting the short-cuts that they promote.

We can learn a great deal about these tactics from the work of the Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA). From 1937 to 1942, the IPA was dedicated to promoting the techniques of propaganda analysis among critically-minded citizens. The IPA produced a booklet titled "The Fine Art of Propaganda, which details specific "Tricks of the Trade" which can still be used today by civic minded designers.

The chief devices used by propagandists are:

  1. Name Calling Giving an idea a bad name - is used to make us reject and condemn the idea without examining the evidence.
  2. Glittering Generality Associating something with a "virtue word" is used to make us accept something and approve the thing without examining the evidence.
  3. Transfer carries the authority, sanction and prestige of something respected and revered over to something else in order to make the latter acceptable; or it carries authority, sanction and disapproval to cause us to reject and disapprove something the propagandist would have us reject and disapprove.
  4. Testimonial consists in having some respected or hated person say that a given idea of program or product of person is good or bad.
  5. Plain Folks is the method by which a speaker attempts to convince his audience that he and his ideas are good because they are "of the people." the "plain folks."
  6. Card Stacking involves the selection and use of facts or falsehoods, illustrations or distractions, and logical or illogical statements in order to give the best or the worst possible case for an idea, program, person, or product.
  7. Band Wagon has as its theme, "Everybody - at least all of us - is doing it"; with it, the propagandist attempts to convince us that all members of a group to which we belong are accepting his program and that we must therefore follow our crowd and "jump on the band wagon."

Once we know these devices well enough to spot examples of their use, we have taken a great and long step towards freeing our minds from control by propagandists. And as designers we can use this knowledge to help us to avoid the pitfalls of propaganda while finding better ways to use design to convey clarity and information to help people make well founded decisions.

Project - Disinformation

Start your initial research this week

Using any of the seven propaganda techniques design a pamphlet which is critical of your issue, taking the opposite point of view that you have held about your issue.

For example if the issue is anti-Iraq-war, then for this project I would be charged with the development of a pro-Irag-war pamphlet.

Due next week

  • Your initial research: Find a real organization which you will base your propaganda design on
  • Bring in examples of their visual system, brochures, web pages, publications, etc.
  • Bring in an outline of the content of your propaganda pamphlet (Minimum one paragraph typed in microsoft word)

Research/Journal:

Readings

Related Resources

 
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