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Journal 14

One of the most helpful parts of the course I found was providing a greater caution about differentiating between conclusions and assumptions. I think over the course of the class, the way I approach research and even just consumption of media has become more careful. I’ve begun to separate and be more conscious of my own biases and how that makes me interpret the meaning of something. Of course I was understanding that everyone interprets everything differently before the class, and everyone has their own unique point of view, but the studio has given me the foundation to be more conscious of how I’m interpreting it, and why I’m interpreting it like that, and if there are any fallacies within that. 

Another great benefit of this class was exploring the history of design and its consumption. While I’ve taken art and graphic design history courses, it was mainly focused on changes in visual trends throughout art movements. This class covered parts that that course never even mentioned. The readings provided great context and insight into how design has been consumed, and the type of societies consuming it. Focusing on broader subjects of just media rather than specific types of designs was also greatly important, as having an understanding of consumption of all media can only help when designing. So while I’m not going to grad school, and I’m not interested in doing studies like this from here on out, the foundational knowledge it provides will prove to be very useful in understanding how my own work will be perceived.  Some of the readings that have stuck with me the most are McLuhan’s within Understanding Media. Where I mention a deconstruction earlier of my personal biases, McLuhan is now constantly in the back of my head reminding me that as much as I rid myself of personal biases, the medium I’m designing in and for will always carry its own biases. Design is never completely neutral, and if it was, would there even be a point to it? Being mindful of the context and background of the field or medium I’m working in is vastly important, in order to have the best understanding of how my work will be consumed. 

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Journal 13

After the review from journal 12 threw a wrench in my previous idea for my topic, I will now be focusing on how portrayals of masculinity in blockbuster movies has changed over the course of the past decades, and how it's formed and conformed to the consumers of the films. From character's like Clint Eastwood's "Man with No Name" from the dollars trilogy, to Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator, Brad Pitt in Fight Club, to Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain. There's a clear shift in how these characters are portrayed, from stoic, almost voiceless characters, to deeply emotional characters, reflected in the visuals of the movie.

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Journal 12

The question I have drafted for my analysis project, is why depictions of masculinity in movies are frequently interpreted differently by viewers than by the people making the movies. Examples; Fight Club, American Psycho, Wolf of Wall Street, Joker, Taxi Driver. So while I'm doing a content analysis of these films individually, I'm more-so doing an audience study. Some of these films I haven't seen, so I'll have to watch them, do research on the intended meaning of each script, and find examples of how wide audiences misunderstanding the intended meaning. From what I've already experienced, I've seen a lot of these misinterpretations within various social media platforms. I'd also like to explore how other films can avoid this, or if filmmakers would even want to avoid it.

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Journal 11

For the analysis final project for my design semiotics class, I want to cover toxic masculinity within cinema. What movies critique it, which movies glamorize it, and which movies opt to show growth out of it, or promote positive masculinity from the get-go. I think this topic is important, because of how popular media affects the generations consuming it. There's an issue in the world, especially the U.S. today, of men exhibiting toxic masculinity, and I think the media we consume can be a big contributor to this. All forms of media can harmfully promote toxic masculinity, but I want to cover film specifically because I've seen many movies that cover all aspects of this topic, and I think narrowing it down to one medium is beneficial for the argument.

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Journal 10 - Maps

For this journal, the goal is to apply Wood's ten codes to a map we find easy to understand. I'm going to be applying these codes to the navigation map from the 2019 video game Death Stranding.

The game focuses on the player character Sam Porter Bridges, played by Norman Reedus. Your goal is connect the country together after a near extinction event by navigating your way through dangerous terrain, rain that ages you by years the second it touches your skin, terrorists, and ghosts referred to as BTs (Beached Things).

This game is one about connecting, both to things in the game, and to the others playing the game. As you explore and connect the game world together, you begin to see more and more structures that other players built, such as zip-lines, bridges, generators, etc.

As you can see in the video, there are a lot of icons, and you probably have no clue what you're looking at if you haven't played the game. However for the player, as you slowly progress, you're learning what everything on the map means as you play the game.

The map relies heavily on color to differentiate between locations/objects.

Blue - Permanent buildings and structures you have made

Green - Structures other players have made

Orange - Enemy outposts

These are intrinsic observations, we recognize immediately these icons mean separate things based on their color. They also all have different icons representing what they're signifying.

The only names that pop up while looking at the map in an untouched state, are those of cities and people you can visit, such as "Lake Knot City" or "Engineer". However, if you interact and scroll over any icon, it will give you the name and description of what you're hovering over. You can view anything of importance of a structure from far away, such as its durability or how many quests are available for you there. It's not trying to hide any information from you, it attempts to show you as much information as possible without completely overwhelming you.

Because the game is focused on delivering packages through dangerous terrain, the map is tilt-able, so you can see how steep of a mountain or how deep of a valley you'll be passing through.

Though not labeled anywhere specifically, it's pretty clear the map is constantly updating. It shows you your current location at all times, as well as the path you've taken behind you.

Everything on the map is displayed exactly where it is in the world. Now, because there can be hundreds of icons on the screen at the same time, it only displays icons in the center circle when hovering over it. It's hard to explain in words, but you'll see what I mean in the video. When zoomed far away, it decides to only show things of higher importance that will affect your travels more significantly. Items such as a rope you can use to climb down, or a ladder, those only show up on the map when zooming in close.

What I've talked about for the most part up until now, have all been intra significant codes, those being Iconic, Linguistic, Tectonic, Temporal, and Presentation. Now, I focused heavily on these, because the game wants to provide you with as much information as it can without overwhelming the user with stuff unrelated. Essentially, it wants you to do the least amount of extra thinking when using it. It also helps, that because it's interactive, it's constantly updating, so there's little need to consider when it's inaccurate or misleading.

Because you're the player and you understand the organization that you're working for, the player never considers who made the map when using it. Though from an outside view, there'd be a lot more thinking going on. They wouldn't know what world this is or what it looks like, where it is or what it's depicting in its icon without the information that the game provides to the player.

Anybody that hasn't played the game would have to consider why the map's important, where and when the map is about, what culture made it, and what its purpose is. All of these are extra significant codes.

I think the reason I find this map so easy and intuitive, is because the game essentially drip-feeds you this information at a steady pace. You see the icons on the map in the world as you're exploring. You use a scanner, and see all these same icons and how far away from you they are as you're walking. All of the pins you can place on the map show up when you use this scanner as well. Essentially, the map feels like if you just flew up into the sky to look at what's around you.

The map doesn't expect anybody outside the game to be viewing it, so it doesn't find the need to explain anything the player already knows from playing.

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Journal 9

After viewing everyone else's projects, I realized mine was laid out a little differently. Mine was presenting my thought process of getting to my idea, which I think was effective, there's just some filler information I could've cut out.

To fill that new empty space, I think adding more context to my redesigns would be effective. As brought up after, there were some limitations to my symbols. Bringing up those limitations and defending them would be good.

Stating that while the humanistic designs lack the ability to convey signal strength, their meaning and feeling trumps the effectiveness of using bars. I think bringing up alternatives, such as having a way to still view connection strength if needed, or having ways of conveying signal strength through these new icons.

While there were limitations to their uses, the responses to my ideas seemed pretty positive overall. I think my peers connected to my intentions, and found my approach to integrating a touch of humanity in our technology to be something to consider.

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Journal 8

In Ruben Pater’s The Politics of Design, a book from 2016, there’s a section where he discusses cultural thievery. He brings up how graphic designers are commonly discussing plagiarism, but they rarely consider if they’re plagiarizing another culture. I find this interesting to look back at, as I think in the almost 10 years since the book was published, being mindful of if you’re appropriating a culture has become a lot more widespread. At least in my classes and peer circles, everyone seems relatively aware of what they’re designing and where they’re borrowing from, and being respectful and tasteful if they are. We’ve had projects that distinctly make it a point to fix previous ad campaigns that were distasteful, which is great. Obviously there’s always room for improvement, but it is nice to know that things have gotten better in the past decade when it comes to this topic. I feel like things are already regressing in this sense and will continue to for the next almost four years, but hopefully not too much.

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Journal 7

For class, we’ve been reading Ruben Pater’s The Politics of Design. In this first section, I’ll be covering something I’m unfamiliar with, and the second section will be something I already am aware of. In a section titled Time Bandits, Pater explores the evolution of time-telling. How before clocks, the sun was used to tell the time, and thus each village had their own time. Ultimately in 1884, after industrialization had spread, the world was divided into 24 time zones. Because Britain was the dominant power in the world, time zones started in Greenwich, U.K. I’m sure I learned of this in grade school, but didn’t recall the details. He goes on to discuss how countries can choose their own time, meaning it’s subject to political power. An example of this is when Mao Zedong made it so that China is under a single time zone, which is extremely troublesome with how big of a country it is, as in the winter, some regions don’t see the sunrise till noon. There’s been other examples of countries resetting time zones as a statement against their enemies. Some countries like Bolivia said that regular clock direction was colonial in nature, and made all clocks go counterclockwise. AM and PM are originally derived from when the sun is at its peak, yet due to work schedules being 7-5 as the social norm, time zones are more attuned to the working day. I’ve never considered why time zones are how they are, nor was I familiar with countries manipulating them. It just never occurred to me that they could be used as a statement.

In the book, there’s a section titled Death by Photoshop. It begins by mentioning how George Orwell wrote that the government in 1984 removed references of people that had been killed or arrested. This then came true in real life in the Soviet Union, where deleting people from images and official records was regular. While I think this brings up a good topic, I think the fact that it focuses solely on communist dictatorships is distasteful. Not covering other examples is a form of censorship in and of itself. It’s hard not to be familiar with this topic, especially in the past few months. With the Trump administration's erasure of DEI programs, they’ve begun to remove history from the national archives. Photos and evidence of the Enola Gay, one of the planes that dropped a nuke during WWII, are being removed for the sole purpose of having “gay” in the name. This also includes a database of 26,000 photos depicting people with the last name gay. They’re even removing Army Corps biologists from the archives simply because they mentioned the gender of fish that they were studying. While not necessarily photoshopping people out of these images, the idea isn’t far fetched within the nation. It has become easier than ever to remove evidence of people with AI. With how influential social media outlets are, and how biased journalists and new outlets have become, the erasure of people and their ideas is extremely prevalent with people like Elon Musk hiding tweets about Gaza, among others.

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Journal 6: Encoding Projects Compared

For my design semiotics class, I was assigned to compare my last post where I related video games to McLuhan’s ideas, to a classmate’s essay on comparing McLuhan’s ideas to GIFs instead.

Video Games vs. GIFs: Whereas video games are intrinsically interactive, where players must control their own experience through their inputs, GIFs are non-interactive, they play in a loop with no physical input. They are interactive though when it comes to social interaction, as they can add to conversations online to convey emotions better than words at times. Video games usually go on for hours, sometimes endlessly, with complex systems, whereas GIFs are extremely short, a matter of seconds, and are used to capture emotions or moments. Video games come in a variety of different graphics and art styles, while GIFs are always limited to 256 colors and low resolutions. All in all, they’re vastly different mediums. Video games are self-contained experiences that demand your full attention, while GIFs are tools used to contribute to social situations that are passed by quickly.

Analytical approach: Comparing both essays, I think we both took similar approaches to how we analyzed our respective mediums. We both began by setting the tone for the essay, introducing our medium and how we’ll be applying McLuhan’s framework to them. We both go on to give the background and conception of these mediums, and then go to apply McLuhan’s various ideas to them. We both mention the global village and hot and cold ideas, and discuss how they have impacted communication and other factors of our lives. Overall, we both discuss their past, present, and where video games and GIFs may go in the future. The biggest difference that I saw between our analyses was that mine was framed as an argument as to why video games should be added to McLuhan’s Understanding Media, while my classmate’s essay was focused on discussing what McLuhan would’ve thought about GIFs.

Imagery: My classmate used GIFs for all of their imagery, which I liked a lot and thought that it bolstered their argument and provided context for those less experienced with the medium. I used still images for all of my imagery in comparison. I think we both used a wide range of what our imagery was displaying. Some pictures and GIFs went along with what we were saying to provide information and visual aid, while others were just giving examples of popular GIFs or video games. Picking 20 images to represent an entire medium may not sound too challenging, but I found it to be harder than I thought it would be. There’s so many different facets and ideas to consider, that it’s hard to determine what images are the most effective, especially when considering what we’re trying to convey in our arguments.

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Encoding Project

Today, video games have come to change how we think, communicate, and interact, whether you play them or not. However, philosopher Marshall McLuhan didn’t get the chance to analyze them in his books. If he were to have written them in today’s age, he would have surely included them in his analyses.

McLuhan was a philosopher who focused primarily on media theories. There’s a good chance that you’ve heard the phrase “the medium is the message”, McLuhan was the one that coined this. The basis of this implies that the way the media works is ultimately more important than what it’s saying. Video games both conform to this while challenging it at the same time.

McLuhan covered a wide variety of media across his theories, but never covered video games. When Understanding Media was published, the only notable game released at the time was Tennis for Two. It was famous for its breakthroughs, but it could only be played at an exhibition where it was on display. Video games couldn’t be considered a medium at this point.

For reference, McLuhan passed the same year Pac-Man was released. He didn’t get to experience how video games grew to be one of the most dominant mediums today, with the industry making 184 billion dollars in 2023 alone. They’ve come to be a major influence on our culture and how we communicate, it would be only obvious to add a section in understanding media about them.

McLuhan said that media is an extension of ourselves. This is the core of his theories, and he meant that media and new technology change how we think and interact with each other. Arguably more-so than any other media, video games challenge our motor skills and cognition abilities, even social skills depending on the game.

Whereas television and books provide set narratives, video games need input. Oftentimes, stories change drastically depending on choices you make throughout them. Video games, in this sense, are unique in that they are very based on decisions, rather than a single set message and ending.

Another popular idea that McLuhan held was the classifications of “hot” and “cold” media. Hot requires little participation, and cold demands more engagement. Games have a wide array of genres, arguably more than even music or film, making it harder to sort them into categories. However, you must constantly be participating to make any progress, so McLuhan would have classified them as cold. 

McLuhan believed that media is defined by its structure rather than content, and we can bring this back to the genre argument. Every game has its own systems built in, different controls, mechanics, visuals, everything. I think this theory is especially relevant, as how each game is built ultimately dictates whether or not we finish it, come back to it, or enjoy it. 

A belief of McLuhan’s was that media could hypnotize users, such as Narcissus looking into his reflection. Video games are a good example of this, as many players get so absorbed into them that it can start affecting their livelihood. It’s a medium that’s extremely easy to escape into, and we’re still figuring out the full effects of them.

McLuhan predicted that media would create a global village, with people being able to connect from anywhere in the world. Not only are games often multiplayer, with each one acting as a theme park of sorts to mess around with friends, but you can also meet and form connections with random people. These connections transcend actually playing, forming online communities and forums to converse about them.

McLuhan argued that new media borrow from old ones. Video games are no different. They pull from every piece of media that has ever come before them. Storytelling and worldbuilding has come so far that oftentimes video games are able to tell a story in a way that you wouldn’t be able to with any other medium. 

Some games take so much inspiration from cinema for example, that they even hire Hollywood actors to star in them. Games often have amazingly beautiful soundtracks that are just as powerful as the visuals and gameplay. If a film aims to blend everything together to feel uniform in its message, games must do the same, often at a higher scale because there are so many variables intrinsic to the medium.

McLuhan would apply media to a tetrad to analyze them, with the four parts being enhancing, retrieving, obsolescing, and reversing. If he were to apply the tetrad to games, he would say they enhance engagement to higher levels, they obsolete non-interactive media, retrieve dynamic storytelling from oral mediums, and can reverse into problems like addiction and detachment.

As mentioned earlier, games are all different from each other, even iterations of the same series. Mechanics, controls and structure all come together to form a cognitive language unique to each one. To progress, you must learn this language. This enhances the ideas they have to offer, with gameplay mirroring the message they want to send, something unique to this medium. 

These languages that we’ve learned have come to affect parts of society sort of unknowingly. Every part of our lives are being attempted to be gamified. Professors have reward systems for a job well done, fitness apps have challenges and medals to give you, and even our self-perception being defined by little numbers popping up on social media from how many people like our posts or follow us. 

Because of how immersive they are, it’s easy to find games within schools. Typing games, kahoot, duolingo, etc, all increase student attentivity. Going beyond this, they’ve even become groundbreaking for training programs, such as Microsoft Flight Simulator being used to train pilots, bus simulators for bus drivers, and even VR programs to train the military.

Similar to how games were formed by other media, they’ve gone on to be the basis for new iterations of media as well. Sites like YouTube became a place for users to record themselves playing, leading to more recently, live streaming sites like twitch have become popular, with users able to interact in a chat with each other that the stream can respond to in real time, ultimately turning into a place for more than just video games.

There’s been a lot of questions surrounding games over the years, whether or not they increase violence, if they’re too addictive and debilitating, and if those issues outweigh the creativity, joy and memories they provide. If you look back at the introduction of new media in the past, you’ll see similar sentiments. All of these would be interesting topics for McLuhan to cover.

Looking at all of this, if McLuhan were to update Understanding Media, video games without a doubt would be a large part of it. They’ve redefined how we engage with media in all forms, how we communicate with each other, and how we’re encouraged to fulfill important aspects of our lives. Though, because they’ve done so much, they might’ve changed his mind on a few things.

With how many different genres, forms, and ways to play them, he might find it difficult to classify the entire media as hot or cold, or with a single defining statement on how they influence our culture. They’ve formed us in ways he couldn’t have ever imagined, and are the defining media of our current time, they undoubtedly belong in Understanding Media.

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Video Games: Hot or Cold Media?

Despite the amount of criticisms I hold of McLuhan's theory on hot and cold media, I think video games are one of the most clearly cold forms of media. By his definition, hot mediums require the least human interaction to be able to absorb information, and I think video games are the most interactive form of media out there. Before you can even play the game, you must learn how to use the controller. Once you learn the buttons, then you have to learn which buttons do what in whatever game you're playing. Every game has a different control scheme, so you must learn basically a new language with every new game you play. Once you've done that, you can finally start playing. Even if you disregard learning the controls as part of the theory, to get to the next part in the story, you must actively progress to the next part. Yes, you must sit and watch a movie to progress, or move your eyes between lines on a book, or pay attention to a lecture. But you must do all of this in a video game. You must pay attention to the story and where to go next, you must learn how to overcome its challenges. Oftentimes, the story is intertwined with whatever activities you're performing, and can contribute to the overall themes. This requires active thinking and consumption of the media in order to derive meaning. Some games are more forward with their story, acting as playable movies almost. However, oftentimes the stories are influenced by your actions, even leading to completely different endings/characters you meet. My biggest complaint about McLuhan's theory, that while he's so focused on the medium, some movies can require more deciphering to fully understand than certain tv shows or video games. He's so focused on categorizing everything, that it detracts from the human effort put into each individual piece of media, and I don't think anybody should subscribe to this way of thinking, especially with how media has evolved in all of its forms.

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Advertising and Social Media

I've recently been going through some of Marshall McLuhan's writings, and he has some great insights about advertising that remain true today. He talks about how advertising has evolved, especially with the introduction of TV. It has always aimed to mold human desires and guide them toward an idealized reality where physical objects and services could somehow fulfill all of their needs. He discusses how promotions changed from being direct once TV was introduced to more of a subconscious persuasion approach. This has only gotten more evident today, especially with the rise of social media within the past couple of decades.

TV changed advertising forever by embedding ads into entertainment, making them immediately more engaging and less obviously manipulative. Social media has pushed this further by integrating ads into users' personalized algorithms. These algorithms show the user content that reinforces consumer tendencies and personalized suggestions, whether clothes, media, or other products. This keeps users in an echo chamber that caters to their desires while reinforcing their insecurities. This constant exposure to unrealistic expectations and social comparisons will always lead to worse self-esteem, anxiety, and depression.

Exposure to advertisements on social media is almost always non-consensual; users are now more than consumers, becoming unwilling participants in a system that monetizes their attention. Many of these social media platforms are used by kids, and advertisements that promote unrealistic standards lead to a distorted perception of reality, as their minds are more malleable than adults. This can result in bad spending habits, whether because they feel bad about their appearance or their clothes or that they don't have the newest tech. The result of this is a manipulated working class that spends all of their paychecks on stuff they don't need, making the ultra-wealthy pockets fatter.

Everything is built around social media nowadays, and while I've seen some desire in people to escape from it, I don't see it going anywhere anytime soon. The biggest reason for this is the feeling of missing out. AI is now integrated into every facet of our lives, pushing these harmful algorithms further. It's hard for me to look towards the future and not be filled with dread. Culture has become homogenized, and everyone is putting on a show to confront their deepened insecurities. I was born just before the rise of social media, and I wish more of my formative years were without it. It meant more to be human before.