Articles: Research and Destroy, A Republic of Fat

Research and Destroy:

The main point to the first part is obviously the differences between the goods that designers produce rather than that of a material good.  Material Goods being needs, like producing food or clothing, designers dive deep into making the things that we already have worth more.  Designers seem to be creating value in the things we already have, by making them look better, work better, and making them more desirable.  This is not a bad thing, but enhances what we as consumers get to choose from.  This customizes our needs into what we now have which is individuality.

The part discussing how the Graphic Designer must be a good politician seems like a funny concept, but only because its so true.  As a graphic designer you must design a pleasing work of art the portrays and displays legible information to consumers while maintaining the expectations and desires of your client.  That statement alone is giving me a head ache.  I swear, my emphasis may be in Graphic Design, but I told the Dean this and will tell anyone and everyone who knows me: "I am a Graphic Artist, not a Graphic Designer, there seems to be a huge difference that needs to be addressed here!" I feel as though Graphic Design has lost, or maybe never had the sense of freedom that an Artist is allowed to experience, simply because you must appeal to an audience, and it is required that information is displayed in your work.

What I find most interesting is the fact that anyone can be a designer.  No one has to have a degree, or any education for that matter.  Anyone can decide to design, if not for a client, for themselves - and so then, what is a Designer?  How they talked about defining a designer by what he/she is not, made a lot of sense, but would seem very mundain.  Who wants to describe what they do based on the direct correlation they have with other work, designers, or the opinions of other artists?  Seems to me like designers have once again drawn the short end of the stick!


A Republic of Fat:

It is sad that they compare "The Alcohol Republic" to our current situation when it comes to obesity.  I mean, how could we have possibly gotten ourselves to the point where there is so much cheap food that we just eat to eat and get fat without doing anything about it?  At least with alcohol it impaired your judgement so you kind of had an excuse!!!

It really is amazing how the 1970's is an american trademark year, not only for the beginning of a fatter america, but the huge boom in corn lead to not only an agricultural boom, but an industrial boom as well.  With the high and excess production of corn, it was used in so many different processes and created so many materials that america not only started to gain wieght, but gained a profit by exporting some of the material out of country.  This is almost a direct copy-paste of the Alcohol Republic timeline.  Makes me wonder when, probably soon, there will be some sort of prohibition or regulations on food production and consumption.  It can't be too far off I would think...

The fact that foods that are unhealthy have become the cheapest is not a good thing.  This only promotes bad health and seems to me like it would be bad practice for our country to allow such things.  The major factor here is that our bodies are tricked into thinking that unhealthy foods are also the tastiest!!!  This sucks because it is now a dangerous cycle where people eat what is cheap, it tastes good so they don't care that its cheap so they buy more and so on.  This continues and they get fat and get diabetes.  Way to go Mr. Butz... wonder if you can really place the blame on him, but I do, at least for now.

Intro to Me:

Hello, my name is Josh Sisco.  I am a Fine Arts Major at UNL with an emphasis in Graphic Design.  Really though I just fallow my passions and let my work reflect my moods or current outlooks on life and the world. I am laid back, like to relax and enjoy myself.  At the same time, I make sure to maintain good worth ethic as I believe it is important to get stuff done.  I try to make every moment count, and even use my school projects to explore myself and my artwork.  I still do not know what I am best at, or where I will end up, but I know that wherever I go, I will be fallowing my dreams, my passions and my favorite pass-times.  In my last semester of school I look forward to my future with a nervous grin in hopes of one day becoming a video-game designer.  I love video-games and digital media.  The entertainment industry has always been a big part of my life and will always be one of my top goals in life to be a part of. Maybe one day Ill get there...

A little about me

Hey peeps

My name is Randall Owens and I am from Omaha, Nebraska. I am a senior Graphic Design major at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. I often eat many things that we talk down about in this class but it doesn't turn me off too much. So far in this course I have learned to pay more attention to what I eat and I have started to avoid certain foods in my diet. Let's see where this class takes me.

Two Articles

"Research and Destroy"

After this reading I feel that it was saying that designers shouldn't feel constricted to designing for consumers. Informing the public and attempting to change the world should also be an objective of designers. Also graphic design has gone through a segregation period, for lack of a better word, when it comes to the working and the out of work. which comes through in this quote:

"It is not so strange that a branch of graphic design has evolved that no longer hangs around waiting for an assignment, but instead takes action on its own accord. It has polarized into the ‘willing to work’, who often have little or no control over their own positions, and the ‘out of work’, who, with little economic support beyond  re-channelled [sic] subsidies or grants, work on innovation for the sake of innovation."



"The Consumer: The Republic of Fat"

This article highlights what I feel are some main reasons we have an obesity problem in the nation. The yields of farmers were getting better and that resulted in people not knowing what to do with their extra grain. The surplus of corn led to corn being in all of our food and that has led to the nation eating over processed foods.

Intoduction

My name is Nick Sharon

I am a Senior at UNL majoring in Graphic Design. I love to go backpacking, ride 4-wheelers, fishing. Pretty much anything outdoors. I also love sports especially basketball. I was born and raised here in  the great city of Lincoln, Nebraska. 

Here in the mid-west we are know pretty well for the corn that farmers grow, living here I had the chance to be apart of a summer ritual called "detasseling". For those that don't know what detasseling is, it is when you remove the pollen-producing flowers, the tassel, from the tops of the corn plants and placing them on the ground. This is a form of pollination control. It was hard work and for me it was not worth the money. At the time I didn't really care about that stupid corn! But now that I know more about where corn goes and what it is in, I find it very interesting and mind boggling.

Introduction

Hello!
My name is Paul Raymond, I am a senior at UNL majoring in Graphic Design.  My hobbies include, playing video games, playing some pick-up basketball and attending as many Nebraska football and basketball games as possible.

I grew up in small town Nebraska (a town of 6,500 people) so because of my close proximity to farmers, I have a general idea of what goes into farming/ranching.  This class has already opened my eyes to a lot of interesting information about food that I commonly consume and I look forward to researching and learning more about food in the coming months.

About Me

Hello! 

My name is Emma O'Connell and I am a junior double major in advertising and graphic design at UNL. I'm not quite sure exactly what I want to do when I graduate, hopefully something super awesomely cool. 

My opinion on food: 

I have a tendency to actually really enjoy food that has high fructose corn syrup/corn in it (ex: candy, McNuggets, etc) so this class has been interesting to me and I have really been thinking a lot more about the food I am eating. 

Thoughts on Research and Destroy

I find this article very accurate and extremely informative. It really elaborates on the issue at hand, the issue in which designers are constantly at work making the latest "new thing" look even cooler than the one you have. But as the article states, is this really what we need, or is this only generated out of want? When need is removed from the situation the future of graphic design will be open to new paths, in which the designer can use this opportunity to redesign himself.
 I really like the part where the author refers to the designer as an "artist, editor, author, initiator, skillful rhetorician, architect…" because I feel as if that really sums up all the processes a designer must go through when creating a new design. It continues to say that in addition to all this the designer must do other things besides designing in order to further advance in their careers.

Thoughts on The Omnivore's Dilemma

I found this article to be very interesting as well. After summarizing our country's national drinking binge that took place in the 1800's, he states outcome of this was not so nearly as relevant as the fact that American farmers were simply producing too much corn! This is extremely similar to our situation today. After watching the King Corn documentary it is clear that farms are becoming much larger, therefore in turn producing extraordinarily large amounts of corn each year.

"As George Naylor said, growing corn is the most efficient way to get energy — calories — from an acre of Iowa farmland."

This seems to me like it forms a direct relationship with the obesity epidemic (and yes it is now declared an official epidemic) going on in the United States today. The cheapest food at the supermarket is also the most densely calorie packed, and similarly have the most corn products in them.