Major Presentation Introduction Hi everyone, thank you for coming. - PDF document

Major Presentation Introduction Hi everyone, thank you for coming. Today I am going to be presenting on the individual major that I created, my senior project, and what I learned throughout the process. Background First of all, I am going to touch on my background that got me where I am today. I grew up in the small town of Norwood Young America, Minnesota. A huge part of my life has always been sports, specifically volleyball, basketball, and softball. In deciding to come to St. Olaf, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to major in, but I did know that I wanted to play basketball and softball. As for other experiences I previously worked as a media manager for a heating and cooling company, which included managing the company’s website, Facebook, YouTube account, and more. I also interned at Target Corporation last summer as a business analyst and will begin working their full time starting in June. Management & Media Relations So as I said before, when I came to St. Olaf I didn’t know what I wanted my major to be. However, I quickly determined which subjects I liked best and those are management, media, and psychology. I was aware of the option to create an individual major from other St. Olaf students so I decided that if I really wanted to pursue my interests that an individual major was my best option. I eventually decided on my major, which is titled Management and Media Relations. The overall goal of my major is to answer the question, “How does media change how people communicate and make meaning?” For

example, how does a company or organization like Target use media-based content to represent the people who comprise the organization? And how do consumers and audiences interpret those media representations to create a coherent understanding of what that organization does? To answer these questions I created three pillars of my major, which are principles of management studies, technological media, and social media. The principles of the management pillar explore courses like management policy and strategy and industrial/organizational psychology to determine how communication structures society and work. From these studies, I learned that in order for an organization to be successful, conversations within must be candid, honest, and frequent. The technological media pillar includes classes like foundation new media and digital rhetoric and new media literacy to explore how communication initiates. Through these studies, I learned how to communicate using modern technologies through writing and design. Lastly, the social media pillar includes classes like marketing and social psychology to see how communication circulates. From these courses, I learned techniques on how to research a target audience and how to best market to that target audience based on my findings. The Psychology of Design

For my senior project, which I have titled The Psychology of Design, I was inspired by a few overarching questions that emerged from my coursework. These questions included, “What makes a design successful?” “Why are we attracted to certain designs over others?” and “What role does psychology play in the creation of designs?” These questions led me to begin my research on the role that psychology plays in design. Today, I will present some of my findings and show you examples of my work based on this project. Simon Norris, the managing director of Nomensa, which is a design consultancy that seeks to combine psychological insight with design, states that, “Great design requires great psychology… Psychology is the science of behavior and the mind. When design and behavior match, the design will be superior.” Basically Norris is saying that in order to create a successful design, the designer must lead viewers toward the exact way they want them to perceive the piece. In order to do this, it is vital to understand how the intended audience will read and react to a design before beginning work. If a designer understands their audience they will save time and be more effective. For example, when considering these two abstracts, an audience is directed to feel very differently depending on which one they look at. The abstract on the left is much more dark and sad, whereas the abstract on the right is bright and happy. Just through the use of colors and patterns, a designer can evoke very different feelings. Moving from these points, I wanted to determine how a designer knows what the audience wants to see. I found that an audience’s reaction to a design is based on the

emotion that they feel, which moves into deeper research of how our brains are composed. Our brains are made up of three levels, including the visceral, behavioral, and reflective. The visceral level of the brain is the automatic or prewired layer. In relation to design, the visceral level involves the appearance, touch, and emotion. The success of the design at this level is dependent on the current feelings or experiences of the viewer, as well as the look, feel, and sound of the image. Next, the behavioral level of the brain includes the brain processes that control everyday behavior. At this level, the function, performance, and usability of a design are most important. Design success is determined by pleasure, effectiveness of use, enhancement, and innovation. Finally, the reflective level of the brain is the contemplative part. At this point the viewer considers the rationale and intelligence of the design. The viewer will be satisfied at this level if the design reflects their personal self-image or memories. In order for a design to be successful, it must excel at all levels of the brain or attack the level of the brain that is best for the intended audience. Psychological Principles Based on the different levels of the brain, psychologists have developed a variety of principles that can help designers determine how an audience will respond to their work. I’m going to discuss three of the main principles that I found. First is cost-benefit analysis, which is the breakdown of behavior based on the difficulty of a task in relation to the perceived reward. If a task requires high energy, it must provide high reward. Thus, a design must offer a benefit to the viewer and can’t be mentally exhausting. For example, looking at these two poster designs we would all agree that the one on the right

is less mentally exhausting to read than the one on the left. The one on the left is disorganized and lacking emphasis on any portions, whereas the poster on the right emphasizes the event name and dates by using effective colors and organization. Next is Hick’s Law, which states that exposure to more options results in a longer decision making process and the longer the decision making process the more likely the viewer is going to move on. Designs must be simple and have a clear message; otherwise viewers will become discouraged and continue on to the next design or product. For example, looking at these two websites it is clear that the design on the right is easier to digest and will most likely keep a visitor’s attention when coming to the site. It has less text and images, as well as clear navigation. Lastly, is Gestalt psychology, which was developed in the 1920s. The theory states that the brain self-organizes information in an orderly, regular, symmetrical, and simple manner. We assume unification or relatedness to visuals based on proximity, similarity, continuance, and figure ground perceptions. As a designer, it is important to remember how our brain organizes and unifies the individual parts of a design to create a whole. Design Process Considering these psychological principles, we can see how they have led to the creation of design principles. Some people believe that designs are created without theory and vision. However, designs are visual organizations of elements that involve many guidelines and much psychology. Before any design procedure, a designer must consider

the goals, stylistic requirements, physical limitations, and solutions of the design. After determining the content of the design, or the information that the design seeks to communicate, the designer can begin the form of the design, which includes the manipulation of the various elements and principles of design. In artistry, content is what artists want to say and form is how they say it. Form consists of many stylistic concepts, such as unity, emphasis, scale, balance, line, and color. In the design process, form and content are inextricably linked because a design is both ineffective without a purpose and ineffective with poor form. Design in Action To recap at this point before we move into the Design in Action section, I started with determining that psychology plays a heavy role in design due to how our brain affects the processing of designs. I then discussed psychological principles that relate to our brain processing and lead to the creation of design principles. Finally, we are now going to move into the design in action portion of the presentation, which will show how I was able to take this research and create designs of my own. In order to do this, I learned three different Adobe Suite Shop programs, which were Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. I learned how to use each of these programs through Lynda.com. After learning the programs, I completed three different projects within each of them to showcase my design capabilities and what I learned. For each program I am going to walk you through two of the designs I created. Photoshop