We had a mono print induction today at Vernon Street. We were shown how to set up an inking area and the diferent ways we could experiment with the printing presses. We were shown that after doing one print, we can get an interesting outline effect, by using the same print wit hound the stencil pieces. I would like to use this process in the future. I could use it for the poster project. My reasoning behind it, would be that traditionally printed poster have more depth to them, and generally making the design higher impact. Below are a few photos from the induction. I'm planning to collect my prints soon.

Since the 1960's the human race has been developing technology and making faster, more efficient, safer robotic systems. The development of technology has been snowballing and new technologies are being discovered every day. In the 1960's humans were looking at how technology could improve the world we live in and be used in almost every situation. Many people blame the Sci-Fi television show, "Star Trek" for the sudden spurt in technology evolution, predicting devices such as the mobile phone, tablet computers, touch screen technology, video conference calls and headgear devices. In the 1982 the CD was invented and made commercially available to the public. This is when technology started to snowballed.

Below is a photo an illustration from the 1982 series of futuristic children's book's, "World of Tomorrow" by Neil Ardley. The illustration depicts a person who has been seriously injured, who is being operated on by a robotic surgeon. Below is the text that goes along with the illustration.

Here you can see an operation taking place in a hospital of the future. The patient has had a terrible accident and lost an arm. However, the arm has been recovered and robot surgeons are reattaching it to its owner.

The operation is very intricate. Tiny nerve endings and blood vessels have to be fixed to each other. The robots work tirelessly and with great precision and speed to repair the damage. They can operate on very small parts of the body, using needle-thin laser beams to cut through and also to seal the tissues together. Human surgeons check the robots via television and make sure that the patient remains in good condition.

After the operation the patient will receive special care to speed recovery. As well as good nursing, this may include radio or electrical treatment to make the nerves, bones and skin grow quickly so that the patient's arm soon regains its normal use.

Treatment to induce tissues to grow could be very valuable in the hospital of the future. It could help burn victims to recover very quickly by encouraging new skin to grow over their burns. Even more important, it may help to cure paralyzed people. The treatment would cause new nerves and muscles to grow and replace the dead nerves and muscles producing the paralysis.

It's even possible that such treatment could make missing organs and maybe even limbs grow again, much as our hair and nails continue to grow after cutting them. One day surgeons may be able to remove a diseased part of the body and provide a framework on which the patient grows a new part!

What I find interesting about this subject is that just as Star Trek had done, Neil Ardley has predicted or at least set the grounds of what is currently being used as a robotic surgeon. Below is a photo of the "Da Vinci SI", a surgery robot that has sparked much controversy to how quick technology has progressed and to the point where we are putting our lives in the hands of a robotic system.

The Da Vinci Si

The Da Vinci Si has two separate but connected sections:

The Tower, which is positioned directly above the patient during surgery. It has four robot arms - Three which can hold a multitude of diferent surgical instruments, and the fourth holds the system's 3D cameras. These arms are controlled by a computer that actually replicates the movement of the operating surgeon.

The console is where the surgeon sits and operates the robot's controls while looking into a stereoscopic monitor that provides a magnified, high definition 3D views of the surgical site. The surgeon manipulates the robot's four arms by maundering two master controls that provide fingertip precision of movement.

The surgeon also operates a foot switch that provides additional options, such as the ability to switch between two diferent energy sources. Touch pads allow the surgeon to easily adjust video, audio and system settings.

The company that has developed this machine is called Intuitive Surgical. The Da Vinci Si was created in 1999 and now being used in many countries. A report from Intuitive surgical itself in September 2012 indicated that more than 20 hospitals in the UK and Ireland already have these machines. These including: St Mary's and St George's and Guy's in London and units in such regions as Glenfield Hospital and Manchester Hospital.

Below is the news article, from the Daily Mail I chose to base my research around. The reason i chose this is article is because of the way that the Daily Mail chose to report it. The goto they chose to accompany the article depicts a human-like robotic hand holding a scalpel delicately between it's thumb and index finger. This is quite strange as this is nothing like the actual robots used in surgery.

It seems as though they have chosen to depict the robot like this to spark controversy on purpose as they know that there are many people who are scared of robots and fear for how far they have developed. The idea of a human-like robot (aka. Humanoid robot) scares many people. 

The main issues that the news article states are:

1. There are surgeons that are not getting the correct training to use the machines.
2. There are currently no regulations to having them safety checked by the MHRA.
3. Robot surgery may not be any better than regular surgery.
4. Robotic surgery costs more than regular surgery.
5. Robotic surgeries have gone wrong in the past.
6. There aren't enough statistics to prove that robotic surgery is better.

Surgeons without correct training

Since January last year there have been 500 reports of problems with the Intuitive Surgical's devices.

The leading problem reported was that an electrical current could jump from the robot into the patients body, causing serious injury. This may be related to surgeons cleaning off their tools by scrapping instruments against each other. The instruments have a protective plastic tip covers on them and it was noted that scrapping them together led to tears or holes in the cover that led to electrical arcing which in turn led to injuries to patients.

Another rare problem that was reported was that a surgeon could accidentally cut through an artery because they cannot feel it's firmness.

The makers require surgeons to do 20 operations under supervision before they can work by themselves. Unfortunately in the UK there are no official standards of checking how proficient a surgeon is on the Da Vinci Si and surgeons can be too keen to use them.

The equipment is far too expensive to run training at the Royal College of Surgeons.

Statistics

In Britain there is no available database to collate any of the problems seen in the U.S. due to the fact that official body is taking responsibility for overseeing the safety of this technology or monitoring it's effectiveness. 

Unlike in the U.S. where it's known that 367,000 procedures in 2012 involved these robots, we don't even know how many operations were performed this way in the UK yet. 

We only know that the robots are used in over 20 hospitals across the UK and Ireland.

One of the earlier tests to show positive outcomes from robotic surgery , in journal Urology, in 2002, looked at 30 patients who underwent the same operation as well as another 30 who underwent the same operation but with traditional surgery. The outcome showed the same general outcomes, but the patients who underwent robotic surgery went home earlier and with less pain. It isn't enough strong evidence to prove that robotic surgery is an improvement.

The Cost Of Using Robots In Surgery

A Da Vinci robot costs around 2.3 million pounds. On top of this, there are annual servicing costs of 100,000 pounds.

With such high costs it doesn't make sense using robots in surgery with such a small difference in positive outcomes.

Intuititive Surgical

The California based company is facing 26 lawsuits from patients and according to a recent review by Bloomberg News the robotic devices have been linked to 70 reported deaths since 2009.

Many companies and hospitals, are trying to promote this high tech robotic system. Some are offering a hands on demo to show how safe they are and be able to take your photo with one. 

Robots Replacing Humans In The Workplace

Many people worry that robots will also take jobs, as they have done before. Robots are used to make products as they can be programmed to make the same movements over and over again. Recently the self-checkout was introduced into almost every major supermarket, which has made it easier to serve more customers, with only one member of staff supervising. The sudden burst in technology development has definitely contributed to the recent high rate of unemployment across the world. There are people who worry that soon the robots won't need to be supervised in tasks such as surgery and customer support, which will leave there to be no use for humans to work.

The 1982 book outlined the many jobs that it claimed were supposed to be made obsolete by technology by the 21st century. Like nearly all predictions for the future, there's some they got right, some they got wrong, and there's a lot that's open to interpretation.

The book said that these jobs would be taken over by robots:

Grocery Cashier

Farm Workers

Dry Cleaners

Small Real Estate Brokers

Door-to-door Salespeople

Toll Booth Operator

Bank Clerks

Traditional Telephone Operators

Typists

Secretaries

Art Room Staff

File Clerk

Librarians

Warehouse Inventoryperson

Warehouse packers

Machine Loaders

Machinists



Robots in Pop Culture

As mentioned before, pop culture has had a large influence on the development of technology. Below is an interesting diagram that shows how pieces of fiction have influenced technology throughout the years and made certain pieces of technology a reality.

Click HERE to see full size

The Fear Of Robots

The fear of robots is known as technophobia. It is the fear of advanced technology or complex devices. The younger generation have been brought up in a world with technology surrounding them so are more comfortable using them and open to new technologies, whereas an older generation of humans are uncomfortable around computers and robots because they find it hard to understand how to use them and fear that they are too smart. Pop culture has a large influence on what we think of robots and has given many people a negative impression. This may be a leading reason as to why many people are against robotic surgery taking place.

Pop culture has lead us to believe that humanoid robots should be feared. If developed, they would be  stronger than humans, maybe faster, be able to perform tasks with much more precision, but the biggest fear among humans about robots is that they could become self aware. Self aware meaning that they knew they were robots and that we are humans and that the sole purpose of their being is perform a task for us. This would obviously annoy the average human and want some sort of revenge, thus the fear of killer robots. here are just a few films which have been based around the idea of humanoid robots.

2001: A Space odyssey (1968)

H.A.L 9000 is the robot that is used to control the spaceship in this film. H.A.L 9000 malfunctions during the film and the protagonists decide to shut him down, unfortunately because of how advanced this robot is it reads the lips of the protagonists as they are discussing how to shut him down, and decides to kill the astronauts in various ways in order to complete what he was programmed to do during the space voyage.

The Terminator series

The whole plot of terminator is based around the idea that robots will become so evolved that there will be a war between humans and robots. Although the protagonist is a "good" robot, there are plenty of evil killer robots throughout.

I-robot

Based on the 3 rules of robotics created by Isaac Asimov, an American science fiction author, I-robot  tells the story of a world almost entirely run by robots. The 3 rules state:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Unfortunately a new set of robots are controlled by a mainframe that becomes self-aware and begins to try and kill all human life.

Wall-E

Although Wall-E is an animated film, it brings a serious message with it. The image above shows the humans that had to leave earth on a space ship and became so used to having everything done for them by robots that all they do is sit in chairs on computers and eat and drink. One of the morals of this story is that we shouldn't let technology be such a huge part of our life. We need to experience real life more, or we could end up just like them.

Gill Sans, known as "The Helvetica of England" was designed in 1928 by Eric Gill. The origins of Gill Sans can be traced back to 1918 when Eric Gill's teacher, Edward Johnston, was hired to design the signage for the London Underground railway. Not completely satisfied with Johnston’s work, Gill set out to create the perfect, legible typeface. In Eric Gill's book "Essay on Typography" he writes:

"The first notable attempt to work out the norm for plain letters was made by Mr Edward Johnston when he designed the sans-serif letter for the London Underground Railways. Some of these letters are not entirely satisfactory, especially when it is remembered that, for such a purpose, an alphabet should be as near as possible ‘fool-proof’… as the philosophers would say—nothing should be left to the imagination of the sign-writer or enamel-plate maker."

Drawing heavily on Johnston’s work, Gill first experimented with his ‘improvements’ in 1926 when he hand-painted lettering for a bookshop sign in his hometown, Bristol. The alphabet, which at the time only contained uppercase letters, was noticed by Stanley Morison for its commercial potential. Morison commissioned Gill to develop a complete font family to compete with the sans-serif designs released by German foundries fueled by the overwhelming success of Futura. The font was released commercially by Monotype in 1928 as Gill Sans. 

While his personal life was later discovered to be rather controversial, Eric Gill (born 1882 as Arthur Eric Rowton Gill, died 1940) was an important British sculptor, artist, and typeface designer who also gave us Perpetua and Joanna (named after one of his daughters), among others.

Gill Sans rose to popularity in 1929 when it became the standard typeface for the London and North Eastern Railway, appearing on everything from locomotive nameplates to time tables.

The typeface was used in 1935 by designer Edward Young on the now iconic Penguin Books jacket design, putting Gill Sans on bookshelves around the world.Many other notable companies (particularly in England) adopted Gill Sans as a corporate typeface by the mid-1900’s, including the BBC, British Railways, and ultimately Monotype themselves—making the typeface Monotype's fifth best seller of the twentieth century.

- Information found here.

The reason I have chosen Gill sans is because it has been widely used across the UK because it's neutral tone leaves it's personality up to the audience, rendering it a generally likeable typeface. I believe my partner in this project, Molly, reflects this typeface, as she is very easy to get along with and is liked by many people.

Below are photos of the 3 newspapers that I bought in search of a news story that I found interesting to research for this project. It is quite interesting the diferent styles that the magazines have gone for.

The Daily Star is a red top which means it is a tabloid aimed at light readers who are interested in celebrity gossip. The newspaper is dominated with pictures and has a lot of colour compared to any broadsheet. The use of bold, sans serif font for the title is quite eye catching and quite scary. The intentions of the newspaper is to scare the audience into buying the newspaper out of curiosity.

The sun has gone for a diferent approach with a more comical approach, making reference to a popular film, whilst being quite sarcastic. I prefer the design of this tabloid more as it is less cluttered. There is only one headline on the cover and the rest of the adverts are boxed off and don't overlap each other unlike the Daily Star. They have used the same font for the headline as the daily star, although it has less impact black on white.

The Daily Mail is a middle-market tabloid. The use of a blacklister font for their logo and serif font for their headline shows that this magazine is slightly more upper class than the previous red tops. They have used diferent fonts for diferent stories to appeal to a larger audience, with more serious stories about health tourism (Serif font) and less serious stories about the royal families family photos (sans serif font).

I have decided that the story I want to research is the one below, from the daily mail, that talks about the rate at which more robotic surgeries are taking place. It is quite a controversial subject as there have been many instances where the robotic arm has malfunctioned and caused serious injury to the patient. This worries many people. I am also interested in the way that the Daily mail has reported on the subject. They have a picture of a android hand which a scalpel in-between two fingers. This is very misleading as the robots are nothing like human arms in the slightest. They resemble the machinery that is used to assemble cars. Many people fear how advanced technology is getting, and using such a misleading photo creates even more controversy.

I plan to do more research into this story over the weekend for our crit on monday.

Comic Sans

Released in 1994 by Vincent Connare, Comic Sans was made to imitate the easily readable and non-intimidating lettering in comic books. Despite It's hatred among designers, influencing designs like the ones below, I believe that the font has a purpose within design.

In Simon Garfield's book "Just My Type" it is explain that the original purpose of the font was for a programme called "Microsoft Bob" which was intended to be user friendly to as a wide of an audience as possible. The the smooth lines and rounded ends of the letterforms give the font a childish quality which wouldn't be intimidating to people who hadn't used a computer previously and would feel friendly and kind-hearted. The font previously used for "Microsoft Bob" was Times New Roman which was far too traditional and professional, and didn't suit the childish illustrations that accompanied the software. Comic Sans was perfect for such a formal medium, whereas It wouldn't suit such a heavy body of text aimed at a diferent audience, such as The Bible, Lord Of the Rings or Government documents.


Hevetica

The original Helvetica was created in Switzerland by Max Meidinger and Eduard Hoffmann at "The Hass Type Foundry". it was originally created to have no outstanding characteristics or give off any impressions. This neutrality was paramount, and based off the idea that type itself should give no meaning. There have been multiple variations of the type including: Helvetica Bold, Light, Black, Textbook, Compressed. Helvetica was seen as a sleek, modern look that companies were looking for to remake their identities after wars within Europe. The design of Helvetica makes a design look quite corporate but formal enough to be used in retail and less traditional businesses on packaging advertisements and logos. This is one of the reasons it is often used in transit system signs. Below are a few examples I found of Helvetica's use.

Times New Roman

Times New Roman gets its name for "The Times" of London, the British newspaper, which the font was commissioned for in 1929. The Times hired Stanley Morison of the font foundry,"Monotype" to create a new text font . Morison led the project and was supervised by Victor Lardent, an advertising artist for The Times, who drew the letterforms.

Times New Roman has characteristics that suit The Times newspaper. It is sophisticated and timeless, and gives the reader the feeling that they are reading something intellectual. The audience wouldn't be as keen on The Times newspaper if it was all written in comic sans.

Typeface for Molly

I used Adobe Font Finder to try and find an existing font that had similar characteristics to the one I plan to create to represent Molly. Adobe Font Finder can help you narrow down your search by categorising the fonts into diferent styles and characteristics.

I searched "Humorous, Informal, Sans serif" as I believe that they are styles that represent the characteristics of Molly.

These are the 4 fonts that came up:

All but "Back to School" are very similar to Molly's handwriting. I plan use one as a basis for my typeface and change characteristics to look even more like Molly's handwriting.

I also stubbled upo another font by the name "Tekton" which I think also has the same look that I intend on going for.

 I got Molly to write down the alphabet again to see if the style of writing had changed since I last asked her to, although it seemed very similar. It has a rushed, friendly look to it. I plan to create a quite simplistic sans serif that has an upbeat feel about it

Today in our lecture with Fred, we began looking into Semiotics and how we can use signs in our design work to communicate with our target audience. 

Fred used a great example of a plus sign, "+". without any context it could mean anything, but when we place a - + = in the image, we realise that the plus is in fact for mathematical purposes. Whereas if the cross was coloured red, it would represent England or first aid (which is in fact a misconception that we have learnt from TV, which is a very large teacher of signs). The actual colour for first aid would be green or white on green as seen below.

A cross, if manipulated slightly could represent Christianity. The point is that it is just a shapes. Our society have been taught to recognise these signs at such a young age that most of the recognition of the sign is completely subconscious. The problem is that because we know how to read these signs because of our culture, other cultures will have some diferent signs. This could make it hard to communicate with an image to them. Many signs could be easily communicated to teenagers, that older people might not understand. This is because teenagers have such a large, common influence growing up; The internet.

A common example for semiotics is Rene Magritte's painting "The Treachery Of Images". which you can see below. The caption translates to "This is not a pipe"

A sign is made up of 2 parts:

The Signifier:

The signifier is the actual painting of a pipe.


The Signified:

The signified is that there is a pipe in frame.

This is quite an obvious example, but it gets you thinking how much we use semiotics and visual literacy in our everyday lives. Rene Magritte was trying to show that it isn't in fact a pipe. It is  visual representation that we perceive as a pipe. In reality it's just painted shapes and colours. Even letters signs. They are shapes that we created and gave meaning to them for the purpose of communication.

Below are a variety of examples that I could find.

"Daddy, what did YOU do in The Great War" Poster by Saville Lumley (1915) (British)

"The Uncle Sam Range" advertisement by Schumacher & Ettlinger (1876) (New York)

These designs share many qualities. The most obvious being, that they are both portraying the stereotypical lives of the upper class from their countries.

 Saville Lumley's target audience is middle-class men. We know this because the lower-class men would join the army because they needed money anyway, whereas the middle-class were more on the fence about signing up. The design is guilt tripping the audience into joining the army by depicting a father on the poster staring directly at the audience, meanwhile, putting emphasis on the word "you" with uppercase letters. This causes the audience to think about themselves and how they would want to answer in that situation. The design has a lay-out that fits the Fibonacci spiral. First you look at the fathers face, then the daughter, then the tag-line, and then the son playing with his army toys. We know that the daughter is asking the question because of this layout and the use of a lowercase script font. The toys and phrase "The Great War" suggests that it is important and will go down in history. The middle class man would want to be part of something described as "Great" and be remembered as a brave hero.

The American design is aimed at all American men. America is a very patriotic country and this company has used this to it's advantage. The year it was created was exactly one hundred years since America became independent. This is shown on the clock in the top left had corner. All Americans would be especially patriotic around this time and would want to support their own country by buying American products, especially ones that portrayed America in such a powerful way. The poster is trying to sell the lifestyle shown in the design. The average American man would have loved to be in such a powerful position as uncle Sam is in the illustration. He is being served by his wife and slave, supplying for his "children" and has the world over for dinner. The significance of the world being sat at the dinner table shows the amazing capability of the cooker they are selling. It also makes America look even greater and important. The children are visual metaphors for regions of the United States. This shows that cooker can supply for all American people. The design uses the rule of thirds layout vertically and horizontally to emphasise Uncle Sam being the centre of the situation and his power within the room.

Both designs use many persuasive techniques, although in my opinion the American design has a stronger, clearer message. The British design lacks a theme of pride towards Britain. I believe that if they illustrated the man in the poster in a more heroic, joyful manner, the message would be far more clear and be a much more persuasive design.

1. The letter A

The left serif on the A looks terrible. It's inconsistent with the rest of the type and makes the cover look unbalanced, especially as the cover is all centre alligned.

2. Placement of Photos

There is no logic to the placement of the photos on each page. It looks as though they were put there ready to arrange but forgotten about. There is to much space between photos and the page is unbalanced.

3. Colour Scheme

I like the colour scheme. the cream background colour is soothing and the bright red, green and yellows compliment each other to create a fresh colour scheme.

4. Inconsistent Layout

The layout changes every other page and causes distress to the reader. There should be a few diferent layouts which alternate.

5. Overload of information

There is just far too much information per page, especially as there are multiple pages that have so much space. Theres just far too much information to take in and from a glance wouldn't appeal to the target audience.