MP3 blogs and their aggregators, which have risen to prominence over the past four years, are presenting an alternative way of promoting and discovering new music. I will argue that MP3 files greatly affect MP3 blogs in terms of shaping them as: a genre separate from general weblogs and music blogs without MP3s, especially due to the impact of MP3 blog aggregators such as The Hype Machine and Elbows; a particular form of rhetoric illuminated by Kenneth Burke's dramatistic ratios of agency-purpose, purpose-act and scene-act; and as a potentially subversive subculture, which like other subcultures, exists in a symbiotic relationship with the traditional media it defines itself against. Using excerpts from multiple MP3 blogs and their forums, interviews with MP3 bloggers and Anthony Volodkin (creator of The Hype Machine), references to MP3 blogs in traditional press, and Burke's theory of dramatism and Hodge and Kress's theories of social semiotics, I will demonstrate that the MP3 file is not only changing the way music is consumed and circulated, but also the way music is promoted and discussed.

Securitization is the process by which subjects move from the mundane to “worth securing”. What a group of people consider to be “worth securing” reflects how they understand that subject’s value in relation to their lives. A dominant trend in securitization studies has been the use of speech-act theory to allocate the “source” of security to some specific dominant influence; speech-act securitization is not necessarily coercive, but it privileges the act of declaring security, and only offers that privilege to a handful of actors. This paper instead proposes that declaration is not the dominant aspect of securitization. Rather than stemming from communication, security is a feature of a social system that exists within communication. Securitization is an autopoeitic (in the language of social theorist Niklas Luhmann, whose work this paper draws upon heavily) process that allows society to adapt and respond to threats and change in specific ways.

This study explores the human-object relationship through the design of a flowerpot that amplifies object/ human communication. Humans frequently anthropomorphize artifacts in their environment, attributing feelings and features to artifacts, so transforming them into companions. For example people commonly name and ascribe gender to their favorite vehicles. Recent advances in digital and interface design have afforded new possibilities for shaping future human/ object interaction. I have chosen to focus my investigations on possible feedback loops that connect human emotionally to the plant. The Morphological chart was the method used in order to generate a broad range of the concepts. The method provides a structure for a less predictable and more experimental form of ideation. The concepts generated focused on defining new roles for, and ways of seeing houseplants and potential routes for interaction and communication between human and plant. The designs focused on attributing human values and features to both the form of the plant pot and communication system used. / text

Securitization is the process by which subjects move from the mundane to “worth securing”. What a group of people consider to be “worth securing” reflects how they understand that subject’s value in relation to their lives. A dominant trend in securitization studies has been the use of speech-act theory to allocate the “source” of security to some specific dominant influence; speech-act securitization is not necessarily coercive, but it privileges the act of declaring security, and only offers that privilege to a handful of actors. This paper instead proposes that declaration is not the dominant aspect of securitization. Rather than stemming from communication, security is a feature of a social system that exists within communication. Securitization is an autopoeitic (in the language of social theorist Niklas Luhmann, whose work this paper draws upon heavily) process that allows society to adapt and respond to threats and change in specific ways.

This investigation’s origin is one born of pragmatism. It seeks to improve the teaching and learning of illustration, a visual communication design discipline. The specific focus is text adaptation and the process involved in interpreting the written word into a visual image. Common characteristics of poor interpretation, identified after many years of teaching illustration, are the creation of images which are either based on relatively insignificant details from a text, or so removed from a text’s theme, that decoding an image’s intended meaning becomes extremely difficult. This study therefore seeks to provide insight into the process of interpreting written text into an illustration and offer some suggestions as to how novice illustration students can improve their skills in this process. The chosen methodology of this study is action research, and within a constructivistinterpretivist framework, work carried out with three groups of novice students, during three linked cycles of investigation has been analysed. Two separate, but linked learning strategies were developed incrementally. These can be thought of as thinking tools. The first one relates to comprehension of text while the second strategy focuses on analogical reasoning as an idea generation method. The data suggests that these learning strategies were successful, allowing students to develop more awareness of their design process and also create concepts which captured the essence of a text. This suggests that, while designing does involve tacit, intuitive thought, explicit methods of thinking can also assist design creativity. Much of the literature on design suggests that a paradigm shift is taking place within the field, in education as well as design practice. One of the characteristics of this change is a call for design educators to develop an epistemology of what constitutes design knowledge. This thesis is an addition to that ongoing search for understanding.

Esta pesquisa traz um panorama do mercado jornalístico para tablet. Classifica as variações de publicações digitais. Mostra os hábitos de leitura em dispositivos móveis e as formas de negócios. Apresenta como o designer se posiciona nesse fluxo de trabalho. Analisa o caso do jornal O Globo, que, com produtos impressos e digitais, proporcionou entrevistas com designers de diversas mídias. Ainda há a análise de O Globo a Mais, revista exclusivamente digital.

Esta pesquisa traz um panorama do mercado jornalístico para tablet. Classifica as variações de publicações digitais. Mostra os hábitos de leitura em dispositivos móveis e as formas de negócios. Apresenta como o designer se posiciona nesse fluxo de trabalho. Analisa o caso do jornal O Globo, que, com produtos impressos e digitais, proporcionou entrevistas com designers de diversas mídias. Ainda há a análise de O Globo a Mais, revista exclusivamente digital.

Organically growing companies usually reach a point when people management starts to be challenging up to such scale that influences their further development. This master thesis in its first part covers basic topics essential for people management, especially communication, work motivation, job design and leadership. In the second part of this work is focus put on empiric research of a concrete situation inside the selected company, analyses of management interviews and employee questionnaires. The last part then presents a set of recommendations adjusted directly for the researched company in order to help improve current situation.

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