Logo designs provide a quick visual shorthand for all the meaning, associations, and equity associated with a brand. Virtually all major companies utilize logos, but there is little theory-based research regarding logo design published in marketing and consumer behavior journals. Related research from psychology regarding preference for visual images has generally used special stimuli created for the laboratory that do not carry the meaning that logos acquire in the markerplace and consequently have very limited generalizability. This study seeks to begin to fill the void by examining preference for actual, familiar logo designs. An improved understanding of preference for logo designs can be a great advantage to a company considering a logo design change. The costs involved in such a change can be enormous. Beyond the cost of the services of graphic designers, a change in logo design incurs the cost of changing everything that displays the logo, and any lost sales that may result if the new design is ineffective in some way. The equity of the brand may be connected to the logo design, so a change in the design of the logo may have long-term implications. Many logos have evolved over the years through successive changes to keep the designs from becoming outdated. This study examined theoretical bases for such activity. According to adaptation-level theory (McClelland et al. 1953), individuals become adapted to an object or image due to experience with it. Slight changes to this adaptation level result in increased preference while drastic changes result in decreased preference. These effects are represented by the distinctive butterfly curve. The current study developed a technique that allows for differentiation of visual designs, indicating the degree of change. This was used to test whether adaptation-level theory applies to familiar logo designs. The results indicate a general preference for no changes in familiar logo designs. While practitioners make changes in logo designs that are consistent with adaptation-level theory, it appears that consumers react instead, in accordance with social judgment theory--they tolerate rather than prefer the changes.

<p> Everything we touch, sit on, use and lean against is designed. Design disciplines (e.g. architecture, landscape architecture, city/urban planning, interior design and industrial design) play an extremely significant role in shaping the man-made environment we live in. They help to populate it with cars, furniture, buildings, clothes, cell phones, and countless other artifacts and also play a significant role in producing innovations that drive successful companies in a challenging and fiercely competitive global market. Perhaps more importantly, the consumption and use of designed goods, spaces, and services produce, reproduce, and mediate our very identities and culture. </p><p> Despite their cultural, economic, and political significance, design professions are understudied in sociology. In sociology, the few available case studies of design professions emphasize professional practice and tend not to study the higher education system, where professional designers are produced. Moreover, there are no studies in sociology that examine academic design disciplines comparatively. </p><p> This dissertation undertakes a quantitative, macro-comparative study of the institutionalization and growth of design disciplines in the US during the past 26 years, 1984-2010, using a unique longitudinal dataset. Through analysis of the intra- and extra-institutional resources and conditions that promote the growth of design disciplines and comparing their growth to those of art and engineering, this study provides valuable insights to policymakers and administrators who seek to make meaningful interventions within the academy and will advance sociological understanding of the changing organization of academic knowledge.</p>

<p> This study seeks to understand the larger cultural context that gave rise to what is referred to as "non-design," a term designated to denote a particular aesthetic that is characterized by a suspicion of, and/or rejection of, "conscious" design, while embracing various phenomenon that emerge without "intention" or "deliberate human design." The study traces the phenomenon of "non-design" in British and American design culture of the postwar period. The author argues that following Friedrich von Hayek's theories of the "undesigned" nature of social institutions and his concept of a "spontaneous order" of the 1940s, non-design first emerged in design discourse and practice in the early 1950s in England, particularly in the work of certain members of the Independent Group, and by the mid-1960s it gained currency in the United States in the architectural and urban theories of Charles Moore, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, and particularly in Reyner Banham's writing on American urbanism. While rarely made explicit, this dissertation argues that the concept of non-design played an important role in design and urban debates of the postwar period.</p>

<p> This cultural study critically investigates the mechanics of the revolutionary posters that were used for mobilizing the Iranian masses and later incorporated by the Islamic propaganda machinery to mark the continuity of the Iranian Revolution. The posters are organized thematically: The initial posters incorporate the religious/secular symbolism of coffeehouse-style poster paintings from the Qajar-era and are followed by posters showcasing the means and spaces of mobilization including the influence of the mosque, religious seminaries, cassette tapes and city walls. The posters in the middle of the thesis try to showcase how influential the rhetoric of Shi'ite Ideology was as projected by the revolutionary ideologues in appealing to the different religious minorities and classes under the Pahlavi state for the resistance movement. The photographic posters follow these national cohesion posters and bridge history and memory, thus situating these posters in the realm of sites of memory, mourning and commemoration. The posters in the last segment include the following themes: gender, commemoration of national and international events including the Iran-Iraq War, and the Gathering of the Liberation Movements of the World. Contrary to the argument portraying posters as insignificant to the Iranian Revolution, this study locates the propaganda images in the milieu of "small media" sparking a "big revolution." Simultaneously, this study reveals the inescapability faced by the ideologues in utilizing abstract, grotesque and profane themes to mobilize and mark the continuity of Anti-Western, Anti-Modern Islamist Revolution.</p>

<p> In the past few decades, web technologies and increasingly accessible digital fabrication technologies such as 3D printers and laser cutters have made it easier for individuals and communities to create complex material objects at home. As a result, communities of individuals who make things outside formal institutions, known as maker communities, have combined traditional crafts and technical knowledge with digital tools and web technologies in new ways. This thesis analyzes maker communities as post-industrial participatory design communities and examines them as participatory spaces where technical communication occurs between individuals with varying levels of expertise and sometimes drastically different knowledges. Ultimately, this thesis asks what technical communicators can learn from maker communities about international post-industrial economies and the future of technical communication. </p><p> This thesis explores how the emergence of interdisciplinary maker communities is rooted in earlier open source movements and the web, how open source principles change when applied to material development processes, how makerspaces and maker faires function as sites that bring together makers in development, and how maker communities serve as examples of post-industrial configurations of participatory communities. </p><p> Through participating in and analyzing maker communities, I suggest that participatory communities are a fundamental component of post-industrial development processes, and that technical communicators are well equipped to deal with the socio-cultural, rhetorical, and technological challenges such communities face. Furthermore, drawing on Liza Potts' theory of Experience Architecture, I suggest that technical communicators will continue to act as guides in decision making processes and as creators of communities, while also creating systems that enable greater exchange of information across platforms and communities, in both physical and digital realms.</p>

This thesis investigates the manufacture and use of ceramics over four centuries in Lincolnshire, and considers the evidence for date and function of the pottery itself and for the social standing and economy of the potters, late survivors of the medieval peasant craftsman tradition. Documentary and physical evidence are both searched to produce the most comprehensive possible list of sites and potters names, and to highlight the areas of doubt where neither type of source can give sufficient proof. The methods of pottery production are also examined and two specific types of vessels are discussed in detail as examples of the search for -=origins. From this point the search widens to consider the importation principally by sea of pottery from other parts of the country and from Europe, and the prices of such wares are compared with prices of local products. This leads to certain conclusions about the economic pressures on local potters and their adjustments to deal with new problems and changing expectations. Contemporary sources, depositional evidence and context are next used to study the names and function of pottery, and finally the principles of dating are discussed, and a series of pottery groups are analysed to test the reliability and transferability of dating. Throughout pottery making is compared with comparable trades and Lincolnshire's position with that of the wider ceramic world.

Ancient glasses are invariably complex materials, in which the specific chemical composition and microstructure capture aspects of their technologies. The chemical characterisation of glasses in specific archaeological contexts has given useful insight into the peculiarities of diverse glass-making technologies. In addition such studies generate more general information upon an important range of phenomenon, including the pyrotechnological milieu, empirical knowledge of sophisticated chemistry, organisation of production, access to significant raw materials and long-distance trade. This study examines a wide selection of glass artefacts recovered from archaeological contexts in Northern and Central Italy from approximately 1200 BC to 200 BC. The earliest material is from the Final Bronze Age, and extends the characterisation of an established glass type, which is unique to Europe and distinct from the contemporary technologies of the Eastern Mediterranean. Using a combination of X-ray fluorescence analysis, electron microprobe and scanning electron microscopy glass artefacts from a thousand-year period from the same region are investigated. The shifting technologies permit the discussion of localised production and importation of glass from elsewhere. The chemical analysis reveals a complex picture of glass production, which defies the expected pattern, and there is evidence for new compositional types, which may yet prove to be diagnostic of highly localised production. The changing compositions are discussed in relation to the broader archaeological context.

This thesis examines the development, production and function of dress pins in Anglo- Saxon England. It proposes a dated typology for the mid-5th to the mid-llth century and notes the implications of this for discussions of contact and cultural interaction between England and other parts of Europe. Chapter 1 defines the parameters of the study, and describes the data that was assembled on Anglo-Saxon pins. An evaluation of the previous work on pins from Northern Europe (Chapter 2) is followed by an investigation in Chapter 3 of the methods and process of typological analysis. After arguing that one of the most important (and neglected) aspects of typological research is 'the process of study1 the chapter provides terminological definitions for the components of pins. Chapter 4 examines the problems, principal methods and developments in pin production and discusses how changes in method reflected changes both in fashion and metalworking techniques. Building on this, Chapter 5 defines the groups of pins that have been found on sites of the Anglo-Saxon period, including: (1) definition of the types and sub-types; (2) determination of their date ranges; (3) description of their distribution; and (4) suggestions about the origin of each type. In Chapter 6 the types are put into chronological order, to demonstrate which types existed simultaneously and how pins developed over time. The function of pins is considered in Chapter 7 and several tentative hypotheses are put forward. The final chapter draws a number of conclusions from the study including: (1) Anglo-Saxon pins display a great deal of insularity during all periods, but particularly in the 8th and 9th centuries; (2) while regionalism may have been a feature of 6th century pins, it ceases to be important by the 8th century when many finds from middle Saxon trading sites seem consistently to be the same types, suggesting that in addition to trade between England and the Continent and Scandinavia it is time to evaluate the micro-economic and information exchange networks in Anglo- Saxon England; (3) lastly it notes the problem of dissemination of artefactual analyses and the difficulties to be encountered in using typologies and it puts forward a preliminary proposal for the use of expert systems (computer programs that simulate human performance in specialist task areas) as a tool to distribute this information. An example of a knowledge base that might be used to disseminate the typology presented here, The Anglo-Saxon Pin Identification Assistant, is to be found in Appendix 2, as are several sample identification sessions.

<p> This dissertation is comprised of three essays that explore the connections between buildings and their impacts on outcomes associated with occupant health. The essays are: 1. The Effect of Certified Green Office Buildings on Occupant Health: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, 2. Understanding Evidence-Based Design Through a Review of the Literature, 3. Future Directions for Evidence-Based Design in Health Care Facilities.</p><p> Essay one, entitled The Effect of Certified Green Office Buildings on Occupant Heath: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, explores the connections between certified green office buildings and their impacts on occupant health via the application of a systematic review and meta-analysis. An extensive literature search was conducted to locate any studies that examined the health of occupants in conventional buildings versus the health of the same populations after a move into a certified green building. The literature review followed the Cochrane Collaboration protocol for conducting systematic reviews. The results of a meta-analysis of the two studies uncovered by the systematic review show a positive relationship between certified green office buildings and improved occupant health (SMD 1.09), yet there was insufficient power (CI -0.88, 3.05) to prove causality.</p><p> Essay two, entitled Understanding Evidence-Based Design Through a Review of the Literature, relates the current understanding of the concept of Evidence-Based Design (EBD), as specifically related to health care facilities, through the vehicle of an annotated bibliography of the relevant literature. EBD lacks a universally agreed upon definition, but one of the stronger definitions from the architecture discipline states that evidence-based design is a process for the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence from research and practice in making critical decisions, together with an informed client, about the design of each individual and unique project. The outcomes of primary concern with health care facilities tend to fall into three categories&mdash;patient/family outcomes, staff outcomes and fiscal outcomes.</p><p> The thirty-one annotated articles reveal that the concept of EBD is quite complex, especially as it relates to the gathering and assessment of data and how such data is used to inform the building project. The bulk of the complexity lies with the word `evidence.' The current literature suggests disparity among researchers and practitioners over the collection, assessment and incorporation of evidence related to the collection, analysis and incorporation of evidence into building projects that seek to have a positive impact on the three main outcome categories of interest in healthcare facilities&mdash;patient outcomes, staff outcomes and fiscal outcomes.</p><p> Essay three, entitled Future Directions for Evidence-Based Design in Health Care Facilities, anticipates the future of evidence-based design as related to the design and construction of health care facilities. Reimbursement policies are driving health care to include more community based and customer services oriented delivery models. Pay based on performance&mdash;quality and efficiency of health care delivered&mdash;as well as customer satisfaction are taking on new importance and will drive designers of health care facilities to develop ever new methodologies for gathering and assessing evidence.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Folklore, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-05, Section: A, page: 2108. Adviser: Beverly Stoeltje. "Title from dissertation home page (viewed Jan. 9, 2008)".