Alain De Botton writes in The Architecture of Happiness, that “any object of design will give off an impression of the psychological and moral attitudes it supports.” Interpreting design then is done by understanding the attitudes of the designer, which either will or will not resonate with the viewer. I may consider the formal and conceptual merits of an object of design, but ultimately my attitudes determine whether the object will have resonance with me. These “attitudes” are, anthropologically speaking, values: what a person finds most good, proper, or desirable in life. Values are the key to the creation of objects of design that resonate. The purpose of this study is to gain insight into my values and refine their manifestation in my work. By defining those values, I can examine how my work might resonate with others.

Social connection is an essential human need. Personal connections exist at a variety of depths and within different types of relationships. Small daily choices determine the strength of those connections and their impact on our well-being as individuals and as a community. Modern society and technology have altered the speed and channels of connection, increasing communication but decreasing meaningful connection. It is critical to understand how the methods of communication affect the depth of connections. Through a series of participatory graphic design projects, I analyze the strengths and weaknesses of one-on-one, small group and community connections within an established taxonomy of the levels of connection, to identify the factors that contribute to strong social relationships.

Denna studie undersöker vilka budskap som Beyoncé konstruerar på sin Instagram genom enbart bildkommunikation. Då kända profiler har möjlighet att vara opinionsbildare för sina följare är det intressant att studera vilka budskap utöver deras huvudgenre, som de väljer att konstruera. Detta då det kan påverka människor som följer henne så att även de anammar dessa föreställningar, värderingar och handlingar. Eftersom Beyoncé har ett stort följeslag på sin Instagram och då hon själv publicerar bilderna är hon en representant för det här fenomenet, som är att gå utanför sin huvudgenre och vara en opinionsbildare. I studien använder vi oss av en kvalitativ innehållsanalys. Vi undersöker Beyoncés Instagram-profil, där vi sedan genom ett strategiskt urval väljer ut sju bilder. Därefter analyseras bilderna utifrån vårt teoretiska ramverk med utgångspunkt i semiotik, genus, rasism, självpresentation och klädernas betydelse. Detta ger en djupgående analys som besvarar studiens syfte och frågeställningar. Resultatet visar på att Beyoncé både direkt och indirekt konstruerar budskap genom enbart sin bildkommunikation. Det är bland annat budskap om politik, feminism och familjesituationer. Hon framställer även sociala roller som kommer till uttryck i bilderna. Dessa sociala roller är till exempel mamma, artist och karriärkvinna. / This study examines what messages Beyoncé construes on her Instagram through merely visual communication. It is interesting to study what messages celebrities convey through their visual communication that is outside their own main genre, considering they have the opportunity to be moulders of public opinion. This is because they have the ability to influence their followers so that they also adopt to these ideas, values and actions. Beyoncé is a representative for this phenomenon because she publishes her own pictures on Instagram and has a big number of followers. In this study, we use a qualitative content analysis. First, we examined Beyoncés Instagramaccount and then chose seven pictures with the help of a strategic selection. Thereafter we analyzed the pictures with the help of our theoretical framework based on the theories of semiotics, gender, rasicm, self-presentation and the meaning of clothes. This makes a contribution to a profound analysis that addresses the issue studied and the aim of the study. The results show that Beyoncé does construe messages, both directly and indirectly through her visual communication. Some of the messages she conveys are about politics, feminism and family situations. She also constructs social roles through her pictures. These are roles such as a mother, an artist and a businesswoman.

This paper investigates the complextity of identity through the example of a micro-narrative. It zooms in on the relationship between a 24-year-old girl from South Africa and her 86-year-old great aunt from Spain. The investigation focuses on hands – tools with which we carry out our day-to-day practices. The hands are used as a metaphor to represent our connection with the material world – the way in which interact with each other and our surroundings. How do we navigate familiar and unfamiliar places? The outcome is visualised through an audio-visual installation.

This written report is part of a design research project which explores crisis as a narrative and how it is communicated within the Swedish public sphere. The project delves into the complexity surrounding Sweden’s national emergency preparedness to war crisis on a holistic level to gain a perspective on the different interplay of power structures. The written report includes a contextual analysis of Sweden’s 2018 brochure If Crisis or War Comes (Om krisen eller kriget kommer) to draw a parallel connection between past and present narratives. The design research process is conducted through artistic and designerly experimentations as a way of exploring and mapping the topic’s complexity. The design research project uses a Swedish emergency shelter room (skyddsrum) as an artistic and overarching metaphor of the cumulated research. The aim of the design research project is to instigate critical thinking and dialogue surrounding the narrative of war crisis from the perspective of change.

In a book, I have gathered 2 years of research on the heart symbol in the context of social media and the responsibility of Facebook Inc. in the propagation of hate speech. In parallel, new far-right parties such as Alternativ för Sverige use the heart symbol as a logo. I question the benefits of a rising discourse of love in nationalist propaganda, often hiding racist and sexist ideologies.This research is accompanied by a music video: six women are reading a spoken-word piece on the sexualisation of the female body and the idealisation of a nation-state. This work is entrenched in my own experiences and those of my friends. I composed the music and recorded our voices, all of us, speaking with different accents, witness of our current history of migrations. / <p>Work reviewed by artist and graphic designer Benedetta Crippa</p>

My thesis exhibition is comprised of approximately eleven large-scale portrait paintings done primarily in oil paint on canvas. This body of work investigates the ways the identity of both artist and subject can coexist in a portrait and evolved from my desire to combine portrait painting with writing as well as to develop methods of using paint to express a merging of myself with the individual depicted in the portrait. My creative research has focused on the traditional form of the portrait as a powerful form of representing an individual and how meaning can be expanded through scale, brushstroke, color, texture, composition and the many variables that portraiture deals with. I expanded on the traditional portrait painting by cataloguing my memories and thoughts along with the thoughts of the subject by painting under, into and over the subject in my own handwriting. My "hand" is visible both in the brushstroke and in the cursive writing, preserving my identity in a "readable" way both literally and through graphology, or handwriting analysis. / by Christina Maya Major. / Thesis (M.F.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Esta pesquisa documenta e analisa uma série de trabalhos realizados pela arquiteta Odiléa Setti Toscano, entre o fim da década de cinqüenta e o início dos anos noventa, no âmbito do design visual: o design gráfico editorial vinculado ao trabalho de ilustração e o design ambiental de painéis e murais para espaços privados e públicos. / This paper documents a series of projects by architect Odiléa Setti Toscano from the late 1950s to the early 1990s, in the scope of visual design: editorial graphic design related to the work of illustration and environmental design of panels and murals for public and private spaces.

O campo de sinalização de parques urbanos requer metodologia de desenvolvimento de projetos com procedimentos transdisciplinares e complexos que pedem expertises variadas, desde aspectos objetivos como repertório técnico-construtivo e gráfico, até saberes mais subjetivos tais como a percepção espacial, antropologia do espaço e comunicação. A sistematização dos elementos componentes do projeto de sinalização auxilia na compreensão desta complexidade. A pesquisa elabora, fundamentada em revisão bibliográfica, um apanhado histórico da evolução técnica, de linguagem e dos elementos estruturadores em projetos de sinalização em parques urbanos. A partir deste repertório metodológico, analisa a sinalização em 06 parques no município de São Paulo que, em contextos diferentes, elaboraram respostas práticas a essa complexidade. / Signage in urban parks requires project development methodology with transdisciplinary and complex procedures that demand various types of expertise, ranging from objective aspects such as a technical-constructive and graphic repertoire, to more subjective knowledge such as spatial perception, anthropology of the space, and communication. The systematization of composing elements in the signage project helps understand this complexity. Using a bibliographical revision as a base, this research elaborates a historical overview of the techinical evolution, language and structuring elements in signage projects in urban parks. As a response to this methodological repertoire, it analyzes the signage in 06 parks in the city of São Paulo that have offered practical answers to this complexity, according to different contexts.

O objetivo deste trabalho é a leitura, interpretação e reconstrução de vinte obras do artista concreto e designer Antonio Maluf, em técnica dinâmica elaborada com aplicativo de animação digital, tendo em vista a análise da linguagem visual dessas obras por meio eletrônico. / This work\'s aim is reading, interpretation and reconstruction the concrete artist and designer Antonio Maluf\'s twenty paintings, by dynamic technique on digital software, looking for visual analysis language of those paitings by electronic media.