Throughout the year,my two main lecturers Dan Berry and Sue Thornton have created a series of additional talks to support the illustration students with subjects that are usually only briefed upon usually in design courses.
There is only a finite amount of information an art student can pick up on when they finish leaving institutionalised education in which the majority of what you've learned may not even apply to what you ultimately want to do with your career.This can be a giant deterent towards productivity and morale once you finally leave for the big bad world out there.Working and stragegizing a plan early on can help combat falling into this trap, however, it's also important to not plan anything directly ; have goals but don't let one path determine unrealistic ideas.I think what I am trying to say here is that there are a lot of art colleges that don't teach you what you need to know (business and marketting) and it doesn't hurt to gather as many resources available to you.So in addition to already having the Creative Futures Week, we have these lectures now and again which I have found quite informative and that have opened up new areas of research to better equip myself and make my future career work for me.
With that brief explaination out of the way,let me touch on the first lecture. The first talk I attended was on Digital Rights distribution back in November by Dan.It was a short bitesized version of a talk that he was preparing for another event, which hit on the main point of the future of digital distribution in terms of comics and interaction.
Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO and a champion of 'design thinking' once said that, "there are useful starting points and landmarks but overstep boundaries, rather than sequence of steps in one direction."
Alan Kay summed it up better by saying "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
What both Tim and Alan hit on is innovation ; the ability to break the mold and see what ideas survives and how.
We are currently in the transistion of a mass paradigm shift as everything we know through media and culture is massively being streamlined through the medium of internet and data.Timelines and gaps between the latest breakthroughs are shortening as technology is constantly evolving and changing how we perceive content.Now more than ever before we are at the most advantage as currently everyone has the means to research and analyse this data.Through blogs and sites we can analyse who exactly has been looking at our work and where,how they got there, what demographic they belong to and how long they might of paid attention to certain parts.This is part on how we can manage to branch out and further our reach online if we can apply this creatively.How people interact is a powerful tool in this case and what boundaries we can push with whatever technology we use.An iphone is more open to new ideas since its interface is a screen which means developers are open to creating new ways to use this platform.
If we hit on the idea of approaching this with comics, this opens a barrier to potentially how we can use graphic narration.The Marvel app, for example, uses some of these ideas already.Their stories have tracking information which tells the editors or writers what points did the reader stop,how long they took to read a particular page and what review they gave it and how that effects the readers interest.That may sound a little invasive and counter productive - as a sole experience may not necessarily reflect on how a reader feels and makes creatives somewhat reluctant to go with their decisions but its just one way on how we can use this technology.Marvel aren't necessarily a creative powerhouse and they need to turn profits however it is just an example on how effectively comics can 'read us.' Scary thought.
It's already happening with Kindles as reader habits are fully recognised with their history.A more noticable example is Facebook who are the biggest culprits of using analysis data and yet we as a society accept this blindly.Ads and suggestions are displayed based on what you like and who you know - based on a massive pile of information the administrators have compiled on their databases, all influenced by what you type and don't type - That's right! Do you think using stats is as invasive in comparison?
Who knows,as you may be reading this in a few short years time,the game might of changed yet again.Social media isn't going away anytime soon,perhaps it'll mutate in some way.That doesn't change that in order to stay current, we need to constantly observe what developments are coming our way despite our resistance towards new things.Twitter was seen as nothing more than a nuisence - a site many saw as a way for teenagers to procrastinate.This has drastically changed in the past 3 years as the qualities that Twitter possesses are relevant to the current way we access information.Major news stories and connections to other people are now common place with twitter.
It's a matter on seeing where we can go from here.How we can use these mediums to innovate and change how we distribute information.
