Typography

What peaked my interest in this week's reading was the absence of discussion on typography and logos, both of which are essential to the "manufacturing of desire," as it were.



Whether you have noticed, a lot of the new typefaces used in today's market are sans serif--plain, discreet, understated. Clean, concise. For example, Apple Computers capitalized the sans serif typeface with their i__(insert product name)__ products. A long time ago, back when circuses were still popualar places to go for fun, you saw text on advertisements that were serifs. A long, long time ago, people wrote in really serif-ed font.

And clearly, this chapter has left out typography's importance.

I wish I could go into further detail, but my knowledge of this study is limited by only leisurely study.

I don't

appreciate

Post

Modernism

(stop)

It's kind of difficult to talk about the effects of culture on our media, since there are so many forms of it available to all kinds of people--save for those who don't have the means to access these technological resources. I do think, though, in the words of Adorno and Horkheimer, that "the whole world is made to pass through the filter of the culture industry." This culture, as it were, to me seems to be a desire for perfection, which we can see manifest itself in our popular media. As we are all familiar with, Adobe Photoshop and like software provides the means to essentially change the very meaning of images--whether it be the communication of one's age or framing of a situation (scenarios abound).

But the good thing is that with the increase of creative resources available to society, innovation increases--albeit not exponentially. Perhaps, then, the democratization of media can gradually alter popular media's status quo. In fact, maybe we can even say that this change is already occurring. Simply through user-defined sites, such as Digg, del.icio.us, and YouTube (of course), we can see a plethora of content that would otherwise be untouched in the mainstream media. Consequently, while there may be a "popular media," there is certainly still are forms of it out there that are created by and catering to select communities.