Project Overview
Hello! Welcome to my portfolio page. For my class (IMS 228) we were asked to create a design piece and implement it in the community. After I came across vintage LIFE Magazines at a flea market I decided I needed to use these in my portfolio piece. I utilized a craftivism technique and I created buttons from four different magazines from the years 1939 to 1972. I made 110 buttons and put them in three different locations with a sign that reads “If you aren’t going to read it, wear it!” I included a QR code to receive responses.
My goal for this project is to subvert how people, prominently Miami students, typically think about how they receive their news and media and what people usually see at newspaper stands and have their eye go to the buttons before it usually goes to the papers. I am also creating a sign that reads “If you are not going to read it, wear it.” This adds another layer of subversion by directly confronting the idea of passive consumption. It suggests that if someone isn't actively engaging with the content of the magazine or newspaper, they can still derive value from it by wearing it as a fashion statement. In a technology-dominated world, we are seeing print media dwindle over time. Since technology dominates, magazines and publishing companies are going out of business. LIFE magazine is a perfect example of this. They went out of business in 1972 and had to lay off hundreds of employees because the cost of printing was higher than the revenue. Our generation barely reads print media, even Miami makes it accessible by placing free newspapers in popular areas like Armstrong, Starbucks, and King Library but yet barely anyone reads and takes them. I think print media is important because having events recorded in ink and a physical copy makes them last longer. This way they can be kept and stored and passed around through the years. I also think it is important to have something physical that you can touch and read that isn’t a screen. While it might be more convenient to look at social media or the news app, newspapers provide coverage on things that maybe you wouldn’t see on the internet. I want students to reflect on media and print media by taking a physical copy and being able to wear it or put it somewhere they will think about it. I know I can’t make dramatic changes to how we consume media, but I can get people to think about it.
The community and audience is the Miami student body. They are the easiest people to target since we are the people who utilize a majority of technology and don’t really value print media as other generations do. I wanted to make the Miami students slow down and think more about how they consume their media by having a piece of vintage print media. This is why I put my buttons in places where a majority of the Miami student body goes to. Starbucks, Armstrong, and King Library. I placed the buttons where you would also find print media like student publications and the New York Times.