The Paradox of Our Time

This poem by George Carlin is where I originally came up with what I want to do for my visual argument. It perfectly depicts the type of society were living in and what we are forgetting really matters.  



The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints; we spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy it less.

We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time; we have more degrees, but less sense; more knowledge, but less judgment; more experts, but more problems; more medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get angry too quickly, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too seldom, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life; we've added years to life, not life to years.

We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. We've conquered outer space, but not inner space; we've done larger things, but not better things.

We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul; we've split the atom, but not our prejudice.

We write more, but learn less; we plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait; we have higher incomes, but lower morals; we have more food, but less appeasement; we build more computers to hold more information to produce more copies than ever, but have less communication; we've become long on quantity, but short on quality.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion; tall men, and short character; steep profits, and shallow relationships. These are the times of world peace, but domestic warfare; more leisure, but less fun; more kinds of food, but less nutrition.

These are days of two incomes, but more divorce; of fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throw away morality, one-night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer to quiet to kill.

It is a time when there is much in the show window and nothing in the stockroom; a time when technology has brought this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to make a difference, or to just hit delete...

Remembering What Matters

In such a fast-paste world, our perception of what really matters in life has been severely skewed. Whether it be a consumption of materialistic items, jobs, or always needing more; people are forgetting that the most important thing in this life is often right in front of us; our relationships. For my pictures i've started to edit, I captured images of pure real relationships between people. Whether it be friendship, love, or family, I am trying to incorporate all into my photos. In the background I am putting images of things that we often think are the most important. As you can see, in the picture above I have a picture of my sister and her husband at her wedding. The background is a busy city background, depicting the fast-paste life that people in my sisters age usually are consumed by. In the picture below I have a picture of two of my friends hugging after not seeing each other for awhile after going off to college. I have a black background of a library in the back. Depicting that the color images that are more focused on what matters in life.

Professional Photographer: John French

JOHN FRENCH (1906–1966) PHOTOGRAPHER


                  John French has and always will be one of my favorite photographers. I love anything-old fashion and I love how all of his images are black and white and so iconic. He captured some of the world’s top models in the 50’s. I have a few of his pictures hanging in my room. His work is stunning. John French was one of London’s top fashion photographers of the 1950s and 1960s, an era when those who wore and photographed clothing for a living could become famous overnight. The models he worked with included the most famous of the time; many were debutantes who went on to become well-known society figures. French persuaded the art editors of the national press to use his flawlessly lit images of top models and his work appeared in virtually every newspaper and magazine. Working originally with the Daily Express he pioneered a new form of fashion photography suited to reproduction in newsprint, involving where possible reflected natural light and low contrast. He also undertook portrait photography. French is known for his clear, stylish, uncluttered black and white photographs taken against clean backgrounds.  He preferred to work closely with his models, devoting much attention to their posing and his sets.  Hands were important in his images, and were always carefully posed; as well as the eyes of his models, often making them looks to one side to increase the size of the white area in the image. As you can see, John French knew how to work with contrast. He worked with some of the world’s top models and wanted to make an argument that these are the women of our time, and he sure did. As you can see below, he has all of his models looking away and very few of his photographs his models are looking directly in the lens. I think this sends off a perfect argument of how women were looked at in this time. In the 50’s they were the homemakers and the men were the ones who did the job. This makes the women look passive and not as confident. These women all have smirks on their faces with the message almost saying “I am beautiful and this is what beautiful should be.” 

The Greatest of These is Love

For our last project of the semester we are supposed to capture images that have a visual argument. I thought what wouldn't be better to capture then people? I am a strong believer that we are here on this earth for a larger purpose and reason and it has taken me awhile to still figure out what that is. I've watched my workaholic father almost through away his marriage because he became too consumed with money. I've watched good people turn ugly over money and materialism. I've seen fights break out between people over pointless things. I've things countless of my friends parents marriages shatter. I've seen a lot of wrong in a world that I thought was supposed to be good. I asked my why? Because people have lost track of what truly matters in life; love. We live in a materialistic world, where people have forgotten how to laugh and how to have a real conversation, but know how to send a text message. I want to show my audience that love really is the greatest thing of all. Whether it be your soul mate, your best friend, or your animals, at the end of the day the only thing you have left are the people and the relationships you've developed in your life. Below are pictures I may used in my argument from my sisters wedding and other events in my life. I think my sisters wedding pictures are a perfect argument because people show their true colors at weddings. Emotions are high and people let go and show how they really feel (I know this because I was sobbing like a baby when saying a speech).

Visual Arguments

For my multimedia class we are starting on a new collage project where we have to create a visual argument through photographs we have captured and edited. I remember my obnoxious English teacher in high school with an english accent and firey red hair would always yell to us "YOU WILL FAIL IN LIFE AND COLLEGE IF YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND RHETORIC. PATHOS, LOGOS, ETHOS PEOPLE!! LEARN IT, LIVE IT, BREATHE IT." I would always complain and talk about how we will never use rhetoric ever, but my crazy English teacher has been right so far. Whether it be in the classroom or not, understanding rhetoric and the importance of persuasion through argument are extremely crucial in all aspects of life.

Being an advertising major has opened my eyes to a whole new light of visual arguments, especially in advertising. We were assigned to find a visual argument in an advertisement and immediately I thought of the Dove campaign. Here is the video if yall haven't seen it: 

I used the picture from the Ad itself though to talk about the visual argument which has no text at all on it.

Ethos is used in this advertisement because it shows the screen of a Photoshop program which is usually looked as something that is technologically advanced. The fact that is shows a before and after side of a photograph and the drastic changes done in Photoshop, the reader can assume the person knows what their doing. Also, the fact that this is a Dove campaign ad one can believe this advertisement more since Dove is such a well known and respected brand  
Pathos: Dove advertisements are all known for their emotional appeal they have. The image alone with no text is extremely emotionally powerful. It shows how drastically they can make a normal looking woman look which appeals to many woman who have always compared their bodies or themselves to woman in magazines.

Logos: Persuasion by the use of reasoning is heavily used here by showing the real fact through this picture which is what this woman really looks like. It is reasoning with all the magazines people read where there are picture perfect women in them, when in reality a lot of it is Photoshop. This argues the fact that what we see in magazines an on TV is not always real. 

My First Official Website Complete- Check.

I've finally finished my website! This is an issue I've also thought should be addressed on TCU campus, but as I've researched it more and created an entire WEBSITE about it, i've become even more passionate about it. I'm excited to share it with the rest of my classmates and hopefully show them and faculty at TCU why more healthy food options on campus is essential.

Take a look at my final production: stuwww.tcu.edu/jlynnanderson

Top Green College Cafeterias:

1. Yale
2. Duke
3. UC Berkley
4. College of Atlantic
5. Evergreen State College
6. Berea College
7. Middlebury College
8. Waren Wilson College
9. University of Washington
10. Oberlin College
11. Bates College
12. California State University-Chico

Where is TCU? All of these universities are going green by overhauling big named food services by buying local, catering to vegetarians, composting waste, and saving energy.

USA TODAY ARTICLE: More University Students Call For Organic, Sustainable Food

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2006-09-26-college-food-usat_x.htm

In the USA article above it talks about how a student named Grant chose Yale over Harvard not because of the university, but because of the sustainable and organic food options they offered at the university. Colleges nationwide are starting to by more food from local farms. Why not TCU?  About 80% of students surveyed at Yale said they'd eat in the dining hale more if it had more sustainable and organic food options. Some students are even going as far to planting their own vegetables in their backyards. I think it is understandable for large universities with hundreds of thousands of students to have a large food distributor, but TCU? TCU needs to jump on the band wagon with other accredited private universities and start buying form local farmers instead of these large food companies.

TCU BLUU Food Comes From Sodexo

I remember when my friend told me "TCU students pay over $40,000 a year for school and eat the same type of food people eat in prison." I just thought she was being a dramatic snob when she said that because I really didn't think the food was THAT bad, but she actually is right.

TCU gets mass amounts of shipments of food that they serve to students everyday from Sodexo. On the TCU dining services website they talk all about Sodexo and how they provide the food for the students. Although this is a very well known company, their has been a lot of controversy about the quality of food this company provides and illness that has broken out in the past. Sodexo is one of the largest food distribution companies in the world. However,  there have been boycotts on several campuses of Sodexo for various reasons. So maybe my friend wasn't just being dramatic? For students to be paying as much as they are paying to go to TCU, shouldn't we get what we are paying for? Absolutely.

Help For Students

As I've been researching for my website I cam across tips for staying healthy in college. This opened the idea of instead of just having why eating should be implementing on campus and how TCU can make it happen, I also want to have some healthy tips for students to refer to. Here are some tips I came across from the article below:

Tips for preventing weight gain for freshmen
(and everyone else) from Dr. Gayle Timmerman

1. Establish an exercise routine and schedule it into your day. It’s even better if you can find a buddy to hold you accountable for showing up. Exercise is key to preventing weight gain, though it’s less helpful at losing weight once the pounds have added up.
2. Plan study snacks ahead of time. Studying is a high-risk time for students, so have a plan. Ask yourself the question, “What can I snack on that will have a small calorie impact and still get me through?”
3. When eating out, share a meal or box half the meal to take home. Large restaurant portions contribute to weight gain. Plan to eat half and offer the other half to a friend or box it up and get it out of your visual sight.
4. Try eating in your dorm room. Cereal, cereal bars, replacement meals like a Lean Cuisine and other foods that don’t require extensive preparation can mean the difference between a restaurant binge and a sensible diet.
5. Get your five fruits and vegetables. Skip the fried okra and French fries and pick up an apple in the cafeteria line.
6. Watch out for sodas and other sugar-filled drinks. Sodas, energy drinks and coffee drinks can put you on the fast track to weight gain. They add calories to the diet without easing hunger.
7. Monitor your weight. Timmerman suggests you weigh in once a week to catch any weight gain early. It’s a lot easier to deal with the weight when you’ve gained five pounds than when you’ve gained 15.

Freshmen 15

I remember at Frog Camp my freshmen year they made us go around and tell some of our greatest fears for the beginning of college. I still remember my response was "Freshmen 15." Majority of people have heard of the 15 pounds you gain when you get to college. But what is the cause of this, why does this happen to so many students? I weighed 127 pounds when I came to college, I now weigh around 124 pounds. If anything, I've been so afraid to gain weight that I've learned how to have a balanced diet and to work out a couple times a week. For many students however, they didn't have the advantage I had of growing up with health conscience parents so you see a lot of students gain a lot of weight. 

Fighting the Freshmen 15: In the article, Fighting the Freshmen 15 Dr. Gayle Timmerman at The University of Texas at Austin elaborates on the freshmen 15 and why this happpens. She talks about how students are going from portion control and home cooked meals, to having to do meals on their own and sometimes don't know what is too much. This is definitely the case at TCU. And with so little healthy food options, the freshman 15 is seen even more. If we had more healthy restaurants on campus, students wouldn't feel the pressure and anxiety of gaining weight in their college years.

If I Could Change One Thing About TCU...

We are starting to construct our websites and we've been brainstorming topics that we want to base our websites around. There are several controversial issues on TCU campus that you always hear students complaining about such as diversity and parking, but I wanted to choose a topic that wasn't a regurgitated topic. Since I was born and raised in California I grew up with a family that taught me all about eating healthy and how essential it is in life. My parents were by know means "granola eaters," but we definitely loved to eat organic. We'd grocery shop at Whole Foods or Trader Joes which are all organic food markets and would always try to eat healthy. When I decided to go to college in the state of Whataburger and fast food galore, I knew my eating happens would be changed drastically. My eating habits have definitely changed, not because I'm in college and "can only afford a cup of noddle for dinner," but because there are very few healthy options on or around TCU campus. There is one organic restaurant in all of Fort Worth called Spiral Diner and that is about 10 minutes away. The only organic grocery store is Central Market and that is a good 10 to 15 minute drive as well with traffic. The only food places around campus are Dutches Hamburgers, Red Cactus mexican food, Potbelly sandwiches, Einstein Bagels, and the Bluu cafeteria which usually is filled with pizza, hamburgers, and a mediocre salad bar. Sure we have Potbelly and Subway sandwich to get some healthy options, but you can only have a sandwich so many times. I've decided to develop a website based around the idea of implementing more healthier food options on and around TCU campus. I think this is a very essential issue that needs to be addressed and I want to show people at TCU why eating healthy is so important. I'm excited to create a website about something I'm passionate about. Now I just need to figure out the complications of Dreamweaver!

Outstanding vs. Lousy Webpages

We were asked to bring to class two outstanding and two lousy web pages.

An outstanding webpage that instantly came to mind was the webpage for Todd Events. Todd Events is an event planning company based out of Dallas that I was going to intern for this summer but ended up taking a paid one instead. They without a doubt have a very "glamorous" website though. I would say this is a 4th generation without a doubt. http://toddevents.com/. They bring some very realistic elements to the website, have music playing throughout, motion, and and simple yet elaborate design template.

Another outstanding webpage I thought of was one of my favorite restaurants of all time, Foreign Cinema. It is a restaurant in San Francisco that plays foreign movies on a wall while you eat your dinner and has an art gallery you can walk through while you're waiting. It is absolutely stunning, and their website just adds to the whole atmosphere of the entire restaurant: http://foreigncinema.com/home.html



Two lousy websites: 1. The Yale School of Art is WAY too busy and it design is all wrong. http://art.yale.edu/ 2. This is just an example of a bad website that we seem to run into too many times on the web and gives examples of what NOT to do: http://www.angelfire.com/super/badwebs/

Wait..there are different generation web pages?

In last class we had to present a 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th generation website. Before this I had no idea there were even different classifications or generations for websites. It was very interesting to see all the different characteristics that each website entails. We had to present one of the websites in front of the class and I chose to present one of my favorite websites: thekollection.com. 

This is a music blog that has downloading features, large images, a neat and easy to use format, and not to mention great new music. 

10 Principles of Effective Web Design

http://10%20principles%20of%20effective%20web%20design/

We are starting on our Unit 2 project in Multimedia class which is all about hypertext and web design. I found this great article on 10 principles of effective web design.

1. Don't Make Users Think
2. Don't Squander Users Patience
3. Manage To Focus Users' Attention
4. Strive For Feature Exposure
5. Make Use Of Effective Writing
6. Strive For Simplicity
7. Don't Be Afraid Of The White Space
8. Communicate  Effectively With A "Visible Language."
9. Conventions Are Our Friends
10. Test Early, Test Often.

This site goes more into depth on to why these principles are effective, but I think these 10 principles really can make a huge effect. Being an avid internet user, these principles all are true when it comes to what websites appeal to people and don't. I've gone on websites that were too busy or complicated and never came back. It is all about simplicity. I'm excited to get started and know how to great my own web designs.

Final Project

This is my final project. The hardest part for me in this project was that I love things to be simple. Being that this is a collage and there is a lot going on, I tried to make it as organized and readable as possible, but with still some uniqueness and creativity involved.  Part of the requirement was to use 4 different types of material. I went outside in my yard and gathered a bunch of different sticks, cut them, and hot glued them along the base of the foam board giving it an "earthy" type feel which I was going for. I then took a white foam board and traced the outline of africa and took an exacto knife and carved it out and colored it in with colored pencils and hot glued it to the top. I then took 2 water bottles and hot glued them to the right side of the board showing that these people are in need for water. I then took a blown up version of the picture of sticks I took in my front yard and used it as a back drop for some of my main pictures I got off AP images. I added my other images I took showing the "donate' aspect. I then typed up a short paragraph about what is going on in Africa and how people can help and I put a wooden frame around it to draw peoples attention. I then added images I found the most powerful. As you can see in the top right corner there is a picture of someone in the military with a gun and I made the picture black and white and the just made him colored showing that they are the ones taking over and leaving the other people in the "dark." I went to Michaels and got these really cool white foam letters and I used those to demonstrate what exactly this collage is about and to get the message across. Last, I hot glued my foam board on top of a wooden donation station I created and wrote "Donate" on so people can easily just drop money and coins in it securely.

I found this project actually very fun to do and I'm VERY pleased with how it turned out. Although it took a lot of time, it really paid off. I'm excited to see what my other classmates came up with.

A Day as A Photographer

One of the assignments in our project is to take 4 of our own images. When Professor Murray told me this, I was very hesitant because I am by no means a photographer. Also, it was challenging for me to think of images I could take that would correlate with the over arching theme of my poster, donations for african famine, without actually getting on a plane and flying to Africa camera in hand.

First, I took money from my wallet it and I tried to spread it on the hard surface of my floor in some "artsy" way to photograph what exactly it is that these people should be donating. 

 

Then I took a picture of my roomates hands in a gesture that says "giving" and shows the giving action being done.

Then I went out front and took a picture of the dirt and rocks that my landowner calls "quality landscaping" and figured I could use it as some background for a title or for a collage layering effect.

This picture has to be my favorite of them all. I have this app called "Instagram" where I was able to add this effect to what would normally be a pretty bland picture of food I took from my pantry. I really love how it turned out and how it has kind of a rustic feel to it. 

I am excited to see how my poster comes together. My only challenge left now is getting everything together and think of a few more raw materials to use.

A Whole New Meaning of Color

I've seen a few friends of mine who are very interested in photography post pictures where the entire picture is grey scale except for one part of the picture still has color in it. I've always thought how cool this looked and always wondered how they did it. In class today we finally learned how to do it and I was very excited! It is amazing to see how you can add such emotion to a picture by concentrating on certain parts through color. I'm hoping to apply this to my upcoming project. I may make a young child's eyes be the only color showing as a sign of hope and to have an emotional appeal of people walking by, or just have the color of the gun showing to represent the violence that is going on there. Either way, color can add so much more meaning and emotion to a picture than one would think.

African Famine Collage Project

In our Multimedia class we were assigned a mini project to help get us started on our actual project, which was to take pictures from AP images from the TCU library database and make a collage. I flipped through about 15 pages of different pictures of this tragedy going on in Africa, and I have to admit, it was very disturbing. Just looking through these pictures made me more passionate to want to not only do well on my project, but to get large donations to send to these poor people. This just reminds me how truly blessed we are to live in the country we live in. As you in can see in my collage The top largest image is a picture of the African military controlling the people from leaving. I've made this collage like a "cause and effect." We have the military holding these people back and then the surronding pictures show the effect of it. You can see starving children, poverty stricken living situations, and homeless people on the streets with no food or water. Doing this collage made me realize that there can be so much more meaning in pictures then I would have ever expected and the placement of pictures can have a large meaning as well.

A Glimpse of Hope

Chevron is making a large effort to help out with the famine in Africa, check out this video: Talk about great brand image for Chevron.

Save The Children

I came across a CNN article titled: Famine In East Africa-How You Can Help that really caught my attention. Check it out: http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/07/20/iyw.howtohelp.somalia.famine/index.html.


It lists all the organizations that are helping the famine going on today. However, all of these organizations all just have links to donate $10 or to TEXT a certain number to donate money. In my Multimedia Image and Hypertext class at TCU we are trying to find an organization we can send our food to. I think we could easily just send everything we have to an organizations address that they could send out to Africa. Take Save the Children for example. They have their address provided on their website: 54 Wilton Road, Westport, CT 06880. Save the Children is feeding underweight children, providing life saving medical treatment, and clean water. The reason we are looking for an organization we can give food instead of money is because we will have these donation stations we create set up throughout campus and although I trust everyone's moral ethic at TCU, you never know who would just walk up and take the donation jar and the money inside of it. People are a lot less likely to steal food.

I like the idea of gathering food and just sending it to an organization in the US. What do you think?

Compassion International

I've found myself and my peers during school projects saying to ourselves "How is this project even relevant?" "What is this project even going to teach us?" I am happy to say that for once I feel like a project my professor has assigned me not only will teach me a lot about the course, but will make a difference. In my Multimedia: Image and Hypertext class with Professor Murray at TCU, he came up with the brilliant idea of teaching us more about image collaging by assigning us to make an image board  of the famine currently going on in Eastern Africa. We will display these boards around campus with donation boxes in hopes to not only raise awareness, but money and food to help these children and families in Africa. If all teachers in campuses across the nation thought to do this, we all could make a huge difference.

Currently in Eastern Africa, the Shabab Islamist insurgent group is blocking starving people from fleeing the country and setting up cantonment camp where they are imprisoning displaced people who were trying to escape Shabab territory. Through this, a famine has been created and tens of thousands of Somalis are already dead and more than 500,000 children are on the brink of starvation.

Part of our assignment was to find a credible non-governmental organization that is sponsoring this relief.  Immediately, I thought of Compassion International which is an organization I have been part of for several years now. Compassion Internal sponsors childern in these third world countries who need help. I have been sponsoring a young girl named Neydelin in Peru since I was in 8th grade. I give her $30 dollars a month and we exchange letters. If we can find more organizations who are credible and making this large of a difference to donate the donations we raise from an assignment, we can make a change. I am excited to see what our class raises through this project and the impact we make.

Multimedia Class

With the stress of signing up for college classes, I frantically was looking for a class that I wouldn't have to dread taking and would actually enjoy. I came across Multimedia: Image and Hypertext and liked what I read. I've always been interested in computers but would not categorize myself as "tech savvy." Being that I am an Advertising and Public Relations major, having skills such as Photoshop, Indesign, etc are essential to have. I worked for a marketing agency this summer in Dallas called RAPP and saw first hand how a lot of these programs were used for huge advertising campaigns. I was the "operations intern" so I did a lot more of event planning and account executive work, but I was always envious of the creative and copyright interns who were always coming up with amazing designs and playing around on photoshop,m while I was bored doing ROI's. With social media growing and the fact that more and more people are becoming reliant on technology, having just a basic knowledge of multimedia can put anyone one step ahead. I feel grateful to be taking this class and am excited to see what skills I will have obtained by the end of the semester.