EMOTION AND THE DESIGNED OBJECT
by
Brittany Diane Schade
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of
The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Fine Arts
Florida Atlantic University
Boca Raton, Florida
May 2013
Copyright by Brittany Diane Schade 2013
ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank my thesis committee—Eric Landes, Stephanie Cunningham, and
Linda Johnson—for their guidance and encouragement throughout this process. I would
also like to thank my husband and family for their love, inspiration, and support, without
which none of this would be possible.
iv
ABSTRACT
Author:
Brittany Diane Schade
Title:
Emotion and the Designed Object
Institution:
Florida Atlantic University
Thesis Advisor:
Eric Landes, M.F.A.
Degree:
Master of Fine Arts
Year:
2013
This thesis explores the expression of emotion through designed objects. Objects
act as vehicles of memory in the same way language is the visible form of thought. In
graphic design, the sensory qualities of an object provide a material surface on which
information is communicated. The goal is to expose the autonomy of materials and form
available to designers in the physical world while expressing emotional meaning beyond
original form. By recasting the temporary fragments and observations of life into
designed objects imbued with personal and cultural importance, the audience gains
insight into others’ personal and emotional experiences. Through our connections with
the physical world, I investigate how form and the material qualities of designed objects
can elicit an emotional response from the audience.
v
EMOTION AND THE DESIGNED OBJECT
JUSTIFICATION ............................................................................................................... 1
MATERIALITY AND SOCIETY ......................................................................................... 2
Objects of our Affection ......................................................................................... 2
Issues with Digital Media....................................................................................... 3
The Medium is the Message ................................................................................. 3
Interpreting Meaning ............................................................................................. 5
DESIGN AND EMOTION .................................................................................................. 7
Levels of Emotion.................................................................................................. 7
Connecting with the Audience............................................................................... 8
DESIGNING MEANINGFUL EXPERIENCES................................................................. 10
Design Authorship ............................................................................................... 10
Installation Art ..................................................................................................... 11
THESIS WORK ............................................................................................................... 12
Conversation Piece ............................................................................................. 14
Last Regrets ........................................................................................................ 17
Self-Identity™...................................................................................................... 19
Pop-Up ................................................................................................................ 24
CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................ 26
BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................. 27
vi
JUSTIFICATION
This thesis is a personal exploration inspired by the ways technology has shaped the
way people experience emotion. Physical and technical limitations of digital media—
which reduce complex language systems to short, typed messages—often obscure both
the context of the author and the emotional weight of the message. I began looking at
the important fragments of life that seem to not have been preserved in any way that
reflected their apparent emotional value. Text messages, personal resolutions, and a
diploma, are all loaded with emotion but lack a form to express it visually. In this
absence of visual expression—which ordinarily occurs during personal interactions or
physical permanence—designed objects can perform as both form and meaning.
During my first year of graduate studies, I found myself limited by my own
conventions and challenged myself to experiment with alternative materials. I was able
to rediscover my own visual voice, which had been compromised by the strict limitations
that had guided my professional work. Exposing the process of design, through
materials and techniques, has provided a humanizing contrast to the way people
currently experience emotion in digital design, while also uncovering meaning that would
otherwise have become lost in translation. Interested in the relationship between form
and meaning, I began investigating how we express emotion through our connections
with the physical world.
1
MATERIALITY AND SOCIETY
“To be human is to live in a material world in which our experience is always grounded in
the actions of our bodies in relation to other material entities within our world.”
— Tim Dant, Materiality and Society
Objects of Our Affection
We live in a physical world where much of our time is spent interacting with the
objects around us. As far back as the earliest humans we have journeyed through life
with a relationship to objects. By reflecting ideas, values, and past experiences, objects
bring meaning to our lives. According to French semiotician, Jean Baudrillard, in his
essay The System of Objects, objects hold meaning through their associations with
people, places, and experiences.1 They act as vehicles of memory in the same way
language, written or spoken, is the manifest form of thought. When people experience
an object they are also connecting on a deeper, emotional level with the object’s creator.
Collectors are prime examples of people who have become attached to objects for their
aesthetic, functional, and storytelling qualities. The surface of an object—packaging or
product—allows the designer a permanent place for meaning to reside. Through the lens
of design, this thesis examines the potential of objects to elicit an emotional response
from the audience.
1
Baudrillard, Jean. The System of Objects. London: Verso, 1996.
2
Issues with Digital Media
Social media, text messages, email, and blogs have become an integral form of
human communication. People are using digital technology to build personal
relationships and share information on a global scale. By eliminating the tangible object
in the digital environment, there is a potential for our capacity to communicate emotion to
become significantly reduced. Speedier forms of communication, which have reduced
complex language systems into shorter and more obscure messages, make it difficult to
translate detailed emotion into words. Messaging platforms like Twitter™, which limits
letter count to 140 characters, forces users to rely on expressive acronyms (i.e. LOL,
LMFAO, BFF, etc.) and pictorial smiles. People communicating in the virtual world have
had to adapt to expressing themselves from behind the curtain of technology, which
blunts the nuances of expression. Even with the capabilities of motion graphics, dynamic
interfaces, and touch-screen technologies, designers are often faced with the nearly
impossible task of preserving emotion in these hyper-ephemeral medias. Although this
thesis does not exclusively focus on these particular issues with digital media, it does
incorporate digital messages as a source for recasting temporary content—which would
otherwise be lost or forgotten—into tangible forms.
Medium is the Message
Historically, graphic design has had a very direct relationship with materials.
Whether printing upon, communicating through, or incorporating objects themselves,
‘material’ has always been necessary for the expression of design ideas. In Graphic
Design Theory, Meredith Davis states, “[Objects] give our ideas material form, allowing
us to visualize, modify, elaborate, share our thoughts, and explore complex concepts
3
and relationships that would be impossible to process in our minds alone.”2 Whether in
print or on screen, designers are responsible for making formal choices of materials
based upon an understanding of context and culture. The materials’ production and
lifespan all tell a story. Jean Baudrillard suggests, “The material, sensory qualities of the
artifact produce an emotional response and meanings that can not otherwise be evoked
by the literal subject matter.”3 When designers experiment with materials, unique and
expressive artifacts are created. Karim Zariffa, a multimedia designer based in Montreal,
Canada, embraces the challenge of blending digital and analog mediums. Zariffa’s
hands-on, collaborative, and material rich approach is a departure from today’s more
common digital designs. His work, which has been used by companies such as New
York Times, Air Canada, Télé-Québec, and Accords Restaurant, focuses on providing
sensory experiences. One of his more popular designs is an entire alphabet created
from car parts for the AOL Auto Blog.
In the 1960s, Marshall McLuhan, a media theorist best known for his book “The
Medium Is The Massage”, contributed to discourse about media culture and its impact
on society. He stated, “Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the
media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication.”4 The
values and meanings we attach to messages are interpreted as a response to the
medium, and overtime these meanings change. McLuhan’s theory was initially targeted
at the introduction of the television and the effects on audience interaction, however
each new technology continues to alter the dynamics of communication. It is important
for designers to gain an understanding of how people respond to their physical
2
Davis, Meredith. Graphic Design Theory. (London: Thames & Hudson, 2012), 14.
Baudrillard, Jean. The System of Objects. London: Verso, 1996.
4
McLuhan, Marshall, Quentin Fiore, and Jerome Agel. The Medium Is the Massage. (New York: Bantam
Books, 1967), 8.
3
4
environment and the objects within them to further investigate how we can create
meaningful messages in other mediums. For instance, how the familiarity and comfort of
the physical world can be translated or reinterpreted in the digital.
Interpreting Meaning
In visual culture signs generate meaning and help us to communicate and
understand our environment.5 Semiotics (the study of signs), which originates from
linguistic theory, is frequently applied in the field of design to interpret meaning. Like
signs, objects can transport complex social and cultural meaning. Donald Norman in
Emotional Design states, “A favorite object is a symbol… a reminder of pleasant
memories, or sometimes an expression of one’s self.”6 In his essay, Typographic
Meaning, Theo Van Leeuwen describes two key semiotic principles, built on the
research of Roland Barthes, to explain how an object’s form can create meaning, similar
to signs.7 The first—connotative meaning—is formed with an association of a historical
or cultural context. Connotation relies on the audience to identify the meaning and
significance based on their own knowledge. Barthes suggested that connotation is a
“second order signifier”8 that allows the same sign to “have different meaning when
presented in a different manner or style”.9 Depending on an individual’s associations of
materials, each may experience different emotions towards the same object.
The second principle of meaning presented by Van Leeuwen is visual metaphor.
Visual metaphor is based on the similarity between a visual form of the object and what
5
Brownie, Barbara. “The Semiotics of Typography.” Gestalt Perception of Fluid Typography. (2009), 2.
Norman, Donald A. Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things. (New York: Basic Books,
2004), 6.
7
Van Leeuwen Theo. "Typographic Meaning." Visual Communication. 4.2 (2005): 137-143.
8
Chandler, Daniel. “Denotation, Conotation and Myth.” Semiotics for Beginners. (2008).
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem06.html (visited 06/06/2012)
9
Brownie, Barbara. “The Semiotics of Typography.” Gestalt Perception of Fluid Typography. (2009), 4.
6
5
it is meant to represent. In other words, an object that suggests a likeness to the content
can elicit an intended emotional response from the audience. For example, visual
metaphor requires careful consideration of materials as an interpretation of an object’s
appearance will have multiple meanings and therefore elicit mixed emotions, not just a
singular emotion. Designers use visual metaphor to direct existing meaning to new
meanings. This is commonly used in the digital setting when trying to bridge
understanding between real and virtual concepts.
Van Leeuwen also claims that multimodality, a contemporary development based
on advances in technology and conceptual innovation, is another system of creating
meaning. Multimodality blends type and image by incorporating various semiotic
resources such as color, three-dimensionality, material texture, and movement.10
Experimental typography, which includes kinetic type and handmade letterforms, are a
few of the ways designers are investigating how to communicate emotion. The projects
in this thesis aim to use material choices and multimodality to convey meaning to the
audience.
10
Van Leeuwen Theo. "Typographic Meaning." Visual Communication. 4.2 (2005): 137-143.
6
DESIGN AND EMOTION
Levels of Emotion
In John Maeda’s book, Laws of Simplicity, he lists emotion as the ninth law and
argues, “More emotions are better than less.”11 These emotional connections between
the object and the audience form the framework of this thesis. In his book Emotional
Design, cognitive psychologist Donald Norman argues that it is important that designers
include emotions into their strategy and that, “the emotional side of design may be more
critical to a product’s success than its practical elements.”12 Emotions reflect our
personal experiences, associations, and memories. In fact, the focus of the audience is
rarely on the object itself, but on the story it represents.
Norman notes that people become connected to objects through three levels of
emotion.13 First, the visceral level of emotion relies on appearance or the material
qualities of objects to elicit a response. This level is based on our personal attraction to
the physical appearance of one object compared to another. Do I think it’s beautiful?
Second, the behavioral level of emotion is the result of our pleasure or gain from its use.
This often occurs when the needs of the user are met with the pleasure and
effectiveness of an object’s use. The first two levels of emotion refer to an experience in
the present whereas the third level of emotion, the reflective level, refers to the object’s
11
http://www.lawsofsimplicity.com (visited 02/10/2013)
Norman, Donald A. Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things. (New York: Basic Books,
2004), 5.
13
Davis, Meredith. Graphic Design Theory. (London: Thames & Hudson, 2012), 69.
12
7
qualities that “inhabit our memories and inform future actions and beliefs.”14 The
reflective level makes us ask questions about how the object relates to the self. Can I tell
a story about it? Does it appeal to my self-image? The reflective level is perhaps the
most important because it requires the audience to make an “intellectual”15 connection
with the object.
Connecting with an Audience
Attachment to objects allows designers to trigger emotions. The audience
becomes more receptive to design when they can relate to it on a personal level. This
thesis explores several emotions within the projects including, but not limited to:
sentiment, humor, sadness, regret, joy, and surprise. By using visual cues and cultural
associations such as typefaces, imagery, and color schemes, designers can provide a
mood for the audience in which they respond to emotionally.
In the commercial environment designers seduce consumers’ emotions through
simulated sentiment and lifestyle identification. Objects designed with thematic elements
reminiscent of the past utilize the lure of nostalgia to tap into memory. From labels, to
signage, to store decor, many of the consumers’ experiences have been shaped by
retail environments designed to encourage feelings of longing for an imagined past, in
hopes that the products are purchased to fill that void. Companies such as
Anthropologie™ (known for their French country, chic style) encourage consumers to
purchase products based on the values and ideals from the past by reintroducing
aesthetic elements from those periods. Purchasing an item based on sentiment
14
Ibid, 71.
Norman, Donald A. Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things. (New York: Basic Books,
2004), 5.
15
8
demonstrates an autobiographical connection between a product’s visual communication
and the consumer’s belief that they are purchasing a product manufactured to their
individual sets of values. Sentiment is based off the personal experiences from one’s self
or the general beliefs of a collective group of people, and these feelings are sustained by
the piecing of memories together to construct meaning.
Humor is another tactic designers implement to disrupt our expectations and
elicit emotion. Laughter is a visual expression of various emotional states and is said to
“release tension”16. Many designers employ humor and irony to surprise and encourage
people to open up to new ideas. Marshall McLuhan states, “Humor as a system of
communication and as a probe of our environment—of what’s really going on—affords
us our most anti-environmental tool. It does not deal in theory, but in immediate
experience, and is often the best guide to changing perceptions”.17 In addition, humor is
considered one of the most powerful emotions in establishing relationships, and in this
case a relationship between designer and audience. Whether using humor or sentiment
or any other emotion, designers are able to connect with the audience willingly and
subversively by crafting objects reminiscent of our own experiences.
16
“Laughter”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laughter (visited 11/09/2012).
McLuhan, Marshall, Quentin Fiore, and Jerome Agel. The Medium Is the Massage. (New York: Bantam
Books, 1967), 92.
17
9
DESIGNING MEANINGFUL EXPERIENCES
Design Authorship
Understanding the authorial voice of the designer becomes an integral part in
these thesis projects. All of the content for the projects derive from emotional
experiences and observations from life. For this reason, the materials and form chosen
to express these emotions are visual manifestations from my memory designed to
identify on a general level with the audience.
The term authorship is not typically associated with the graphic design
profession. Designers have generally been considered as communicators not authors.18
The phrase “Designer as Author” sprang up in the 1990s and was featured in an article
written by Michael Rock in the trade magazine Eye. Authorship has been described as
“a process of dredging unique forms from the depths of the interior self”. Authorship
allows designers to collect information, direct content, and to communicate their own
messages through the visual language of design, not in the traditional sense of words.
For designers today, authorship means the autonomy of entrepreneurship, to take
ownership of a project from conception to completion. Perhaps the most apparent form
of design authorship is the artist’s book. In his article, Michael Rock continues on to state
that:
The artist’s book, in general, is concrete, self-referential and allows for a range of
visual experiments without the burden of fulfilling mundane commercial
18
Rock, Michael. “The Designer as Author”. Eye. No. 2, Vol. 5, 1996.
10
tasks….Artist’s books—using words, images, structures and material to tell a
story or invoke an emotion—may be the purest form of graphic authorship.19
Designers who work in this medium, such as Julie Chen and Macy Chadwick, have
challenged the conventions of the role of the designer. They have helped to expand selfexpression, interpretation, and authenticity into an industry dominated by mass
production.
Installation Art
Installation art is a term for three-dimensional works that are often site-specific
and designed to transform the perception of a space.20 Artists work in all media including
sculpture, interior/exterior design, film, digital, motion, and sound to create sensory
experiences for the audience. Installation art became popular in the 1970s with roots in
conceptual art and is considered by some to have originated with Marcel Duchamp’s
Fountain (1917). Designers and artists such as Dawn Ng, Felice Varini, and Stefan Sagmeister have used installations to create intimate dialogues with the audience in an
attempt to elicit emotion. Physical objects and large-scale graphics commonly used in
installation art encourage a level of interactivity between designer, audience, and object.
The use of installation as a medium was used in some of the thesis projects.
Whether creating overwhelming (Conversation Piece) or intimate (Last Regrets)
experiences, the scale of the work is important in establishing the initial mood for the
audience. Installation art has the ability to confront the audience within a space. These
forced spatial experiences require the audience to understand design as it relates to the
self—on a reflective level—producing the deepest emotional response.
19
20
Ibid.
“Installation Art”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Installation_art (visited 02/18/2013).
11
THESIS WORK
Our lives, in a sense, have become more temporary. By eliminating the tangible
object in the digital environment, our capacity to communicate emotion becomes
significantly reduced. Designed objects can provide a permanent presence for our
thoughts and actions. In these projects I have recast temporary fragments and
observations from my life into designed objects to help construct an emotional
experience with the audience. Throughout the projects, I chose to focus on amplifying
emotion through materials and form. The work blends both digital and analog mediums
to enhance the emotional content of the message through our connections with the
physical world. Each project uses juxtaposition on a wide range of emotions and content.
The goal is that our associations with the objects will allow the detection of the emotional
meaning of the content and create a meaningful experience for the audience. In addition,
these projects encourage the audience to interact with the work by making personal
connections at various levels of emotion.
These thesis projects were exhibited at the Schmidt Center Gallery located at
Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, FL. The gallery space was divided between
five graduating MFA students, including: graphic design, ceramics and painting.
12
13
Conversation Piece
People have become desensitized to the appearance of language in
contemporary communication due to the vast quantity of messages to which they are
exposed. Which information gets rejected, or what we have decided is unimportant, is
determined less on the message content, but rather, how we are confronted with it. In
the context of digital media, conversations appear homogenous and lack a contrast of
meaningful, emotional content. My goal with Conversation Piece was to bring awareness
to the temporality of text messages by archiving them in a permanent setting that the
audience can relate to, while challenging people’s expectations of what written
conversations should look like.
At home our shelves, counters, and walls are filled with objects that are
embedded with meaning. These objects, that we value, are the physical artifacts of our
memories. We carry these concepts of “home” and “memory” to the digital environment.
On the social media site, Facebook™, the “wall” is a feed of messages and
conversations with friends and family. Like our walls at home, the digital wall displays
photos, events, and announcements for everyone to see. Coincidentally, the wall is the
first page that opens up when you log onto many sites therefore it is also considered the
“home” page. I merge these concepts of conversation and the home, as they exist in
contemporary communications with what we understand of their meanings in real life.
Wallpaper expresses the messages’ emotional value to me through the metaphor of the
home.
Conversation Piece was designed with bright contrasting colors and bold typefaces
to increase the dramatic content of the messages. Repeating blocks of type, shapes,
and lines were used to represent the patterned wallpaper found in homes. The
14
arrangement of the designed elements were not intended to replicate traditional
wallpaper patterns, but to design a space that encapsulated the humor and
contemporary prose of the text messages, while also exploring ways in which the digital
world can inhabit the real world.
15
16
Last Regrets
Last Regrets is a project that examines the final thoughts of hospice patients.
Each of the messages was collected from an actual hospice nurse (my sister), the
personal information kept confidential. In each of the pieces the emotion of the subject
and the emotion of the audience connect in the act of reflection. As an artist book, this
project provides a personal object with which to tell stories. The messages are
presented in medical record folders hung on the wall and require the audience to open
them up to reveal these intimate wishes. The goal is not to elicit sympathy, but to ask the
audience to reflect on these precious, final contemplations.
17
18
Self-Identity™
Objects are the most visible form of social status. How we decorate our lives and
what brands we buy, gives others visual information that position one within culture and
society. The ability to make choices of consumption also satisfies a desire to define
one’s self. But, often time people are distracted by persuasive marketing campaigns and
become unaware that the self-identity that they are choosing belongs to a company. This
project focuses on retail packaging and its ability to define consumer confidence. By
designing a brand identity that is applied to objects associated with consumption aimed
at “confidence”, the audience can gain insight into the power of marketing that drives
consumption. Three different packaging designs were named “Fame”, “Fortune”, and
“Beauty”. Through the emotion of desire, the individual pieces are designed to inform the
audience that each object we consume has been designed to satisfy one or more
deficiencies in how we perceive ourselves.
19
20
21
22
23
Pop-Up
As society becomes more reliant on technology, we lose touch with the process
of making. The spy ware pop-up alert was chosen for its serious and threatening
message. By recasting the message to play off the irony of the message and by
presenting it in different formats, it fails to communicate the urgency it once had. Instead,
the message is designed to elicit a fun and surprising experience. The choice of
structure, format and delivery played a role in this outcome. Cut and folded paper
provides the physicality of a warning message, while the anaglyphic technique creates a
dynamic sensory experience with the audience. The goal of using so many layers of
techniques and form to create this piece was to showcase the process of the designer
as a tool to generate meaning as well as offering a case in which type in both digital and
analog form could coexist with the other.
24
25
CONCLUSION
The goal of this thesis was to explore how people’s emotions are triggered by the
materiality and form of objects through various projects that recast temporary fragments
of my life into designed objects. By researching the social values of objects, material
representation, and the context of emotion in design, I have a better understanding of
how designers can elicit an emotional response from the audience. The autonomy of
working in various mediums allowed me to create unique, expressive projects that
provide the audience insight into my personal emotional experiences. In addition, I
sought to bring attention to the differences in how we experience emotion through
various mediums by juxtaposing digital content with analog materials. These projects
have inspired me to further research how we can translate our connections with the
physical world to users’ experiences in the digital environment.
26
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http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem06.html (visited 06/06/2012)
Dant, Tim. Materiality and Society. Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2005.
Davis, Meredith. Graphic Design Theory. London: Thames & Hudson, 2012.
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27
McDonagh, Deana. Design and Emotion: The Experience of Everyday Things. London:
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McLuhan, Marshall, Quentin Fiore, and Jerome Agel. The Medium Is the Massage. New
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Rock, Michael. “The Designer as Author.” Eye. 2.5 (1996).
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28