Stickers and first batch of pictures

Unfortunately when I took pictures, I had alot of blur and grain, so I had to do alot of photoshop work, possibly due to the sucky light source I was trying to use. But here's one of the pictures that I did alot of editing (maybe still have to do more, but looking good sofar):



Here are the rest, unedited. They'll be like the first photo.

I'll be making a series of posters based on the sites I took pictures of and will be using the site where I got my info on media websites and put in information as to what country banned that site and why.

Tomorrow I'll take some outdoor pictures. I'll place stickers on anything I can find with a URL. I'll also make the real stickers and its packaging, making them an ironic product when it comes to censorship.

Edits edits edits

Edited some of my posters...


This one I added symbols that can be found inside flags. I was told flags aren't a good idea, but some just have bold symbols. Take China, for instance, there is a big star and 3 small stars surrounding it. We will know that's a symbol of China. Unfortunately not all are like that. I need to find symbols for Indonesia, Thailand, and United Arab Emirates, and I might change Brazil's because it's not bold enough due to too much detail. Probably will.

I tried doing animals, but shrunken silhouettes don't look good at all. And I tried emblems, but for this type of thing, too much details.

Anyone know any other symbols from the countries I'm still looking for?


This was my first infographic. It turned into circles, now they're squares due to inspiration of pixels.


This one was easy to make. Basically, I read quite a bit of articles on how France and Germany don't have access to nazi and white supremacy sites, and yet these articles that are written in AMERICA don't seem to tell us these sites, not even when I try looking for them. I did end up at a list of these sites, but little to none worked.

Tried a few variations of my X sticker using my color pallet since I'm only sticking to one. Should I stick to the black and orange since those colors give more of the "alert" feel, or is variation good?

I'm also going to do full pixelated pages using my color pallet. I'll have good variations and they'd be great for chapter openers!

Progress!

I'm only using the X as a sticker. The rest are going to be informational posters. They work better as posters, info is too small for it to be stickers.

Makes my life easier now, though. I can do so many things with just one type of sticker, which can be made into another poster series.

So I'll have my informational vectorized posters and my photographic posters that involves sticking the stickers on things I'd want to censor out. I think I'd also want to create a packaging with a bunch of the same stickers so it can become a product as well.

Other things I'm planning to do:

- Create a series of short-length books as my process book, will code them in color and number

- Create my thesis book

- Create a box to package both, the box having an x-ray effect.

- Continue making posters

So at this point, I really know what I want to do.

I'm going to do the sticker project tomorrow or Thursday.

A few stickers

Still working on more, but sofar I got 2 infographics and a simple X for stickers. All they need is probably a tiny bit of tweaking. I'm currently working on a couple of more.

Logos, patterns, and more notes

The patterns I'm working on up top is the idea of "wrapping paper", being that wrapping paper covers something up. I'm working on some square patterns, and my books (process and thesis) are going to be squares to have the shape of a pixel. As for the logos, I was asked to try another word other than Access. Used a thesaurus. Wasn't crazy about the words that came up, thought they were too plain, but I decided to try Pathway. The numbers on the left I'm thinking of using if I decide to include chapter numbers.

As for further research, going into the nazi and white supremacy sites, it seems that any article I find about them, they don't seem to give me any names for sites. One even says "the site's anonymous author". And about 90% of these sites are hosted in the US, and in one article, yahoo was asked to censor these sites, and not just the french version. One even asks "does one country have jurisdiction to regulate companies in another country"? But the main question is, why wouldn't they list these sites and why would they not elaborate on anything on these sites? I also found a list of these sites, and most of them I'd get error messages like "domain not found" or "access restricted". This is pretty strange.

I found another article on banned war pictures, but this was during the Gulf War in 1991. Tami Silico took photos of flag-draped coffins on a plane in Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. She got fired, and a year later, Russ Kick put up the 361 Dover photos on his site and was shared with the world. Although it was, the Pentagon barred further release of this content in need to protect privacy of soldier families. Then I researched on how the Vietnam War was the most uncensored war in history. In 1943, the first photograph of an american casualty was published in Life Magazine, and soon TV and photojournalists were allowed to access some of the most disturbing imagry in America's collective memory.

"Photographs seem to be the only thing the war office is really afraid of." - Jimmy Hare

I also did some research on social media websites, like YouTube, MySpace, Flickr, and more. Will be worked up into an infographic, which will be worked into one of my stickers.

Notes, graphics coming up.

Currently working on graphics, but I thought I'd take the time right now to post my updated outline after changing it a thousand times.

World Internet Censorship

I. General Info

Here I'll talk about what internet censorship is, as well as talking about the broader issues like literacy and internet enemies. Some of these topic I'll cover will include:

- Literacy

- Internet usage

- Internet enemies

II. Popular websites that have been banned in other countries

- YouTube

- MySpace

- Sites banned by Google

III. French and Germans against Nazi and White Supremacy sites

I came across an article on how Germany and France have banned Nazi and White Supremacy sites. I'm trying to figure out what these sites are and any other certain reasons of them being banned for. And some of these sites had their content changed, yet are still blocked. Also, why would they go from a nazi/white supremacy site to something like a chinese language site. It seems that even the articles I read won't state any names of these sites, except for one of them stating "Jew Watch" as one of them. Trying to find more details.

IV. Pictures from the Iraqi War

There were horrific images published on the internet of dead soldiers. Zoriah Miller, who took the pictures, is now possibly going to be barred from all US military facilities for posting these pictures. Pictures were removed. I might also include other horrific pictures that were banned from the internet.

Yes, my outline still seems to be sketchy, but it's getting there.

Right now I am currently working on my logo and stickers. The stickers I'm making is inspired from the idea of censorship being that you cover things with it. I'm designing both simple and complex, sticking them onto certain things, take pictures, and then create posters. Some ideas right now include:

- Computer screen

- URLs

- Posters/ads in the public

- Tshirts that advertise certain marks

- TV

- Mouth

Okay, so those are my notes. Posting the graphics soon.

Pixels - Foundation stage

I'm playing around with squares.  I think for a pixely feel, the two in the top-left will do justice.

I'll explore more.

I want to make pixel symbols for my books when I design them.

On a different note, I might use some sort of cellophane or plastic to "censor" my early stages of work when I put them in my process book since early stages for me were "crap".

Major planning

So what I've been doing is trying to combine censorship and the net to every piece I've been trying to make. This made things complicating and very frustrating.

One thing I'm good with sofar is the color pallet exploration. It's not finalized yet, but I have good choices.

So I decided to work with three types of elements for this projects, some thought out by me and some suggested:

1) Pixels

2) Missing pieces

3) Covering things

Pixels - Mainly going to use pixels for my logo. The logo I have currently I like, but it can also be defined as other things. I can also go with a pixel or square-like design for my thesis book. I'll probably use em for my process book as well.

Missing pieces - We had a big discussion on missing pieces in class. When something is censored, they are missing. Also, I reviewed the article on Germany and France censoring White Supremacist and Nazi sites, and that some that have changed content are still censored. What the article DOESN'T state is what are those websites and why. After learning of this, it makes me more critical in what I read. From now on, I will look out for those "missing pieces". Anything blanked out can also be missing pieces.

Covering things - I think we can have fun with this element. Some ideas I have are stickers, crossing out things in articles, wrapping paper/craft paper, etc. Some ideas from the ideas I just stated are...

- Putting an appropriate sticker that I design on a computer screen while a certain website that has been censored in certain countries show through whatever's left of the screen, take pictures, and make a series of posters out of them.

- Design a wrapping paper pattern and wrap it around the book cover. Either I'll directly print or I'll silkscreen on craft paper. Maybe both since I have to do two books.

- The idea of crossing out things in articles can be good for either posters or stickers, or even anything else.

- Eventually I'll make a sticker book (meaning a stack of stickers perfect bound) or a box of stickers.

- This is just an idea I'm throwing in, not actually considering, but making a puzzle with a piece or two missing. Not sure if I wanna do yet. That'll be one of the last things I'll think about.

So since my research is one of my main things I'm doing, I'm mainly going to look for the missing pieces.

This is starting to be a fun project.

Been sick, doing research, trying to get enough research to get more production done. I need to find more statistical sites since I feel my strongest piece right now is my infographic.

I redid my literacy infographic with the use of color code, indicating literacy rates, and influenced by my logo.

I'm going with the top right. And the top is the current color pallet I'm working with.

My idea for my logo is the idea of wireless networking. My other logo ideas failed because I was focusing on one side. So I decided to be influenced with just the internet. And since internet is wireless, that's my reason. Plus it also gives the feel of rapidness and that's how the internet is, especially today.

Others I have done (I'm currently working on another right now):

The last one is one of the NYT headlines I worked on. The others I'm having problems with. Either neither can be re-interprited into the topic of my thesis or I just need to explore more.