Book Cover: Media Studies

What seemed most challenging for this week’s assignment was its open nature. While given a small set of parameters there really were a million good ways one could approach such a design. I spent considerable time simply playing with elements and layers in photoshop to build a general idea of what I wanted to communicate through my design.

Media Studies continues to evolve today and while there is a great tradition in the study of previous ideologies and production theories and I believe a study of media today must find its foundations of production within a global framework. This simply wasn’t possible until recent technologies evolved and I believe it would have been a much bigger part of Media Theory at the time it began to be developed. With this in mind I sought to center my cover around the globe and the mind. Media Studies enables our minds to connect through technology and people on a global level.

Using the brain on top of the world image was a strong communicative, but perhaps risky choice. I thought it might be too gory. Yet, I wanted to indicate this is a connection between technology, communication and the individual mind. A mind that is personal and inside us. Dominate ideologies are still formed from individual perceptions. Perhaps I could step back and just use a head, or perhaps not use the brain at all and just a globe? I stuck with my original design because of the personal connection I wished to make? Is it too much? Any ideas to tone it down?

In order to create the brain/globe images I made use of the transform selection tool, layering and multiplying techniques. I downloaded a image of a globe and a brain. Then I overlaided them together. Using the “smart object” tool I was able to shape the globe within the borders of the brain. Then I used the modify selection tool to smooth out the edges. The finishing touch was an outer glow and a lens flare effect behind the brain to communicate the vast depth of such a field of study and to help bring together the images of technology and people -> draw them toward the globe.

At first I attempted to place items of Media into the text MEDIA. For example, a television, radio, newspaper were masked and pasted into the text. That proved simply to busy and took away from the text. Next, I searched for an image of a television wall. This wasn’t to promote television as a medium, rather the multiple images were to communicate the shear number of visual media impacting our lives. They were to stand for the visual element of media. Yet, media is also very much audio/sound. I decided that was too important to leave out so I converted the A in MEDIA to an antenna often associated with radio/sound. Yet, it also had a double meaning promoting the transmission of media which is how it reaches us globally. It wasn’t a perfect representation of audio/sound but it worked and its double meaning suited the purpose well.

To me Media Studies has a strong human element. It’s the joining of technology -sound and images- with the global culture of people and their thoughts and mind. To communicate this idea I used a large group of people offsetting the televisions at the top. All coming together in the mind -> a global mind.

In the end, I’m pleased with the design, but concerned about the brain being too much. It’s a fairly simple design, yet perhaps there are too many communication goals.  I am interested in your thoughts.