Today I noticed a lot of packaging. Really, I noticed one particular package outside of my friend’s apartment. I don’t remember the name of the company, but the logo was red, and had an arc going over the company name like a shooting star. Then I started trying to look for logos and noticed that I never considered the logos of things I use often, or on the awnings over stores. They just seem commonplace now. Maybe that’s why the current google logo is so jarring. Maybe it’s just too kiddie. The jury is still out.
I listened to Pandora radio today, and got a few advertisements between songs. One was for an action movie, which seemed a bit silly since it was just a lot of hitting sounds and gunshots. There were also a few geared specifically towards me, like a food ordering service in New York (where I’m from) and textbooks from Amazon. Then I played a couple of games on my phone that had nice graphics that were very welcoming, as if to say “you don’t have to do your work, just play me!” One was actually designed to feel like an inn, which is very inviting.
I also went to a restaurant today that had pictures of other stores from the neighborhood on the walls. I didn’t notice the other stores going to the restaurant, but stepping out of them, I realized that a lot of the pictures on the walls were of stores across the street. Turns out I pay a lot more attention to pictures of things than I do real things.
I also went on social media for a while. Someone asked me if I know someone, so I looked them up (but I didn’t know them. Just some mutual friends), then I saw a Calvin and Hobbs comic my friend posted on his wall on Facebook. It was funny, but also relevant to things we used to do together.
I also tried to look at my Captain America poster more objectively. I got it because I like the character, but the image is of him jumping out of a newspaper from World War II. It kind of perfectly describes what the role of the character was, being an alternate version of current events at the time of the war. It’s basically the cover for Captain America #109, only they took out the words “the origin of” and made his name red, white, and blue, in keeping with today’s logo.
I went to a couple of RSS feeds that have their news articles in order of how recent they are. They had a picture and the first couple of sentences from the article. One of them also made the more important headlines into bigger fonts, with the more passing stories closer to 12 or 18 point font.
Also, I saw a poster with Uncle Sam on it that was most certainly not about the military. I think it was some finance something or other.
Reflection:
I see logos a lot. I like to take notice of them if they’re new, but I don’t really think of them most of the time. Pictures that are new to me seem to grab my attention much more than places I’ve walked through before. I’d been to the street with the stores on them before, but didn’t notice they were there until I saw the picture.
I also never really thought about how they changed the cover of Captain America #109 for my poster before. The logo and the character are much more recognizable now than they were when the comic was released, and taking out “The Origin of” makes it feel like he was always a part of that time period.
I must say, actually noticing the media around me was a little bit strange, but like a switch I’m having trouble turning off. Now I notice when I have to skip an ad on a youtube video (not noted above, but I did) or see a poster or some graffiti at a bus stop (also not noted above). It makes me think that every detail I’m exposed to is deliberate, so someone must have guessed what my reaction would be to every curve and color. Then I guess what they guessed I would think. I knew going in to this assignment that everything I do involves some kind of media, but it’s still nice to take a minute to consider what decisions went into putting all of that media there.