I am interested in microstock illustations as the area of study. Microstock photo agency is stock photography or illustration provider, which sources images from individuals, for example from freelancers and amateurs.There is plenty of research about microstock photo agencies in the perspective of marketing but not in the perspective of graphic design and content analysis. In my opinion further research about microstock illustrations are needed.
While using microstock photo agencies in my work as graphic designer in the University of Cape Coast I had an impression that illustrations of African characters where somewhat limited in numbers and in range of topics. I would want to dig deeper into the subject to find out how Africannes is portrayed in microstock illustrations.
I will do a literature review on representations of African characters and some basic theories of stereotyping and visual otherness.
I will gather data from five well-established international microstock photo agencies, namely Shutterstock, Fotolia, Dreamstime, Istock and Adobe Stock. I limit the research to only English language microstock sites to ease the analysis.
I will use search words “African, not African-American” or simply “African” if I can otherwise filter out images portraying African-Americans. I will concentrate on search results with a human character. I will leave out objects, patterns, abstraction, nature and animals and other non-human motives. I will also rule out photographs and videoand concentrate on non-photographic illustrations. I will pick first ten applicable search results. The data will consist of 50 images in all.
I’m going to use semiotic analysis and close reading, to analyse the samples. I am going to concentrate on the roles the characters are assigned to and the main themes that arise from the data. I will compare my findings to the literature.
I will draw illustrations that offer alternative representations of African characters in order to contribute in the diversity of imagery regarding the African population available in microstock collections.
I will use autoethnographic approach, like keeping a diary about the design process to reflect on my design process in the light of the literature and the data, taking note especially on any biases and underlying motives.
How do biases dictate the design process and on the other hand how does consciousness of one’s biases affect it?
Schedule
Fall 2016
- Course work
- Methodology and terminology
- Literature review
Spring 2017
- Course work
- Literature review
- Gathering data
- Data analysis
- Production of probes
- Distributing probes
- Collecting the returns of the probes
Fall 2017
- Illustrating
- Summary and Conclusion
- First version of write up
- Final version of write up
ILLUSTRATING THE OTHER 