Design and Technology in Communication
In the digital era, communication has become a powerful tool, reaching and influencing the target audience like never before. The migration of established mediums happened from print to movies, to television, and now to digital mediums. One new development in this area is Augmented Reality (AR).
An example of AR is the device "Eidos," developed by students at the Royal College of Art in London. Initially, Eidos Interactive was a video game developer and publisher, but the device "Eidos" as an AR device seems to have emerged around the early 2000s, although specific details about the exact developer or the first presentation year are not clearly stated.
The presence of interactive display screens in various places like hotels, airports, hospitals has eased the time spent at different service areas. Similarly, advancements in technology have always proved fruitful for visual designers. They are now learning to combine communication and technology to create various digital media, such as web pages, video games, animation, and motion graphics.
Design is gaining respect and recognition like never before due to the continuously evolving technology and mediums of communication. Corporations, universities, and healthcare systems are investing in integrating design thinking, creative leadership, and design centred around human needs to provide seamless service to end consumers.
As students of communication design, it is important to learn to create appealing visual images and adapt to the ever-evolving digital world. Eidos, an AR device, allows users to adjust their sight and hearing like adjusting the settings of a TV or a radio, making it a valuable tool in this digital age.
In the realm of public service announcements (PSAs), technology is being used to communicate simple yet powerful messages. For instance, a PSA campaign, created by R/GA and Mindride, aimed to showcase that everyone's core is similar and questioned the need for labels. The campaign used technology to blur gender distinctions, featuring a large X-ray installation showing only skeletal structures.
The campaign's impact lay in viewers mentally filling in the blanks and showing their implicit biases when unexpected pairs were revealed. In 2015, this advertisement film won the Emmy award for best commercial, highlighting the potential of technology in communication.
Our learning of language comes from continuous exposure to different forms of media in our culture. The power of digital medium is compelling because it reflects the force of human behaviour. Communication and medium of communication have undergone significant changes in the last decade, and it is essential to stay updated and adapt to these changes to effectively communicate in the digital age.
