Do You Speak Visual?

The main reason I wanted my parents to get iPhones was to introduce them to emojis. Nothing quite compares to that moment of enlightenment when you are virtually gifted with another language by the powers of Apple. It's like watching a cat with a ball of string, or a baby fascinated by a pushable button. Recently, to my delight, my mum unlocked that colourful bank of alternative communication, and it was beautiful, although she does mainly focus on the flower selection. I say give it time, for the iPhone now presents endless possibilities - why communicate in standard English when a picture speaks a thousand words? One of my university housemates loves emojis so much she even has an emoji t-shirt. I asked her what the big deal was, and she said this: 

"I love the joy of communicating with a language that is both totally absurd and universal. Sometimes there are situations in life that can only ever be expressed by a pile of poo with a smiling face on it." Harriet Henry, voice of a generation. But that's the thing isn't it, that no matter what language you speak you can appreciate the meaning of an image? Emojis may be a trivial example, but they're a relevant one when thinking about how much the world is employing a new visual dictionary. What pictures you put out there say a lot about who you are as a person.
When Facebook brought in the cover photo, a lot of people saw it as a chance to express themselves, make a statement, promote events with an advertising banner or just put lots of fluffy rainbow animals on their profile. It's always been cool to be creative and those who actually physically make and create are hailed as a kind of 21st century ideal, only now it's easy as pi for the artistically inept to appear creative too. Everyone can edit their own mediocre photography, or simply create a strong statement through the imagery they adopt from a professional. The language of visual can, in this sense, be a deceitful and limited one. Instagram is huge, Pinterest too, and blogs have become perhaps even more widely read than magazines. Everyone panicked that the digital age would be the end of print but beautiful editorials are still alive and kicking and what coffee table books you lay out in your sitting room still state your creative inclinations as much as the blogs you follow. Blogs become books, books become blogs; the shift is that print can spread (excuse the pun) a lot faster, be shared quicker and the boundaries of the page are quite literally being stretched.
Take Because Magazine, an innovative new publication that arrives in your hands in print form and then requires the reader to use the Fashion Scan app to bring its pages to life. You simply hold your smart phone over the page, and a video will pop up, or some commentary from the article's editor. You can shop the products in the shoots directly from your phone, and even use the app to scan any fashion ads or billboards to discover extra content. Is this the future of print? If it is I must say I could come around. As editor-in-chief Caroline Issa says, the worlds of print and digital shouldn't be in a tug of war, we shouldn't feel one is more intellectual than the other. They can be "in one package" that "optimises what each medium can offer us."
The world of business if getting in on this too. In a similar way, brands are using scanning apps to enhance their marketing and advertising campaigns. No longer is a market researcher with a clipboard the only way to gain insight. Instead of having to create powerful advertising images from data, it can now all begin from an image. In his article for the Times, James Dean talks about the US company Ditto Labs, which has developed image recognition software to pick up logos and brand names in people's social media snaps. The technology allows marketeers to assess the sentiment or emotion attached to their brand through analysing the actions and facial expressions captured alongside it in a photo. One amusing stat is that 13% of people wearing visible Adidas logos were also interested in Justin Bieber. Aww, the young and chavvy youth of today.
This technology all sounds very clever and futuristic. It also seems intrusive if it's targeting tweeny boppers. On the other hand, I can't help admitting that if we are willing to express and present ourselves in the medium of surface imagery, show off the latest brand to our followers and filter ourselves into a better picture, then perhaps we cannot complain if we are also judged by it personally and commercially. Visual language is all at once a brilliant window of creative opportunity and a form of self-imposed social labelling. The question is, do you speak visual? And if you don't, do you want to? Some couldn't care less, some have a slight flare for it, some manipulate it and some people are downright fluent. However else you choose to express yourself, you can't deny you understand visual power, because branding is inescapable...unless you live in outer Mongolia without wifi.

Picture 1 - The Writing

Picture 2 - My recently used emojis. Read into it what you will. 

Facebook Me?

The other day, sitting with housemates in our usual post-supper-girly-gossip stupor at the kitchen table, I uttered the phrase, "sometimes I just want to take my whole Instagram down and start again." I was understandably laughed at, and then my housemate tweeted it. Then, like every other night in, I probably went up to my room and vegged out by scrolling through Facebook, and even after shutting down my computer allowed myself a little scroll through Instagram on my phone before turning my light out, when really I should have been reading one of the three books a week my degree puts upon me. Perhaps my self-conscious admission was sub-consciously post-modern due to the contemporary literature module I'm currently taking, but more likely it was due to the increasing pressure we all feel to make our lives interesting enough for constant social media consumption. In fact, I know that's why I said it. 

Imagine a life without Facebook and all the other various social networks? In my head it doesn't seem so bad, but then how would I remember people's birthdays? How would I get sent invites to things? How would I stalk people when I want to procrastinate? Without Instagram, how could I legitimately take selfies? How could I snoop on celebrities and see catwalk shows as they happen? Would I have to eat my perfect salad without photographing it? How would the world go round?
I think that this social media induced insecurity is a very new, but alarmingly prevalent, side affect of a generation where technology is developing faster than my nails grow. Yes it's great that I can keep in touch with everyone all the time, but I don't always want to keep in touch with everyone all the time. Also, when I'm ensconced in the library 9-7 every day tackling essays, I don't want to see how much fun everyone else is having, or how great they're looking when I'm eating an entire chocolate orange, slumped at my desk as the Asian next to me gives me withering looks. I have begun to realise that Facebook can do a lot more harm than good, and I'm ever so glad I didn't have to grow up with it any earlier than the young enough age of 16, when at the grand old age of 21 it still has the ability to make me fret. I think anyone who says it doesn't make life more of a performance is lying. Social media has even changed the way relationships work. No longer do boys have to pluck up the courage to call you, a seemingly terrible ordeal, first they must add you as a friend, then you might use Facebook chat, then you might start texting, and only when you've learnt to get on through satellite communication might you have a REAL conversation. In some cases, you can sleep with someone and not even have spoken to them on the phone, although obviously you would have had face to face contact (one would hope).
According to Facebook, I have 669 friends. I don't think I could even count more than around 60 true friends and family who's lives I really care about if you pinned me down right here and now. OH and I've just spent about 10 minutes dithering on Facebook instead of writing this post! I'm keenly aware that this is beginning to sound like a rant and not an article, but I am genuinely fascinated by the power Mark Zuckerberg holds over us all, and am curious as to when Facebook will become naff and 'yesterday'. If I still have Facebook in five years, people will only have to press the left arrow key on my photos to see a picture of me that was taken a decade before. Is that not a sobering thought? Perhaps in five years we won't even be talking to each other any more, only iMessaging.
Social media is a hugely successful part of expanding businesses, spreading awareness for pretty much any project, and raising the profiles of charity campaigns. Only the other day it was responsible for bringing to light the travesties of Pussy Riot activities at Sochi. It also (tragically) is what keeps me up to date with most of the news. Since having Twitter I've actually become more informed, as before I never made the proactive decision to buy a paper or subscribe to The Week like my more savvy friends (I'd rather spend the money on shoes). Social media is also going to allow me to share this blog with people, in which case I'll be promoting myself just as much as the next person. It's a slightly scary/hopeful thought (for when I graduate) that people are paid to do social media, it's become that much of an art form. I even listed various social media sites under 'Technical Skills' on my C.V.
I think that is where my issue lies. No longer is social media a 'platform', whatever that phrase has come to mean, for communication. It's a theatre stage, or more appropriately a cinema screen, upon which people can deliberately act out their apparently glittering lives. Even if we do live fairly ordinary lives, and hey most of us do at least some of the time, we still make choices as to what we advertise through Instagram/Facebook/Tumblr....the list is endless. I can't count the number of times I've hovered over deactivating my account in recent weeks, receiving a 'neknomination' almost pushed me over the edge....and yet I come back every time. I'm as addicted to my online alter-ego and the many avenues it takes me down as I am to Coca-Cola. And I have to admit that the internet allows me to indulge endlessly in my 'passion-for-fashion' (cringe). But I wish I had the power to resist, and the self-assurance to not care, and that I could be so alternative I didn't have Facebook and didn't look at my iPhone every 5 minutes. But I am only human, and as the world gets less so, I expect I'll be along for the ride. Now excuse me while I go and tweet myself to sleep.

MØ - Say You'll Be There (Spice Girls Cover)

(Defeat: I would not have heard this fantastic Spice Girls tribute if it weren't for Facebook, and now I have to share it).