MDES, University of Cincinnati, 2011, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Design

Creating an iconic product is a designer's dream. But people won't stop there; they want to use the iconic product to reinforce their brand value. So the ultimate target is to create an iconic brand. However, when it comes to branding, we have to face the challenge of cultural differences. On the other hand, an iconic brand needs to keep its own iconic identity also called their brand gene. The brand gene can be expressed by products, services and other things. Typical examples are Apple and Motorola, the former succeeded because of its consistency on brand gene, while the latter failed because it chose the wrong gene. This master's thesis will analyze several cases studies related to iconic design, cultural branding and localization, examine approaches of creating iconic brand and provide suggestions for brand creation and cultural adaptation.

Committee: Craig Vogel MD (Committee Chair); Paul Zender MFA (Committee Member) Subjects: Design

MDES, University of Cincinnati, 2016, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Design

An icon is useless if the people viewing it cannot correctly decipher its meaning. Current design practice for icon creation involves a designer creating an icon that they think represents the intended concept and then showing it to people to see if they can determine its meaning. If they cannot, revisions will be made to try to enhance comprehension. This study tests a different technique for icon design that eliminates guesswork on the part of the designer composing an icon. Using consensus analysis techniques, it can be determined what symbols users expect to see in an icon that conveys a certain meaning—before even a rough draft of the icon is created. Once analysis of data obtained via freelisting, pilesorting, and ranking were analyzed using consensus analysis, the items that should be included in each icon examined here were determined. Icons were designed using the symbols determined through data analysis and then comprehension of those icons was tested. Results indicate that using some of the techniques of quantitative ethnography to guide icon design improves the effectiveness of the icons because they are better understood by users.

Committee: Paul Zender (Committee Chair); Todd Timney (Committee Member) Subjects: Design

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2016, Psychology/Industrial-Organizational

To promote better decisions in the workplace, organizational researchers must communicate the value of their scientific findings. Traditional statistics such as the correlation coefficient are difficult to interpret. Graphical visual aids, such as Icon arrays, have recently emerged as effective tools for simplifying probabilistic and statistical information. This dissertation examined the benefits the Icon array in communicating the validity of structured interviews. People judged the Icon array as more useful than the Binomial Effect Size Display (BESD) for communicating validity information. People were more engaged with the interactive visual aid than its static counterpart, and judged the interactive visual aid more useful. Finally, people performed better on an objective graph comprehension test when presented with an Icon array than the bar graph. The benefit of graphical displays (Icon array and bar graph), however, was moderated by individual differences in graph literacy. Bar graph and the BESD were more useful for people with high (vs. low) graph literacy. The Icon array was equally useful for people with high and low graph literacy.

Committee: Scott Highhouse Ph.D (Advisor); Richard Anderson Ph.D (Committee Member); Margaret Brooks Ph.D (Committee Member); Priscilla Coleman Ph.D (Committee Member) Subjects: Cognitive Psychology; Organizational Behavior; Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2014, Spanish and Portuguese

The rich mountain of Potosi, with its famed silver mines, has commanded the attention of Europeans, creoles (Americans of Spanish descent), and indigenous Andeans since the Spanish colonizers of Peru were made aware of its existence in 1545. Soon after its discovery, the rich mountain was represented in a variety of written and visual texts created by writers and artists from the Andes, Spain, and other parts of Europe. Independent of its physical form, in these representations the rich mountain assumed a discursive meaning, functioning as an icon that, depending on the context, represented abstract ideas of wealth, immorality, dominance, and spirituality. This dissertation brings together texts, images, and maps to discuss the multifaceted iconicity of Potosi and its cultural salience in these representations. Besides functioning as an icon that supported Spain's "official history;" a discourse that presented Spanish achievements as heroic and providential, other representations of the rich mountain supported alternative discourses regarding Spanish colonial history. To advance individual and nationalistic agendas, authors, artists, and mapmakers strove to control the meaning associated with the iconic rich mountain. My dissertation shows that for an early modern audience the mountain of Potosi was more than just a source of silver; it was also an icon that contributed to discourses negotiating issues of economy, morality, spatial and political dominance, and spiritual expression.

Committee: Lisa Voigt Dr. (Advisor); Lucia Costigan Dr. (Committee Member); Elizabeth Davis Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Art History; Cartography; Comparative Literature; Latin American History; Latin American Literature; Latin American Studies

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2007, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning : Architecture (Master of)

As a result of globalization, mass communication, and a consumer culture obsessed with the powerful yet fleeting impact of the image, a clear transformation has occurred in our sensory and perceptual experience of the world most clearly reflected in the arts and architecture. The current trend towards separating identity and function in architecture has divided the interaction that takes place between the building, the user, and the environment, leading to a renewed desire for an integration of functionalist solutions and aesthetic practices. Current problems of representation in architecture will be addressed through creating a more meaningful architectural interaction between aesthetics and function. Acting as a mediator of internal and external flows, the buildings utility and identity can become apparent, responding to both seen and unforeseen events resulting from a dialogue between program, time, and technique. The investigation will become a hermeneutic approach to design in which deeper meaning can be created through material and immaterial forces used to question the relationship between the interior and exterior. The design process reacts to external and internal stimuli, transforming the form and aesthetics through feedback between a subject and the environment and between architecture and its milieu.

Committee: Michael McInturf (Advisor) Subjects: Architecture; Architecture

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2005, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning : Architecture (Master of)

Driven to gain increasing market shares, corporations are compelled to formulate distinct public imagery. Since the advent of the high-rise typology the skyscraper has provided an architectural means to this end. The end of the 19th century saw development of the corporate headquarters building as the new power structure, conveying images of opulence and wealth through increasingly tall towers. Today, the speed and pace of our contemporary, media culture has rendered architecture a slow and antiquated mode of communication. Our lives are saturated with fast-paced, adaptable, graphic, imagery. Buildings cannot keep pace. Architecture lags behind current culture; its ideas outdated before ground is broken. The question arises, what will become the enduring symbol of the corporation? Imagery, and the creation of a pictorial language have long been driving forces of communication enterprises. Since the establishment of the Christian church, icons have conveyed a greater depth of meaning. As the manifestation and condensation of an array of ideas and principles into a single, recognizable object, icons became powerful tools of influence and control, most recently through the corporate application of branding. This corporate persona is a powerful construct, one to be vigilantly maintained, but as high-rise building can no longer keep pace with evolving corporate imagery, designing a purely iconographic image of the corporate headquarters tower is no longer a valid architectural response. Rather, imagery should be found rather than sought. This thesis seeks to establish a 21st century architectural icon for Western & Southern Financial Group by allowing the pictorial, to result from objectivity. Rather than designing an image for the corporation, a contrived process likely to prove ineffective, the project aims to promote the corporation through an architecture that is responsive to specific scales of influence: sustainability, visibility, connectivity, and employability. (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Michael McIntruf (Advisor) Subjects: Architecture

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2011, English (Arts and Sciences)

Absence of the rhetorical feminine from our Western tradition is an ideological, theoretical problem whose consequences manifest in material, practical ways that affect how we teach writing. This dissertation, the first hybrid manuscript of its kind at Ohio University, examines relationships between mythos, logos, and the eikon (icon) in light of ancient rhetorics that depict powerful feminine entities and woman rhetors engaging in public, rhetorical performativity. They suggest our rhetorical origins may be as visual as textual. But the feminine authority ancient rhetorics convey is diminished, masculinized, and resignified in the West through the social construction of masculinized L/logos. As a result, once powerful feminine rhetorics disappear from our rhetorical tradition. I question the rhetorical feminine's absence in light of images that show woman rhetors engaging in deliberative, epideictic, and forensic performativity long before Aristotle taxonomizes these terms. I argue that rhetorical and religious authorities historically entwine through masculinized L/logos and the institutionalization of what I call patri-theogony--a blend of sacred and secular patriarchal ideology that custom and laws enforce which coincides with the supposed mythos-to-logos cultural shift--that supports the inception of a masculinized rhetoric. Lasting academic consequences result: feminine authority is rendered invisible, affecting our discipline, our language, and our entire social order. For example, feminization of composition follows from masculinization of rhetoric in the structure of masculinized L/logos. Rhetorical inequity between women and men places what Robert Connors calls “feminized” writing faculty in positions of responsibility without authority. In these positions, feminized writing faculty enact what I call the trope of the schoolmarm: disempowered authority figures, “mythologized mother-teachers” separated from once powerful rhetorical feminine roots, they prac (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jennie Nelson PhD (Committee Chair); Jennie Klein PhD (Committee Member); Albert Rouzie PhD (Committee Member); Mara Holt PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Rhetoric

Master of Arts, Oberlin College, 1964, Art

The artists of the Baroque, rejecting the traditional conception of Sebastian, portray the formerly invincible saint as wounded, suffering, no longer victoriously partaking of the fruits of his glorious martyrdom, but being found and cared for by Irene, the widow of the Christian martyr Castulus. Such a change in iconography involves both a shift of the outward and visible as well as the intrinsic content of the pictorial matter. the significance of this thematic revolution has often been overlooked because it parallels the stylistic developments of the age, which, until recently, have captured more fully the imagination of art historians. Therefore, it is the purpose of this paper to deal specifically with this iconographic change which involves the portrayal of the moment when the saint is found and cared for by Irene.

Committee: Wolfgang Stechow (Advisor) Subjects: Art Education; Art History