Project 1: Bring Back Bill Cunningham

Cunningham’s ‘Fashion and Style’ section of the New York Times documenting a trend in stripes.

Bill Cunningham in action.

Background Bill Cunningham was a fashion photographer for The New York Times for over 38 years. Each week, Bill could be spotted on his bicycle riding about town while photographing hundreds of examples of New York City street style. His photos were then used for his segment “Bill Cunningham on the Street” in the Fashion and Style section of the New York Times and his video segment on nytimes.com (www.nytimes.com/video/on-the-street). Through surveying and selecting photos, Bill was able to identify and share what new styles were trending weekly. However, if we view each photograph he took as a data point, what Bill was actually doing was creating and analyzing the patterns, trends and outliers of a data set. Bill would search through the range of fashions in his photos and determine the most frequently reoccurring style in order to identify a single fashion trend for that given week.

• Range - a set of different things of the same general type.

• Pattern - discernible regularity that occurs in data.

• Trend - a general direction in which something is developing or changing in data.

• Outlier - a person or thing situated away or detached from the main body or system. Project Overview Inspired by Bill Cunningham, this 2-week assignment will introduce students to the process of successful data collection, data set creation, aggregation of data and visualization. Students work in teams of 4-5 and strategically position themselves throughout one neighborhood (SOHO, Williamsburg, Meat Packing District, Midtown) in order to document, analyze, conclude and visualize which new fashions are trending for fall. The question is, can we “Bring Back Bill Cunningham” and determine the most recent trends in fashion? 8/29 Homework: Teams build a data set of primary research through the observation and

photo documentation of garments in a given neighborhood. 1) As a team, create a plan for your data collection. Ex. Are you only focusing on men’s fashion? Will accessories be included or will you just focus on garments?

2) Teams devise a plan (time of day, locations, documentation format, etc) for achieving successful data collection. Each student must position themselves on a unique street corner within their given neighborhood for one hour and document as many examples of street fashion as possible (50 photos per student). Place your 50 photos in one folder. 3) Create a contact sheet of your 50 photos. Place your photos in one folder. Double click your folder and select Icon View to view your photos within the window. Resize the window to fill your screen and resize your photo icons so that the garments are visible by adjusting the sliding bar on the bottom right of your folder window. Then take a screen capture (Command + Shift + 4 on your keyboard) of your 50 photos (25 at a time) and saves the capture as a .jpg file. Deliverables: In a word document, write your meta data of your documentation process.

• Who (your name and team neighborhood) • What (what was the focus of your data collection) • Where (street corner location where you took photos) • When (day and time) • Why (why did you choose your specific street corner) • How (your team’s plan for data collection and your personal method for

successfully capturing images) • Visually review your images, and note if any trends are beginning to stand out.

Bring your written meta data and your laptop with all of your 50 photos to class on 9/12.

9/5 ** Labor Day, No Class** Reading: The Introduction, pages 2–7 and pages 35-41 on Context in Data Points. Pinterest: Begin collecting examples of successful Infographics and Type design.

9/12 Studio: Introduction to Adobe Bridge, keyword coding and building a data set in Excel. Based on a visual review of the contact sheets, each team decides upon a consistent labeling system for their images that also allows for new categories to be added in the course of the coding process. The data is attached to each image through keywords in Adobe Bridge. Then, individual student images are compiled into one folder to build an aggregate of 200 photos (team of 4) or 250 photos (team of 5). Once completed, Adobe Bridge will numerically determine the top trends and each team will choose 1-2 trends to focus on. Based on their keyword categorization, teams transfer their image data into an Excel spreadsheet and begin to sketch possible visualization options (ex. bar graphs, bubble charts, pie charts, etc). Homework: Inspired by the formats used in the NY Times segments for Bill Cunningham, teams create their own Bill Cunningham Analysis Report in the form of an Editorial Page Layout or short Stop-motion Video. Consider how the design (color pallet, typography, layout) of the Analysis Report further supports the look and feel of your top trend and/or neighborhood. Your Team’s Analysis Report must include the following elements: • A trend-themed title (ex. “Gray is the New Black”) • Photos of your Team’s #1 Trend

o Stop-Motion Video: 8 or more photos of your #1 Trend o Editorial Page Layout: 4 or more photos of your #1 Trend

• The Meta Data of your collection process written as an entertaining short story (not a bulleted list), which appears in your Animation or Page Layout.

• A Neighborhood Map that plots the 5 photo shoot locations in your neighborhood (the map must be designed and not copied as a screen capture from Google)

• Minimum of 1 visualization (graph or chart) of your primary research showing at least 10 data points that range from your #1 trend to your outlier.

9/19 Final Critique: Teams present their Analysis Report, top trend and discuss their data collection process. Each student must speak during the presentation. In addition to presenting the editorial page layout or short stop-motion video, be prepared to discuss the summary of your data, including: top trends, patterns that you noticed in the research (ex. did certain trends appear together?) and the fashion outliers that were captured (i.e. what styles were least represented). Also consider what your fashion research and trend reveals about the demographic of your neighborhood (ex. age, income, etc).

Output: Present your team Analysis Report in Bill Cunningham style as a mock NY Times page layout or nytimes.com stop-motion animation. Page Layout Stop Motion Animation Illustrator or Photoshop Design area 10 x 16 inches Print at 11 x 17 inches (tabloid) 300 dpi, CMYK color Saved as PDF for presentation Ex: Search “Bill Cunningham nytimes”

Adobe Premier, Photoshop or iMovie 1 minute or less Short stop-motion animation with narration/sound Exported as .mov or .MP4 Ex: http://www.nytimes.com/video/on-the-street/

Naming Conventions for file collection: Before class, save all team members’ files within one folder on a flash drive. Name the folder your team’s neighborhood. • Meta Data: LastName_FirstName_metadata.docx • Two Contact Sheets: LastName_FirstName_contact_1.jpg,

LastName_FirstName_contact_2.jpg • Team Analysis Report: Team_Report.pdf or .mov or .mp4

 Example Analysis Report