https://owlcation.com/humanities/How-To-Use-Chinese-Curse-Words-and-Phrases-Like-a-Native-Pro

https://www.mindful.org/what-the-brain-reveals-about-gratitude/

Gratitude is celebrated throughout philosophy and religion; recent scientific studies suggest it carries significant benefits for our mental and physical health.

philosophical treatises and religious exhortations emphasizing the importance of gratitude, along with scientific studies suggesting that gratitude can improve your sleep, enhance your romantic relationships, protect you from illness, motivate you to exercise, and boost your happiness, among many other benefits.

Research says that when people are feeling grateful and appreciative, their brain showed (more activity) in the medial prefrontal cortex, an area in the frontal lobes of the brain where the two hemispheres meet. This area of the brain is associated with understanding other people’s perspectives, empathy, and feelings of relief. This is also an area of the brain that is massively connected to the systems in the body and brain that regulate emotion and support the process of stress relief.

Data suggest that because gratitude relies on the brain networks associated with social bonding and stress relief, this may explain in part how grateful feelings lead to health benefits over time. Feeling grateful and recognizing help from others creates a more relaxed body state and allows the subsequent benefits of lowered stress to wash over us.

They did a study where they assembled a collection of these stories and transformed them into short scenarios where they shared with their participants. Each scenario was re-phrased into the second- person (eg. " you are on a wintertime deathmatch and a fellow prisoner gives you a warm coat") and presented it to the study's participants and asked them to imagine themselves in that scenario and feel, as much as possible, how they would feel if they were in the situation.

ANALYSIS:

This study intrigued me in that it was creating a method or in a way manipulating the participants to feel a certain way. I find this important because capturing people in the moment of feeling gratitude, just thinking about it, is difficult. I had never thought of this method. Now I'm considering of creating an outcome based on this idea however, I am going to also create illustrations together with text to enhance visualisation thus creating a greater impact.

OUTCOME IDEA derived from this research: create a publication/ poster/ outcome that induces gratitude through powerful stories of aid and sacrifice. I can also take it in a more modern and relatable way such as simple things to remind us to be grateful in daily life. By choosing something more relatable, I feel its easier to make people feel grateful because when the story is too great and heroic, people will disassociate and think of it as fiction and not as a real-life event, " this is not me", " this won't happen to me". I want them to think, "right... so and so did this for me". This also reminds people of 

WHY? Design decision: This is with the aim of creating a habit of feeling gratitude which helps to improve emotional and mental well being through generating activity in the area of the brain that is connected to regulating emotions and support the process of stress relief. This could be linked to my other proposed purposes of reducing stress and helping to improve depression. This could be because they feel a sense of worth because from people's judgement to help and sacrifice in their behalf which means they valued them enough to sacrifice themselves. 

This short clip was one of the headspace packages regarding letting go of stress and it is a one-minute short video that has a narrator speaking in a very slow and calm tone. This relates to my project not only to collect the knowledge of methods to reduce stress in relation to meditation and the app headspace, I am also looking at the graphics and this gives me examples of how I can improve my design. 

This clip was a short introduction to gaining an understanding of meditation and acquiring more knowledge on the subject matter. I am learning about the graphic design in relation to advertising and the topic of stress and meditation. 

" Meditation has been shown to reduce stress to improve focus and create the right conditions for healthy restful sleep. Headspace is guided meditation for everybody. " It is inclusive and can be applicable for anyone in any age, whether they are a beginner or have experienced before. 

I learn knowledge regarding meditation helping stress, which  can inform my project

These short one minute clips from Headspace gives a short introduction to me that is beneficial because I am gaining an knowledge and understanding of meditation and how it helps in elevating our emotional and mental well being. Headspace has a lot of different packaging that targets different specific things that impact our minds negatively, such as stress, sleep, and focus etc. Looking at these videos, the headspace app and website, I am able to observe their way of operating such as in their advertising of the app, graphic designs and layouts of the app, their overall ideology and mindset towards meditation. This inspires me as I don't have much understanding to meditation and I learn about if i do decide on promoting meditation as a stress relieve technique, how can i do that in the format of a graphic interface.

Headspace is a good example for me to understand how meditation and mindfulness can be promoted and explored using the outcome format of a graphics interface. It is especially relevant when we are living in a technology-driven society.

https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/sixteen-journal-issue2-publication-241117

Across the western world, the number sixteen signifies a coming of age: a numerical signifier of the transition from youth to young adulthood.

Committing to exploring “the notions of emotionality, human form and time”, Sixteen gives searingly talented established and emerging photographers a space to explore their practise.

For the second issue, the publications’s founder Xavier Encinas asked seven visual artists to “interpret what we do not want to see or feel”. Taking the maudlin theme of “pain/suffering”, photographers including Sean & Seng, Chad Pitman, Misha Taylor, Jack Davison, Solve Sundsbo, Chadwick Tyler and Ali Michael traverse their emotions across the magazine’s pages.

a platform where photographers could investigate emotionality and human condition on a philosophical level through imagery.

IDEAS:

- The future

 > how to be an adult guide? (Almost adulting by Arden Rose)

- Stress/ Workload 

 > effective stress reliever guide or methods

- Changes / Evolvement 

 > letter to pubescent/ adolescent self, essentially letter to my past self from the future about regrets..?

- Less attention to own health

 > guide to changing sleeping habits

 > skincare?

- Taboo topics

 > sexual topics

- Fears

>

INSPIRATION:

- Sixteen Journal V.2 - A World of Pain

- Black Mirror - (hypothetical further) advancement of technology and its effects on younger generation ( 00s and 90s ) (maybe a comparison?)

FORMATS/ METHODS:

- social media campaign

- publication

- posters

- 

which looks at the science of swearing. I argue (using peer reviewed science!) that swearing is both big and clever. It’s likely to have been one of the first forms of language that we developed and, since then, it’s been helping us to deal with pain, work together, manage our emotions and improve our minds.

Professor Mark Williams, former director of the Oxford Mindfulness Centre said:

"It's easy to stop noticing the world around us. It's also easy to lose touch with the way our bodies are feeling and to end up living 'in our heads' – caught up in our thoughts without stopping to notice how those thoughts are driving our emotions and behaviour,"

"Another important part of mindfulness is an awareness of our thoughts and feelings as they happen moment to moment.

"This lets us stand back from our thoughts and start to see their patterns. Gradually, we can train ourselves to notice when our thoughts are taking over and realise that thoughts are simply 'mental events' that do not have to control us."

"Awareness of this kind also helps us notice signs of stress or anxiety earlier and helps us deal with them better."

HOW TO BE MORE MINDFUL

Name thoughts and feelings

To develop an awareness of thoughts and feelings, some people find it helpful to silently name them: "Here’s the thought that I might fail that exam". Or, "This is anxiety".

Free yourself from the past and future

You can practise mindfulness anywhere, but it can be especially helpful to take a mindful approach if you realise that, for several minutes, you have been "trapped" in reliving past problems or "pre-living" future worries.

A POSITIVE PAST-PRESENT CYCLE

If we can establish an effective past present cycle where we

• Use useful past experiences to problem solve in the present
• Use present experiences to move consciously beyond the limitations of our past memories, and
• Use past memory to enrich and appreciate a present moment experience

Then these are some of the characteristics that we can say make us ‘liberated in the present moment’.

https://www.mindful.org/simple-mindful-practice-ground-gratitude/

When we have our health, a roof over our heads, and people that care about us, it makes sense that giving thanks would come naturally. Yet often we find ourselves wanting more rather than being thankful for what we have already. When we’re busy thinking about the things we’d like to be different, however, it’s easy to lose sight of the good that’s in our lives right now.

Being grateful for whats happening now can be uplifting even if the moment before we felt down.

ANALYSIS:

This article has been informative in explaining human nature and the tendency to lose sight of the good in our lives. Even when we have a lot of things to be thankful for, we tend to heighten our standards and compare with people who have it better and think about how we'd like things to be different. This 'taking for granted' syndrome is clearly related to teh phenomenon of adaption where we are highly skilled at, where we quickly 'get used to' new environments and situations.

In order to make a change, one has to accept and be understanding of the flaw before being able to create a solution for it. Learning about the flaw of human greed, allowed me to consider to which point or angle i should look at in order to get the best hypothetical results.

https://www.itsnicethat.com/features/ustwo-moodnotes-cbt-mental-health-app

www.ustwo.com

Apps for the mind use far more abstract variables, based more on intuition than conventional techniques used in regular medicine.

Now, a new app called Moodnotes is an enhanced mood journaling app that allows people to increase awareness of their moods. It uses the principles of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), often used in the medical world, to approach psychological problems. In a nutshell, CBT is a form of talking therapy that aims to help patients address certain unhealthy thinking patterns and behaviours, and is often used in the treatment of anxiety and depression.

“We wanted to create a digital tool to help people increase their awareness of their thinking habits, to better understand how such thinking affects how they feel, and to help them learn how to think in healthier ways,” says Dr. Drew Erhardt, clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at Pepperdine University and co-founder of Thriveport. 

The app works in a similar way to other digital journaling tools, and users first encounter a screen where they input how they feel using a face icon that slides up and down to become either more positive or more negative. They can then add notes about their mood and their current situation, and depending on how good or bad they feel, are led through what Ustwo calls a “thought checker tool” which helps them “unpack distressing situations.” CBT-based tools are used throughout to help identify certain thinking patterns or “traps,” and over time build up a Moodtrend graph that shows how their mood changes or forms patterns.

Taking on a scientific approach, this app aims to empower individuals to take control over their emotional health with a scientific grounding.

Scanner watch

Totally spies, tv show

I used to always watch this tv show when I was a tween, and I used to be very envious and awe-struck by the imaginative and awesome gadgets given to the spies. This source inspired my idea to create an app that deals with fear of creatures, such as dogs, insects and even people. The app is paired with a watch is similar to the watch above. It is said in the tv show that it allows to scan any object (solid or liquid form) and it is able to give you the information or store this information. 

My idea is an app that can constantly scan the surrounding area for the previously inputted data about the subject that they fear or hate, allowing the app to spot it ahead of time and immediately plan a fastest route to escape. There can be pre set possibilities of subject matters that they want to avoid, such as dogs (fear of dogs),  bees, people that they dislike.

http://www.sinemerkas.com/project/the-girl-guide/

‘The Girl Guide’ is for young girls going through puberty written by Marawa Ibrahim, a nine-times world record breaking hula-hoop circus performer.

Over 200 illustrations, photo-illustrations and props were made to represent topics from periods to bras to body hair in a playful and fun way. As the book contains 50 lessons, anecdotes and body stories by Marawa, we decided to make a human typeface out of her body. This became the identity of the cover and a few pages inside the book were typeset with it to illustrate bold quotes and make fun page numbers.