Design I Like: “How good design can effectively camouflage bad music”

I remember when Lady Gaga came out with “Just Dance,” (barely a year ago); It sounded like many other female vocalists on radio Disney that come and go – I couldn’t put my finger on who it was, but the music was predictable and uninteresting - so I dropped it. The music video looked like it was shot in Urban Outfitters, so I again, didn't take much notice.

Since a year has passed, and queens across the city are calling her "legendary" as if she could be Grace Jones without batting an eye, I am intrigued by the visual impact and the engineering of her presence as an entertainer when a plethora of lingerie is paired with music that is lyrically safe and simple, if not offensive in its arbitrary nonsense.


Release date: April 2008
Initial impact


Released Date: January 2004


Release date: September 2009

I can say that while she catches up to European/Alexander Mcqueen/Balmain and Bjork pop culture and imagry - what has been hot and growing visually for the past 5 or so years, she is using it to brand herself and design herself as a performer. These images are getting old for me but just becoming in style to the next pop icon.

The use of sexual and American cultural music video visual cues to intrigue and brand are most apparent in Beyonce's new video featuring Lady Gaga: “Video Phone.” The lyrics are on crutches, pathetically saying “You say you like my bag and the color of my nails/You can see that I got it goin' on.” - pretty typical of a boring love affair with capitalism.



While she robotically dances to her melody lacking “Video Phone” song, the cold moves and scowls Beyonce serves, separates the viewer from potential connection or intimacy and makes what could be sexual (her breasts and crotch pumping) into something flat, bossy, and mildly pornographic. Her outfits are amazing - the colors fantastic - but the overall impact empty - even bewildering.

Again, I don’t like this design as much as I am drawn to it as a visual taste maker dominating the pop music scene - POP ie: the loudest voice, role model, and music industry influence (of the moment) - threatening every day the extinction of substantive musical artists.

Beyonce’s “Video Phone” lyrics go on to say "Tape me on your video phone/I can handle you”; The next visual step, after Beyonce has flattened herself to a video vixen on a dude’s cell phone, is to turn around and dominate him with guns. The majority of the video is of Beyonce with guns, giving a violent visual image paired with her body's sexuality - designed to make viewers turned on and violent, a great psychological space if you are meeting a shorty in the club or going off to war.













The over all effect is disturbing. I think these girls like to disturb and alienate and dominate after they have had to roll around and flex their signature pop looks and lingerie stylings for their male(?) fans.

As design in architecture, art, fashion and music [videos] continues to evolve, visual influence on what consumers will support is especially powerful as seen in the building of Lady Gaga’s marketed image and her continued success. Beyonce and Lady Gaga’s music is less about the song’s experience – if it gives you chills or tells a story when you listen – and more of a thing to listen to with your eyes.

What I See: "Kandahar"

This weekend I had the pleasure of watching “Kandahar” (2001), a beautifully shot film starring Nelofer Pazira, as Nafas, based on her true life story of returning to Afghanistan to find her sister 10 years later, after she had fled to the United States in 1989 during the Soviet Union’s occupation and the mujahideen’s rebel take over.


The film opens with a view from a hand held camera in a helicopter following the rich, red, jagged mountain tops of Afghanistan, and the camera’s movement mimics the jaggedness of these peaks. The motion is not shaky as much as it lends itself to simulating the experience of walking along the mountains from a bird’s eye view.

Immediately thereafter, the camera’s gaze (positioned from the helicopter, and then from the ground) smoothly and slowly tilts down – following white parachutes – falling from the sky against a light blue sky as women’s voices fill the landscape with a song. The opening is simple and poetic, the significance of the parachutes is not clear, but the transition from mountains to windy dessert is intriguing with the simple equipment the director chooses.

The camera, again hand held, walks through crowds of little school girls, visually establishing the residents of rural Kabul, walking through the crowd shooting straight on, with close ups of each child’s face. The shear volume of people is overwhelming, perhaps touching on a westerner's point of view of Afghanistan as a world a part, a group of unknown peoples. The view swiftly cuts to a walking pan of close up shots of their faces, so gorgeous and unique, making for an intimate feeling and revelation of each child’s individuality. The removed feeling, the irresponsibility that many post 9/11 westerns may have, is effectively replaced by this visual technique.




In contrast, we are introduced to the young boys of Afghanistan - a walking pan across the back of their heads – mimicking the pan of the young girls’ school lines from the previous scene, yet the young men are all in white hats chanting scripture, and we do not get to initially know them by their faces, rather a distant and anonymous symbol of scholarship and a future military arm.



When we do see a young man’s face, the teacher has shouted “silence” - the chanting is broken and we cut to a medium shot of a boy’s head obediently raising up to recite the attributes of a Kalashnikov or “semi automatic weapon, with gunpowder and repeat. It kills the living and destroys those already dead.”



The visual hints, and absence of narration speak volumes to generations raised in war and spiritual devotion. The clever compound of visuals of empty landscapes and children's roles, speak clearly of isolation and the roots of a misunderstood culture with dignity and urgency for peace.


In this simply shot part-memoir, part-drama, there are two other effective camera choices that lend to the visual story.
A wide depth of field captures in the foreground burkha covered, prayer wailing women around a pile of rocks that appears to be a grave, while simultaneously along the horizon, men are fiercely digging the earth to bury another community member lost. The women’s rocking parallels the men’s raising of their shovels, as separated by gender but connected by death.




As Nalas travels toward Kandahar, she visits a camp of men with blown off limbs from the surrounding land mines (a common problem). A great wind is felt, the men begin running with their crutches and the image of the white parachutes return, whose significance is revealed as the viewers and men draw closer realizing that the white parachutes are artificial legs courteously of the Red Cross. The closure of the film's opening scenes turned what was once beautiful and mysterious into a harsh reality and works really well in surprising the audience with emotion.







The final visual choice is a meditative tie of the people and the land, by a perfectly divided into thirds, wide shot that zooms in, maintaining the thirds ratio as Nalas' traveling group walks along the desert’s horizon.











I enjoyed “Kandahar” as a powerful visual invitation to explore other countries’ communities and sympathize with them as fellow humans undoubtedly deserving a life of understanding and peace.