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When award show memes take over the Internet
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Highly televised award ceremonies appeal to a wide range of audiences, and no matter who's watching, there's bound to be something that will captivate you. Watching your favorite actor receive an Oscar statue for his or her hard work, for instance, can be an exciting experience, especially if you've followed the star's career. With musical interludes, where popular performers take to the stage to provide an entertaining break from the inspirational speeches, and a typically high-comedy host carrying the evening forward, there's a lot in store for everyone who tunes in.
When the show is over, the fun doesn't stop. During the 2014 Oscars, for instance, host Ellen Degeneres used her smartphone to snap a picture of herself, known colloquially as a selfie, with a handful of extremely accomplished actors positioned behind her: Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Julia Roberts, Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Channing Tatum, Bradley Cooper, Jared Leto and Lupita Nyong'o were all crowded around her, smiling and waving at the camera.
The creative power of clever cropping
In keeping with one of the running gags in Degeneres' show, which was snapping pictures that were then tweeted from her @theellenshow handle, this star-studded picture was added to the collection of Oscars 2014 memories. Then, just one day later, altered images of the same picture appeared all over the Internet. According to Gizmodo, fans used their Photoshop skills to put slices of pizza in the hands of the stars, crop images of themselves into the mix, replace all of the actors' faces with surprised dog heads, and several other permutations that are all partial references to memes and other loosely related jokes that hearkened back to Degeneres' performance.
Why does it matter?
There is an overwhelming culture of meme creation on the Web. People use their design skills to enhance, alter or recreate recognizable images to develop or perpetuate a joke. For instance, Degeneres' selfie quickly became a backdrop upon which clever Photoshop users were able to weave old memes together to create new ones. The grumpy cat superimposed over Bradley Cooper's face is one example noted by The Huffington Post, as well as a version where Kevin Spacey's face replaced everyone else's.
Although these images might seem juvenile, the same skills used to create these self-indulgent pictures can be translated into other projects. By practicing your Photoshop skills in the arena of meme creation, you're contributing to a lush and thriving sub-culture of the entertainment industry and subsequently, honing your cropping, layering and flipping abilities.
The relevance of Photoshop
According to The Guardian, it didn't take long at all for Hollywood to realize that there is a huge market for meme creation. In fact, the source noted that some of the most recent elements of the Oscars appeared to be engineered for this kind of Web-based artistry. Between giving Degeneres a wide berth to host the show according to her own style and the inspirational one-liners uttered by some of the winning actors, such as Nyong'o's suggestion that all dreams are valid, there was enough material created to provide any number of images with snippets of text.
Despite the general levity of the meme culture, the usefulness of these skills should not be underrated. If you can teach yourself how to use Photoshop to contribute successfully to such a niche and specific sub-culture, just imagine what you could do with a little formal training. The American Graphics Institute offers Photoshop classes, for instance, that can show you how to take your skills to the next level.
About the author
Jennifer Smith is a user experience designer, educator and author based in Boston. She has worked in the field of user experience design for more than 15 years.She has designed websites, ecommerce sites, apps, and embedded systems. Jennifer designs solutions for mobile, desktop, and iOT devices.
Jennifer delivers UX training and UX consulting for large Fortune 100 companies, small start-ups, and independent software vendors.She has served as a Designer in Residence at Microsoft, assisting third-party app developers to improve their design solutions and create successful user experiences. She has been hired by Adobe and Microsoft to deliver training workshops to their staff, and has traveled to Asia, Europe, India, the Middle East, and across the U.S. to deliver courses and assist on UX design projects. She has extensive knowledge of modern UX Design, and worked closely with major tech companies to create educational material and deliver UX workshops to key partners globally. Jennifer works with a wide range of prototyping tools including XD, Sketch, Balsamiq, Fireworks, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Blend for Visual Studio. She also works extensively in the fields of presentation design and visual design.
Jennifer is also an expert on Photoshop, digital image editing, and photo manipulation. Having written 10 books on Photoshop, and having consulted and provided training to major media companies and businesses around the globe.
Jennifer is the author of more than 20 books on design tools and processes, including Adobe Creative Cloud for Dummies, Adobe Creative Cloud Digital Classroom, and Photoshop Digital Classroom. She has been awarded a Microsoft MVP three times for her work with user experience design in creating apps for touch, desktop, and mobile devices. Jennifer holds the CPUX-F certification from the User Experience Qualification Board and assists others in attaining this designation in leading a UX certification course at American Graphics Institute. She is a candidate for a Master’s degree in Human Factors in Information Design.