DESIGN FOR A BETTER WORLD
SLIDE LECTURE | STUDIO EXERCISE | ONLINE DISCUSSION
E X P E R I E N C E S
LEARNING
:REFLECTIONS
:LESSON PLANS
WORKING
:SKETCHBOOKS
:PROCESS
SHOWING
:AIGA
STUDENT SHOW
:AIGA INEQUALITY MATTERS
Students will be able to look critically,
compassionately, and contextually at examples
of protest and advocacy posters from various periods and places.
WHY?
WHAT?
Protest vs. advocacy
WHEN? WHERE?
WHO?
Designer as citizen
Citizen as designer
HOW?
Illustration
Symbols
Merging
Substitution
Hijacking or culture jamming
Reference
Shock & horror
Appeal
Information
Commentary
Play on words
Irony
Humor
Students will be able to devise type/image combinations that communicate about personally meaningful causes in two formats: protest and advocacy.
As mentioned in lecture, you need to prepare for Wednesday’s studio... it is too big a project to accomplish in fifty minutes! Look through the PDF and focus on the simplicity of the protest and advocacy posters. Decide on a cause that matters to you. Find or create an image or symbol that is relevant to your cause. Feel free to scan or photocopy in order to enlarge or crop to a scale appropriate for a “poster” the size of a sheet of drawing paper (approximately 9” x 12”).
Please bring the following supplies in addition to your image: multiple sheets of white drawing paper, pencils, black pens/markers, ruler, glue stick, xacto or snap blade, and type (spec sheets from earlier studios or print-outs from the computer). Again, feel free to scan or photocopy the type spec sheets in order to enlarge.
“The “personal” is crucial now not because it stands in contradiction to globalization, because it doesn’t really. Globalization is everywhere — within and outside our skin. No, personal perspective is important because it brings the designer into design — the human being into the problem.” —Michael Schmidt
SIZE: any rectangular format on 9” x 12” white drawing paper
COLOR: black-&-white
CONTENT: both type & image (found or created)
Define your cause as protest: what are you AGAINST?
Define your cause as advocacy: what are you FOR?
Think back to the examples of protest and advocacy posters.
Nearly all of them integrated type and image so well that the message relied on both the verbal information and the visual information. Strive to achieve this.
Look at your image. What 1-3 words could you add to create a message?
Try sketching ideas for a message of protest and a message of advocacy.
Which perspective seems more effective for your cause?
Consider using these powerful devices shown in lecture:
symbols, merging, substitution, hijacking or culture jamming, reference, shock and horror, appeal, information, commentary, play on words, irony, and humor.
After you have experimented with image and word combinations from both perspectives, choose your strongest one. Now give it some formal attention.
Consider the scale, placement, and cropping of the image.
Consider the scale, placement, and typeface of the words.
Make a final version on a new piece of white drawing paper.
If you choose not to use the full 9” x 12” size, cut it down or neatly draw a border.
You may cut and glue your type and image, or you may trace them.
If you trace, consider your ilustration style.
Write about your message, your process, and the decisions you made.
Students will be able to consider, articulate, and discuss the role of values and social consciousness in design education.
“Designers are seeking to integrate values back into their working practices and a revolution is underway. Design shapes people’s thoughts and desires, their lives even. It’s so powerful and so ubiquitous that design graduates should be made to pledge to use their new-found communicative powers for the good and betterment of mankind… If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem!” —John Cranmer & Yolanda Zappaterra [Conscientious Objectives: Designing for an Ethical Message]
Go to the University Center concourse to see the Guerrilla Girls exhibition and look them up online to learn more. Do you think that their posters are effective? Do their devices and style appeal to you? Integrate your observations and opinions into discussion of the following:
As design students, do you think that you should be obligated to use your skills “for the good and betterment of mankind” as Cranmer and Zappaterra suggest? Why or why not?
If so, what type of design education would be appropriate to this goal?
Read Good Citizenship: Design as a Social and Political Force by Katherine McCoy.
Do you agree or disagree with McCoy’s ideas about how to teach values?