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Catalogue

Tamara LewisGraphic Media DesignYear One: Group CCTS Tutor: Adriana Eysler

ContentLecture One First Things First

Lecture TwoHolding Text: (Un)Creative Writing in the Digital Age

Lecture ThreeModernistic Graphic Design Principles:Fashion Promotion (Kay’s)

Lecture FourTypography and Communication

Lecture FiveMemory of Lines

Lecture SixBleached Dreams and Troubling Places

Lecture SevenPose! That’s not me!

Lecture Eight Left Brain, Right Brain, Right Shame!

Lecture NineLanguage as Material: Materiality and Method

Lecture TenThe Author

EssayThe revolution will be visualised: What can art and design contribute to social or political movements?

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irst Things First ‘First things first’ is a design manifesto for the social responsibilities of a designer. Graphic design began as a design practice in the late 19th century, along with the Industrial Revolution, which brought mass production and work opportunities for designers. The need for advertising and branding of mass products put designers in a situation where they had to produce fast outcomes. Making design a part of the production line not an art form. This prompted the question ‘what is the role of the designer?’ and the need for a design manifesto.

The ‘Arts and Crafts Movement’ started to respond to the question; what is the role of the designer? The movement strongly believed that their products were built carefully and beautifully. They displayed the quality and values of the craft.

The movement celebrated craft based work; hand-made and decorative objects that they felt connected with the owner. The craft movement was against having mass-produced and machine-made products because they were replacing the way of working with newer and faster products.

If you compare this approach with a movement that appeared at this time; The Bauhaus, takes the role of designers and turns them into something the craft movement didn’t approve of.

Bauhaus was a design school in Germany in the 1920s that taught its’ students that mass production was critical. They wanted to find a way towards industrialisation and keep design effective, creative and modern, as well as being useful and

Lecture One

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affordable. They were interested in producing aesthetically and functionally designed objects for everyone. Bauhaus was a place for creative people of different skills that worked together. The school believed design had a role and a way of enhancing society.

In 1964 Ken Garland’s manifesto ‘first things first’ appeared. ‘Acknowledging the complicity and exploitation of graphic designers in and by the machine of advertising and the empty drive of consumer culture, Garland called for resistance. His manifesto provoked serious and critical thought about the role that graphic designers played in the culture at large.’ (A.Eylser, no date).

The lecture was called creative writing through (un)creative writing. The concept was set out by Kenneth Goldsmith. His idea is to take a manufactured object and then reassign the meaning of it. This was built on ‘Defamiliarisation’, which is the technique of showing common things in an unusual or unfamiliar way.

Goldsmith says that in the age of the Internet with unlimited data we have “enough material from which to build new pieces; and or to re-assign meaning. In artistic terms creative writing is decades behind art or music, where the avant garde entered the mainstream years ago, with ready-mades and sampling.”

In essence he is saying nothing is off limits. The Internet is a resource that should be used to create. If its on the internet and you can change it or recreate it or even make something completely new then that is your work. If its on the internet its fair game, not plagiarism. This isn’t a new art movement; it stems from the Dada movement which is reconstructing newspaper articles, song lyrics and artwork to create something new. It is just moving that movement into modern times to keep up with the ever changing way people communicate. David Bowie did it with his song lyrics and now Austin Kleon does it with his ‘black out’ poems.

Lecture Two

(Un)Creative Writing in the Digital Age

Holding Text:

I tried to create my own from a range of comments on BuzzFeed articles:

I want my 10 minutes back for reading this bullshitIt took you 10 minutesHorrifyingHorrifyingly awesome, you meanSo... I don't even know who they... let alone trying to work out why this is newsI really don't like the way some people say "muZlemsHow should they say it?muSlimsWhat is up with those people?!?!

The main focus of the lecture was on Kays Fashion Catalogue. We looked at fashion, persuasion, taste and the consumer. We were told about four points to look at within these categories. Good advertising, the way the read is addressed and positioned (theories based on commodity aesthetics), adverts are a social mirror thought by Roland Marchand and the commitment to material.

The first point we looked into was consumer culture, the culture of self-image that has emerged. This is due to the increase of leisure time as a society. We have to enjoy our time and spend money. This will be spent on going out and buying things, we have become a narcissistic culture. We are all inner focused and need to feel approval from others around us.

We are encouraged to feel critical of ourselves though cultural consumerism making us more unhappy and craving approval even more from our peers.

This links into fashion with our health as well, we are thought that being healthy means you have a good body and fashion enhances the way we look. As well as telling us what to wear and how to dress this plays to our consumerism culture by providing new and modern clothing.

Using advertising adds to our emotional weight of consumer culture. Advertising creates a celebrity culture and gives people an ideal and unreasonable expectation of how they should be. Increasing our narcissistic culture in trying to be something we

Lecture Three

Fashion Promotion (Kays)

Modernistic Graphic Design Principles:

are not. Advertising started using more visuals then text to show you what you want to be and how you think you should look.

Originally there was more text then imagery explaining the product. Now you are more likely to have a large picture of the product in its ideal location, e.g. it could be a skirt on a tall and slim model or a brand new kitchen appliance in a new and modern kitchen.

This leads us on to advertising vs. suggestion; the differences between pre and post consumer culture are vast. This links to Saxon Mills. The idea in advertising is ‘must haves’ are in full visual persuasion in many ways, whether it is an individual copying something, for example typography, illustration or the layout of a magazine.

This lecture focused on the idea of Typography and Communication. We first looked at what typography is and then went on to why we use typography. We looked at ‘The Grand Design’ by Robert Bringhurst. The book looks at the overall role of typography in graphic design, how they link and the best way to use type as a designer. The key thing I learnt was that typography needs to be appropriate to its context. Not only is it used for making something more legible but it can also convey the feeling or atmosphere of the text itself. Having said this, I find it very difficult to see what he is teaching, being taken on in his own writing style.

They text isn’t inviting and the chosen type, in my opinion, makes it harder to read. The opposite of what you would want as a typographer.

Typography is linked to the invention of printed type. Before the mid 15th century, there was only calligraphy and script making typography a newer art form. The definition of typography according to Gerrit Noordzi, is “writing with prefabricated letters”, but the Oxford English Dictionary tells us that typography is “The art or practice of printing”. However neither of these definitions mentions the process or its origin (printing of letter forms or type). I think this is not accurate enough after having had this lecture and feel that it should be defined more clearly as a print making process as that is the root of typography.

Lecture Four

ypography and Communication

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What is typography?

• It is a craft that links words with its meaning visually. The printed page is the craft and process of composing type and printing form.

• Only practice with pre formed letters, creating letter shapes but it doesn’t offer a repeatable system of setting them out.

Typography exists to honour content?

• The typography needs to be appropriate to the content.

• Respect the content and do it justice with the typography.

In this lecture we looked at the memory of lines and how lines connect everything in life. There are many different types of lines. Examples include a straight line, a wavy line, a queue of people, heart monitor, landscape, a skyline and the lines on your hand such as your life line or wrinkles.

Another example of lines throughout life are cave paintings, like the ones in France. They were created for recording, memory, expression or claiming something. A theory about cave paintings is that they were created by people in a trance’ or by ‘witch doctors’ predicting something or expressing a vision.

As part of the lecture we split into groups and considered the different lines we encounter everyday. This is a photo of our outcome.

Lecture Five

emory of LinesM

This lecture was entitled ‘Bleached Dreams - Troubling Places’. It revolved around the idea of simulation; to fake something or create a copy of something. It could be either a NASA flight simulator to train pilots and help them adjust to environments or creating video games.

From these two ‘normal’ or ‘safe’ situations a physiological impact is created and can be placed into daily life. It could be a shopping centre that doesn’t have clocks around the building to try and make you lose track of time and how long you have

been there. A more extreme example is Project Syria, which was build by the University Southern California interactive media lab. A virtual reality of the war was created as a way of showing what is happening for documentary purposes.

Another extreme is Google Glass; you wear glasses and gloves and are shown a virtual reality. You can then interact with it using your hands as if you are there. This poses the question; if the image you see is real and the movements you make are real and affect the image… Is it real?

leached Dreams and Troubling Places

Lecture Six

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I find myself asking: If people are spending a large amount of time in a simulated place, does that become their reality? What defines reality? And if we spend more time in a simulated place than in reality, does reality become ‘fake’ and the simulated place become our new reality?

This lecture was on photography and its history. How the content of a photograph will make the viewer feel or understand the seen. We were shown the first photograph to be taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. It was taken with a camera obsura in the early 1800s. From this method the pin-hole camera was developed. The pin hole camera is a box that is completely sealed so no light can enter it apart from a very small hole (a pin hole). When the light is let through the hole into the box, the scene will be reflected on to the back of the box, upside down. On the back of the box where the scene is reflected a film will be placed so as to develop the photograph. Image by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce; first photograph.

After discussing if this really was the first photo to be taken, and what should be classed as a photo or a printing method, we were shown this photography taken by David Burnett. We were told that the people were waiting for a rare species of bird to appear. We had no reason not to believe our lecturer, Dr Mark Ingham, so those of us who haven’t seen it before believed him. Thinking there is a large group of people gathered all looking in the same direction and pointing excitedly. This could be the case.

We later found out that it is this actually a crowd waiting for the launch of Apollo 11 in 1996. Both

Lecture Seven

That’s not me! OSE! P

are plausible. This shows that you can caption a picture with anything you like and create a story. If it looks possible then it will be believed making the content of the photograph less important then the understanding of the context and information around it.

Left Brain, Right Brain, Right Shame was the title of this lecture. It wasn’t just about the differences between the two sides of the brain but on how they work together and how they affect human behaviours. The left side of the brain is analytical, logical and organised. The right side is more creative, imaginative and visual. It looks at the big picture, the overall impact of something instead of the initial impact.

We learnt that Iain McGilchrist (2009) argues that “The left and right hemispheres of the brain are distinct and that the right hemisphere is not only more creative but the most important or primary.

He argues that in cultural terms, it has been overtaken in the West by the left hemisphere in a reversal of the proper order of things.”

Left Brain, Right Brain, Right Shame!

Lecture Eight

Despite the right brain being more important according to Iain McGilchrist people see it as the less useful side or less academic side, which is what brings in right brain shame. If you are ‘right brained’ you are more creative or imaginative, meaning you are less likely to have an academic profession, which is looked down upon in Western society.

This lecture was linked to a previous lecture called (un)creative writing. We continued the discussion and talked about language as material. The class felt more like a workshop than a lecture; we talked about different ways of creating a work from language and made our own.

I made a piece of work using a blackout technique. This involved taking an existing piece of writing and crossing out sections to form new sentences and phrases until you have a completely different piece of writing.

Lecture Nine

Materiality and Method

Language as Material:

In this lecture we were asked if a designer could be a producer. Media has dictated the approach to text, authorship and artists. An artists task must not be purely visual; they should be in control of the content as well as the presentation of work.

This is a Marx concept; taking ownership of the production. The artist or designer should become in control of technology and the content of the project, not just the visual aspect of it. With this in mind we were told about two companies that have taken on this thought.

Lecture Ten

he Author T

‘Dear Lulu’ was set up by James Goggin who is an expert of print. He held a two day workshop with a group of students to integrate the process of printing on demand. This was to show students the full process of creating something. They were in control of the whole production and not just the visual result.

Another artist who has taken this on board is Daniel Eatock who created ‘indexhibit’ which is a site for artists to find each other for collaboration projects and to help people create work from other peoples work that has been shared.

Essay Question

What can art and design contribute to social or political movements?

The revolution will be visualised:

I will be looking at how artwork for a political movement is created, how an image becomes entwined into a movement and why it is important to the movement. The power of design is something I am interested in. How it can take something, an idea, and turn it in to force. It helps gather peoples interests, aids them to see an idea or understand it better. A visual poster, in my opinion, will be more compelling than a typographic one. It is easier to see and understand at a glance, making the point of view more understandable. Design can take an idea and turn it into something powerful. I want to find out how this can be used in a real situation as well as whether its contribution is always a positive one.

I will also be looking into how artwork can be a part of a movement, how it can send a message to people; whether it is a positive one, empowering or a warning to a community. Artwork can unite a group. It is giving you a symbol much like an organisation having a logo. It is something that separates you from the wider community and gives you or your group a united front. To help me achieve this I will be looking into two activist movements and what propaganda really is as well as the affect of it on society.

I have been looking at an article called Visualizing a Revolution: Emory Douglas and The Black Panther Newspaper (Emory Douglas: The Black Panther Party and Revolutionary Art, n.d.) The section I found most interesting was when I learnt that Emory Douglas solely created and maintained the visual identity of the group. He created the posters, newspapers and the production of it for the Black Panther Party. The campaign was hugely visual and people could see and relate to the artwork that was being produced.

When the campaign was taking place, everyone was educated to different levels. This means that not everyone would have been reading to the same level. Therefore not everyone would be able to read passages of information or essays on what the Black Panther Party where doing. The Party wanted everyone to understand and relate to their movement regardless of their background. This is where Emory Douglas came in to his own in designing the artwork for the movement. He wanted the images that he created to tell a story so people understood it immediately. People generally skim an article and look at the images, so having good artwork to support their activist movement was key.

Emory Douglas’s style was purposely not commercial, despite having been trained in commercial design at college (“The revolutionary art of Emory Douglas, Black

Panther,” n.d.) His artwork was personal. It was his style; what he liked and felt was appropriate. He particularly liked wood cut printing and carving so he used this look as inspiration. He couldn’t produce prints every day for the newspapers as it took too long so instead developed a style that was similar, using pens, ink, brushes and markers. ((Douglas, n.d.) Fig.1.page 29) The most important thing was that the newspaper was exposed to the public as much as possible. The newspaper was aimed at people who had been “oppressed and locked out of the system” (Emory Douglas: The Black Panther Party and Revolutionary Art, n.d.) The paper had to connect with them and be a reflection of their desires as well as reinforce their thinking and ideals. Telling their story from their perceptive. I feel that this approach to activist artwork was and still is important.

I believe that it played a huge part in getting the Black Panther Parties message across to the wider public. As well as advertising their aim to people who may not have been aware of their efforts and aims in other parts of the country, these people became their supporters. Without support they could not have achieved their objective.

I have also looked at an activist newspaper. It is called Occupied Times and is a current newspaper written and produced in London by the Occupy Movement. Its aim is to empower everyday people and it is considered an anti-establishment newspaper. Its’ ethos is that it is has not been corrupted and speaks the truth without any governmental influences. The Occupied Times is completely independent and self funded with articles and photography being donated by activists around the world. (“The Occupied Times About,” n.d.)

As well as being a space for free speech for all kinds of activists, making it a broad newspaper compared to the Black Panther Parties newspaper, there have been articles on funds to help small or unknown groups of people. Examples include lesbian immigration support or activist creatives, such as theatre groups trying to hold events or showcasing anti-establishment events. It also features mental health support and events along with upcoming protests. (“The Occupied Times,” n.d.)

The viewpoint of the paper is to try and achieve a different social structure within society. I get the impression that it feels disenfranchised, that the ’peoples’ vote is pointless and not being heard. The paper is trying to influence people and I feel that the theme of it is ‘we are against...’(insert something anti-establishment), and that is the key purpose to the paper: to overthrow society.

If I compare The Occupied Times to Emory Douglas and his work with the Black Panther Party, I feel that it is less important. I think that the Black Panther Party had a more important cause. This is not just from looking into history but because the newspaper had one aim and one need; to get their message across. I don’t feel that The Occupied Times has that urgency or a very strong message. They have an aim and a purpose but I find it too generalised. It doesn’t feel like a need or a cause in the same way that the Black Panther Party Movement did.

This could be down to design. Mostly one person that had creative freedom created the design for The Black Panther Party Movement. They produced artwork in their style that had been influenced by people they admired; whereas The Occupied Times is alot more commercial. ((Laranjo, 2014) Fig.2.page 29) In the latest issue, The Occupied Times has used the cut and paste method. That is recognisable as protest artwork; it has been computer generated on Photoshop. It gives the impression of trying to be anti-propaganda and anti-establishment in its content, but is commercial in its look.

All movements of this type are anti propaganda because they are trying to change the majoritie’s view. The groups are a minority trying to change the way society view something. That is why the movement is a political or social one. It is a group of people sharing their opinion and trying to influence others to the same way of thinking. In fact it is still propaganda in this sense, in that everything is biased towards something. In this case it is biased towards the group’s idea, making it not propaganda in their eyes. The artwork is to get people’s attention and to try and get a following with their idea. That being said, there is no set style to a protest or social movement’s artwork. It just has to have passion and an energetic feel to it, as if it is rushed and urgent. It needs to feel important and intuitive to people. The fact that they are trying to engage people and try and persuade them to their way of thinking makes it propaganda. The definition of propaganda from business dictionary is “A message designed to persuade its intended audience to think and behave in a certain manner”. (“business dictionary,” n.d.)This is exactly what both groups are trying to achieve.

Comparing The Black Panther Party and The Occupied Times we see that the Black Panther Party is more focused on achieving one thing; their goal. It is not as broad in its topics or aims as The Occupied Times. The Occupied Times has a rushed feel to it because it used a cut and paste look to the front-page artwork of this month’s issue. It is almost looking back to a time before people used computers to generate most artwork and instead created it by hand.

I think The Occupied Times does this to enforce the urgency to the cause of the newspaper. The cut and paste method along with its poignant artwork throughout the newspaper makes it look important and needed. The artwork reinforces the importance of the paper. I think this is very important to the paper especially because it does not have a set cause or group for it. It is a general activist movement newspaper that I feel is more informative and educational than anything else.

However The Black Panther Party was active from the 1960s until 1979 when the group was shut down by the F.B.I. It was closed because the American Government considered the group to be a threat to society. If we take into consideration the time period when the newspaper was created and active, there are going to be a few differences in how it was produced. Firstly the printing methods were very different to how The Occupied Times is created. It was created by hand and looked more artistic as well as being less commercial. It had a strong graphic design style to it as well as being hand drawn and printed with offset printing and a duplicator machine.

In conclusion I feel that art and design has a very important role in social and political movements. I think that the role Emory Douglas played within the Black Panther Party was vastly important, not just as a member of the group but as the designer and editor for the newspapers that they produced. It was part of the reason that the F.B.I. got involved and shut the party down. Its ideas and beliefs were getting out to the general public and making the F.B.I. feel as if they were a threat to society. The design of the posters and newspaper held a huge part in sending The Black Panthers Party’s message out to the public. This is particularly true when the campaign was taking place. Not everyone was educated to the same level, meaning that not everyone reading the paper would be able to read large sections of text and essays to try and persuade them to believe in The Black Panther Party’s ethos. This demonstrates that the artwork was that much more important and vital to the group, just as the art work for The Occupied Times is important to the newspaper they print. I feel that its cause is not as important compered to the Black Panther Party, but the artwork is just as necessary in trying to persuade the public to believe in their ethos.

Fig.1. Emory Douglas, poster from The Black Panther, (November 8, 1969)

Fig.2. Occupied Times, Madness, Francisco Laranjo (March 2, 2014)

business dictionary, n.d.

Douglas, Emory, poster from The Black Panther. November 8, 1969, offset lithograph

Emory Douglas: The Black Panther Party and Revolutionary Art, n.d.

Laranjo, F., 2014. Occupied Times – Madness.

The Occupied Times, n.d.

The Occupied Times About [WWW Document], n.d. URL http://theoccupiedtimes.org/?page_id=1419

The revolutionary art of Emory Douglas, Black Panther, n.d.

Reference List

List of Illustrations

Fig 1. Douglas, Emory, poster from The Black Panther. November 8, 1969, offset lithograph

Fig 2. Laranjo, F., March 2, 2014. Occupied Times, Madness.

Acevedo-Yates, C., n.d. considering activist art in the age of occupations.

Art Activism [WWW Document], 1997. . Soc. Mov. Cult. URL http://culturalpolitics.net/social_movements/art

Borderless [WWW Document], n.d. URL http://www.grad-london.com/whatson/borderlands/

business dictionary, n.d.

Cascone, S., 2015. Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Awards $400,000 in Artist as Activist Grants.

Douglas, Emory, poster from The Black Panther. November 8, 1969, offset lithograph

Duncombe, S., Lambert, S., 2013. Activist Art: Does it Work?

Emory Douglas: The Black Panther Party and Revolutionary Art, n.d.

Fight the power, n.d.Gaiter, C., n.d. visualizing a revolution: emory douglas and the black panthers.Just Say no, n.d.

Laranjo, F., 2014. Occupied Times, Madness.

Political Art Work [WWW Document], n.d. URL http://artisticactivism.org/

Protest Art, n.d.

services the school for creative activism, n.d.

The Occupied Times, n.d.

The Occupied Times About [WWW Document], n.d. URL http://theoccupiedtimes.org/?page_id=1419]

The revolutionary art of Emory Douglas, Black Panther, n.d.

Bibliography

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