Communication Design Studies - Assessment 2

While developing this project I’ve been thinking about how to approach collage and researching other artists who use collage in their work. I found Robert Rauschenberg’s work to be inspiring because he blends found imagery with his own artwork and manages to include a message in his pieces. A lot of his imagery poses questions about popular culture and The U.S.A. as well as its politics. Although I my project uses digital collage, his work influenced the style and technique used to incorporate information and ideas into imagery.

(Image source: https://news.artnet.com/market/rauschenberg-market-hed-tktktkktt-1547860)

(Image source: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/robert-rauschenberg-1815)

It took me some time to find appropriate imagery to support the question: ‘How are you designed?’ After researching the imagery and era of the time, I initially wanted to show other examples of emotional manipulation related to war. However I felt that this idea was exemplified in the poster design which shows the image of red poppies. I therefore decided to reference the slogan and face drawn on walls by soldiers in WW2 known as “Kilroy”, Soldiers would draw this face accompanied by the words ‘Kilroy was here’ on walls and trenches as a sign of strength and to record their presence. This was an early form of graffiti and could be seen as a type of democratised propaganda itself.

(Image credit: https://www.facebook.com/Kilroy-Was-Here-1784462615156460/community/)

(Image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kilroy_was_here_(re-drawn).gif)

Here is my version of Kilroy with my question replacing the usual phrase...

I combined this with my poster (the answer) and images of the Uncle Sam poster which my poster emulates.

For question 2, ‘Do you care about us?’ I wanted to reflect what was going on at the time of the Black Panther movement - which is the poster style I chose to represent the answer. The image in the poster design is from 1969, the same year as the first moon landing. I wanted to create a contrast between the celebration of the astronauts and the oppressed and under represented people living at the time. I created a newspaper front page which which shows Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins being paraded through the streets in front of a loving crowd.

Below this fabricated newspaper page is an image of a homeless person sleeping under something which resembles the U.S. flag. Connecting these two elements is the question made to look like a newspaper headline.

This will be combined with the Black Panther style poster which presents a marginalised citizen of The United States as a powerful hero. I hope that this page will ask the viewer to question the ethics of propaganda and the manipulative approach to highlight only ‘convenient’ information and facts, while ignoring the inconvenient truth.

The challenge with the project at this stage is to find a way to visually represent the questions which correspond to each poster. I had an ambitious concept in my mind to create a collage using adapted and found imagery from the era of each propaganda poster. I would incorporate the question into the imagery with the aim of making it look natural and as though it belongs to the world which the imagery creates.

To echo the question, ‘What are your ethics?’ I chose to use scans of redacted and classified government documents. I felt that this would pair well with the poster of Edward Snowden and the answer, ‘Put your country first’. I hope that this combination of imagery (Snowden, redacted documents and the idea of patriotism) would trigger an interesting thought process in the reader which questions the idea of patriotism.

I printed text from the CIA website, used a marker to ‘redact’ the information and write the question. When combined with the collage below the imagery creates a scene for the question and answer to inhabit, helping the viewer to visualise the context.

After completing my poster designs and testing digital vs. analogue collage methods. I began to work on the digital layout of my zine, which I’d like to look as much like a paper collage as possible.

It’s proven difficult to brainstorm appropriate imagery to use as a background for my ‘question’ side of each page layout, but I’ve slowly been developing ideas and creating designs to support my questions. So far I’ve got to a good place with the 3rd and 5th questions.

For the 3rd question, “Do you lie?” I’ve focused on Bill Clinton’s scandals of the 90s to highlight not only that era of propaganda, but to show that journalism can be a form of propaganda. I also felt it was relevant to present Clinton as the liar for this question given his history.

I began by sourcing relevant images of protests. Seen below is an image of protesters calling for Bill Clinton’s impeachment after the Monica Lewinsky scandal. I’ve deep etched the image using Photoshop and used a couple of different methods to blank out some of the picket signs. I’ve then added my question to the blank signs, adjusted the perspective to make the text appear natural and added a blur filter to further the illusion.

Following this step, I dropped this image over a larger photo of protesters in front of The Capitol Building in Washington D.C. and added textures to the edited picket signs to help them blend in with the scene.

And finally I add my final ‘Trust’ poster to complete the layout. This will be presented as an A5 zine, left and right pages.

For the 5th question, I spent some time researching the most common aesthetic of modern memes to create the final ‘answer’ to my interview. The question asked propaganda “Are you dying?” and I chose to show Donald Trump answering with his signature phrase: “FAKE NEWS!”. After creating the meme it seemed obvious that the best way of presenting the question would be to use Twitter to signify the democratic voice of the people. I created a series of ‘tweets’ asking different questions to create a collage of the many voices of democracy and on the facing page Trump’s meme dominates, bleeding into the questions side of the page to show the stifling nature of modern propaganda.

The first test of printing and scanning my poster was slightly unsuccessful. The print out seemed to be very low quality using my printer. A lot of the detail and colour was lost from printing. I decided to forge ahead and scan my collage test (using the printed posters), but the results were very low quality which seems a shame considering the amount of work put into designing the posters.

Below is a comparison of the printed + scanned vs. the digital collage tests....

Printed + scanned:

Digital collage:

After developing the Clinton poster, I decided to go back and see what I could do to improve the other posters before I went on to create my zine. The answer to question 1, “How are you designed?” seemed like it could pack more of a punch. I played around with the design a bit, refining some elements such as text size and placement and where the poppies fade off the page. Most importantly I increased the scale of the poppy image so that they make a stronger impression on the viewer. Additionally I also added my signature to emulate the original poster design.

First iteration...

Second iteration...

I revisited the Clinton poster for Question 2, “Do you lie?” after presenting my work for feedback in the tutorial. Bailey made a good point that the Clinton poster lacked a clear connection to a specific era in history (presumably the 90s, given the subject matter). I agree with that feedback so I went back to explore how I could develop the poster design. After considering some different options, I decided to create a layout based on the cover design of Time Magazine. I feel that this echoes the relevant era in U.S. history and ties the poster to the project more clearly. I chose to swap the word “TIME” for “TRUST” to ‘answer’ the question posed.

I researched what covers of Time Magazine look like. I then decided to emulate the current design rather than what was present at the time of Clinton’s presidency, so that it would be more recognisable to today’s audience.

After some research I discovered that the Time logo/masthead is a custom typeface. I therefor set out to create my own emulation of the Time logo spelling the word trust. I adapted the masthead from multiple typefaces using illustrator to create similar design. This took some guesswork as there is no example of what a full ‘TIME’ alphabet would look like.

Here is the final poster design complete with custom type design and thin white frame between background and red frame - true to the design of the magazine.

My fourth question asks, “Do you care about us?” I wanted to highlight the opinion that propaganda manipulates its audience for gain to the government or political leaders, not for the good of the people. It especially excludes minorities and foreigners in its imagery. I decided to create a poster that shows a figure which the government may consider as a minority and present them as the hero of the poster along with the answer, “Only true citizens!” Using Photoshop, I deep etched an illustration of a powerful African-American woman holding a weapon from a Black Panther Movement poster by Emory Douglas. I designed a poster in a similar style and added Douglas’ illustration to create an appropriated poster design which answers my chosen question.

(Image credit: New York Times, 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/16/arts/fifty-years-later-black-panthers-art-still-resonates.html)

My third poster answers the question, “Do you act ethically?” I wanted to create a poster that questions the idea of patriotism. I eventually settled on this question after developing the concept of my poster and deciding on the answer, “Put your country first”. This answer distills the idea of patriotism therefor shaping my question to be what it is. Once deciding this outcome for the questions, I went on to consider how to represent a patriot visually. This idea led me to decide on Edward Snowden as a subject. I went on to create a poster in the style of Shepard Fairey’s HOPE poster originally with Obama as a subject. I’ve adapted this poster design and used my own digital artwork of Snowden to create the main design.

And here is my first iteration of the poster...

(Image credit: Time Magazine. https://time.com/5120561/bill-clinton-monica-lewinsky-timeline)

The second question is intended to focus on the trustworthiness of propaganda, therefor I ask the question, “Do you lie?” To create a poster to answer this question I began by brainstorming on famous lies and liars in history. The most iconic liar I could think of was Bill Clinton when commenting on his, at the time, alleged affair with Monica Lewinsky. I decided to develop a poster inspired by a still from a video of that speech. To vary the styles used in my poster designs I wanted to create a vector illustration of Bill Clinton using Illustrator. This was a challenge for me as I rarely attempt such complex digital illustrations, but I am happy with the likeness that I produced - complete with a glinting wedding ring and the iconic podium. I added the words, ‘Trust me.’ above the likeness of Clinton, set in the a similar typeface to the one used on the president’s seal.

After developing ideas for Assessment 3 for a couple of weeks and posing my proposed questions to Bailey for feedback, I began to find a clear direction for my zine. I wanted to design a series of propaganda style posters, reflecting various eras from the last century, but with an ironic twist. The posters would use text to answer the question posed by the ‘interviewer’, but I planned to pair the text with unexpected imagery to encourage the reader to question the ethics of the subjects raised.

The first question would focus on the design aspect of propaganda and simply ask, “How are you designed?” My research led me to the conclusion that propaganda relies largely on emotional manipulation. The designs are focused on inciting an emotion - common examples would be guilt, hatred or fear. I wanted to start the journey of the zine with early propaganda, so naturally looked to the First and Second World Wars. I wanted to combine an iconic piece of propaganda with something that symbolises emotional manipulation. After some research this led me to a design which combines the classic Uncle Sam “I want YOU!” poster with an original image of poppies. I think the end result creates the desired impression, hopefully pinpointing the opinion that propaganda design relies on emotion manipulation in order to be successful.

Here is the original poster:

(Image credit: Time Magazine, 2017. https://time.com/4725856/uncle-sam-poster-history/)

My original illustration of poppies. Created using fineliner pens and watercolours.

Showing the process of using Photoshop to deep etch  and colour correct the illustration...

The first iteration of the poster, ready for feedback. I decided to make the border black and red, instead of blue and red in order to match the colour of the poppies. The poppies also match nicely with the colour palette of the text in the original poster.

This week’s lecture presentation looked to the future of Communication Design and touched on how machine learning and digital generation is making an impact on design as we know it. Many artists are beginning to use art to represent digital information and data. Examples such as Movie Barcodes and Photography in Abundance show interesting representations of how much digital media we create and consume on a daily basis. These artworks highlight what we take for granted in our digital age and do a good job of representing the quantity of data that is out there. 

Logos can now be created by computers, using a set of geometric rules and/or algorithms  - begging the question of whether the logo is recognisable as a specific shape or by the 'rules' used to create the identity. The MIT Media Lab used a generative logo design for a number of years. The logo was based off a set of rules which a computer could then use to create a large number of logo variations. The logo was therefore not so much a specific logo, rather a recognisable relationship between shapes and colours, creating a theme.

An artwork in Berlin, Germany called Public Face finds the average emotion conveyed in tweets posted from Berlin on each day to find a representative emotion to convey. The face changes from ‘happy’ to ’sad’ depending on what has been collectively tweeted that day.

Machine learning and computer generated design is all around us now and influences a lot of what we take for granted in the design world. It’s interesting to see designers using their creative skills to find meaning in an overwhelming amount of data, more of which is being created every day. Andy and Karen Ann finished the lecture by showing some of the experimental artworks they have developed which experiment with similar concepts of transforming digital data into fine art and conceptual design.

The lecture started off by introducing conceptualism through one of its early appearances - Marcel Duchamp’s urinal. Conceptual art and design has become a huge part of modern art as we know it today.  To paraphrase Karen Ann's description, conceptualism is art that remains as the idea. It has an intellectual element to it and provokes a question in the viewer, encouraging them to re-examine something they may already be familiar with, often re-appropriating existing artworks or objects and materials. For me, collage could be considered as conceptual art in some instances as it often uses found imagery to provoke a specific question or response in the viewer or to disrupt a familiar topic. To take this idea further, I would say that certain examples shown in the lecture, for instance the Rainbow Flag or what we now know as the peace symbol are examples of conceptual art used for design. Both of these examples are pieces of design which take existing elements, for example semaphore flags or the rainbow to create a new meaning which can be very powerful and become culturally significant. Flags can unify and inspire people and communities, perhaps they could be seen as examples of conceptual design too? A simple image or symbol carrying significant meaning without text.

  Andy and Karen Ann talked about various artist manifestos, for instance the First Things First manifesto, which argues that design and art can be significant without having monetary value and emphases the importance of keeping this idea alive without allowing design for the purpose of profit to reign supreme. They argue that both types of work should co-exist. The Guerrilla Girls were an art collective in the USA, founded in 1985. They fought to expose the gender bias and inequality in the art world. They used conceptual art and communication design to highlight the imbalanced proportion of male to female artists in galleries and advocated progress and change.

This technique of using communication design to push political and social ideas has been popular from the punk movement until today. Andy and Karen Ann showed some interesting examples of magazine which used art to push the boundaries. Specifically Rem Koolhas’ collage design which showed political figures and pop culture icons applied to the same artwork to subvert our impressions of the figures shown. 

Colours magazine and the Italian fashion label Benetton had a series of very provocative advertising in the same vein. The advertising used photography to provoke the viewer. The images included themes of race and unity, oppression, life, death and disease. The images could be seen as very provocative, but there is no denying that they packed a punch.