OUGD401 - Study Task 04 - Defining the Brief

1. RESEARCH FOCUS
COP Theme: Society.
Graphic Design Discipline: Advertising.

How are gender specific products and toys potentially having a negative impact on children’s skills development?

2. DEFINING THE DESIGN PROBLEM
An advertising campaign which aims to shatter gender stereotypes within children’s products, specifically toys, which may have a significant impact on their social, fine motor, spacial and perseverance skills development.

3. CLIENT NEEDS OR REQUIREMENTS
One requirement that will guide this project forward is the use of imagery. Due to the potential young audience, the campaign needs to use clear imagery which is understandable by all and relatable to both parents and their children. This therefore means that the imagery cannot be too complicated as to avoid confusion in the message being conveyed.

Another requirement that will guide this project forward is the format of these advertisements. Posters would be the most suitable form for this campaign, as it would mean they can be posted in different locations to raise awareness. This would also mean they would need to be scaled appropriately so that they are not overlooked by the public when passing.

4. AUDIENCE
This advertising campaign is focused towards an audience of parents to young children, as well as potentially young children themselves who may also view these advertisements.

One implication of this audience means that the campaign needs to be relatable and should therefore use the ideas of a product which is well-known to the public by both parents and children. This also means the campaign should not be too controversial as to not cause distress to those children who would potentially view these advertisements.

This campaign could also be aimed towards those expecting children, which could show them the potential impacts on their child's future development and make them rethink about which toys or products they let their children interact with.

OUGD401 - Study Task 04 - Ideas and Research

http://lettoysbetoys.org.uk/why-it-matters/ 
http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2015/08/12/how-gender-specific-toys-can-negatively-impact-a-childs-development/
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/chi-onwurah/let-toys-be-toys-gender-marketing_b_4728423.html

COP Lecture Series: Print Culture and Distribution: Part 2

We now live in what is called 'the late age of print', where it can be seen there has been a return to handmade production methods of print, such as letterpress and screen-printing. An example being 2013 Leeds Print Festival letterpress flyers.

The Slow Movement - a return to slow methods of production and design. It focuses on quality rather and quantity.
The slow food movement questions what fast food stands for culturally. It shows a return to locally sourced produce, learning how to cook your own meals from scratch and is environmentally conscious. It does not rely on co-operations to do things for you, it is about learning new skills.
The slow fashion movement is against fast production of clothing, made for cheap and for profit. It aims to return to independent producers and locally sourced materials. It focuses on humanity rather than profit.
The slow design movement is focused not on the end product or output, but focuses on how your practice relates to issues such as, socio-cultural and environmental.

Print culture and a return to the handmade coveys a sense of humanist politics. For example, The Print Project reclaims old industrial print machinery and puts them to use again as a creative tool. This is in regards to sustainability and comments on how society usually has no regards for maintaining anything.
Richard Lawrence - The Print Milkfloat, is opposed to fast culture. He teaches the general public various print methods, including letterpress, and engages them with such handmade methods. This can be seen to add human or social values to creative practice.
Nicolas Bourriaud's artwork is about using artwork as social interstice. His art is about forming human relationships and interactions, it is fundamentally relational in that it creates networks, engages collaboration and participation. It is a form of relational art.

OUGD401 - Study Task 03 - Visual Analysis and Triangulation

COP Lecture Series: Print Culture and Distribution: Part 1

The "age of print" began in 1450. This term comes from media theorist, Marshall Mcluhan. During this time what was known as the beaux-arts were the only subjects taught at art schools. This included painting, sculpture, architecture, music and poetry, and was very exclusive to men.

1780 - 1832
During these years the industrial revolution took place (1760-1840).
Machines of mass production were developed.
- culture created out of class systems.
- coming together to create new forms of art.

John Martin (1820), Belshazzar's Feast
This piece of work was produced to be used as a propaganda campaign, whereby people had to pay to view the artwork. The money made from this was used for prints and engravings. As a result, careers were made from this as reproducers, making money from other artist's work, showing how anyone can become an artist.

Mass Image Culture
Matthew Arnold (1867), 'Culture and Anarchy'.
In this publication, Arnold aims to define culture as:
- 'the best that has been thought and said in the world',
- the study of perfection,
- attained through disinterested reading, writing and thinking,
- the pursuit of culture,
- seeks to 'minister the diseased spirit of our time'.

Working class culture
- refers to the snobbishness between classes, the attempt to keep the working class 'in their place'.
- political prejudices.

Leavisism
F.R. Leavis and Q.D. Leavis.
Believed that the 20th Century sees a cultural decline:
- "culture has always been in minority keeping"
- "the minority, who had hitherto set the standard of taste without any serious challenge have experienced a collapse of authority".
For example, 19th Century Penny Dreadful was a book produced to be affordable for the working class.

Schools of design were considered as production lines of industrial capitalism during this time. The first opened in London and aimed to teach design skills. The arguments between the culture of design vs. the culture can be traced back to this point in time, relating to the snobbishness of fine art students that can be seen today.

Walter Benjamin (1936), The Work of Art in The Age of Mechanical Reproduction
This suggests that the technological reproduction of art removes what is known as 'the aura of art'. This includes elements such as, creativity, eternal value, tradition, authority and authenticity. The recycling of images, such as the Mona Lisa, threatens this aura of art and it's meaning, where new machines of industry can be used as an attack on traditional print culture.
For example, the Illustrated London News meant that people no longer had to go to galleries to view art. This shows a democratisation of visual culture in that anyone could become a visual communicator.

Print Capitalism (1842)
Print capitalism concerns images made for the sole purpose of profit. This can be seen to replace culture with popular culture.
(William Morris (1877), The Lesser Arts)
Morris' work emerged from this idea of print capitalism. He referred to subjects such as graphic design, illustration and animation as 'the lesser arts'. His anti-capitalist approach meant that he was against reducing creatives to labourers, which is why the main focus of his work is nature rather than industry - the idea of the mechanical vs. the intellectual.

In design today, a return to the auratic or small collective methods of production can be seen. For example, letterpress, which suggests a return to the handmade as opposed to digital methods of production.

COP Lecture Series: The History of Type - Production and Distribution: Part 2

The Bauhaus (1919-1933)
The idea that form follows function - the function of something forms how we design, for example for decorative or promotional purposes. The design of something must follow a common visual language, as commerce is at the start of design (the first written language was based on trade - acts as a receipt).

1957
Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann.
Designers of Helvetica.
Wanted to fit in with the modernist idea of type.
Their aim for this design was to create a clean and neutral typeface that had clarity, no intrinsic meaning in its form, and could be used on a wide variety of signage. (Less is more - the function of the typeface).

1982
Arial was released by Microsoft exactly 25 years after the release of Helvetica - the maximum time that a design is protected by intellectual property before it lapses. For this reason, Microsoft barely modified Helvetica.

1990
Steve Jobs.
The first Mac for under $1,000 was introduced.
This meant that for the first time creatives had their own computer to use for design. However, in this sense, type was seen as being democratised - anybody could use it to create their own typefaces or designs.
"By making itself evident, typography can illuminate the construction and identity of a page, screen, place or product" - Ellen Lupton, Thinking with Type.
This year, Tim Berners-Lee also created the world wide web and released it for free. This shows a complete democratisation of type distribution, as it became easier to distribute material over the web rather than having to physically print any material.

1995
Bill Gates created internet explorer - the first globally adopted browser. This meant the way in which typography could be used was changed, for example, in terms of layout. It also established the windows font set as a global standard for browsers, which included Arial and Comic Sans.

"We realise now that long documents do not work on the web.We should never have thought otherwise, but all those short documents we’re reading instead are poisoning our ability to read long documents" - John Clark.
This quote suggests how the introduction of the internet has affected the ways in which we read, for example, we've stopped speaking and started typing through the development of instagram, facebook and various other social media.

Further from this, the development of emojis have started to replace written language with pictures and symbols, which has provided a global language for which we communicate. However, this also suggests we have gone back in history, for example similar to the development of the Greek Alphabet, where words and concepts are replaced by image.
"Typography fostered the modern idea of individuality, but it destroyed the medieval sense of community and integration" - Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death - the idea of a community now being online.

1977 - Jamie Reid
Produced designs for the Sex Pistols.
1992 - David Carson
Produced his first publication for Ray Gun magazine.
- both went back to the Bauhaus idea.
- undermining meaning in terms of scrapping grid layouts, etc.
- aesthetic reinvention.

"Design is both a political and cultural force for change, although most designers choose not to think about the power it has" - Jonathon Barnbrook.

In conclusion, there is no single approach to typography. Context helps to shape it's culture and interpretations.

COP Lecture Series: The History of Type - Production and Distribution: Part 1

Type is what language looks like. It concerns tone, weight and pace of individual letterforms.
Typography is the organisation of the layout of letterforms, however the dictionary definition defines it as:

1. the art and technique of printing with movable type.
2. the composition of printed material from movable type.
3. the arrangement and appearance of printed matter.

These definitions are fairly outdated. According to Robert Bringhurst in The Elements of Typographic Style, typography is the craft of endowing human language. It requires an understanding of visual and cultural literacy.

The Importance of Chronologies

The development of type has documented change in visual culture, for example, hieroglyphics which were used around 7000 years BC. These use physical representations of language to communicate.

The origins of writing started around 3200 BCE in Mesopotamia, the western hemisphere. 

The Rosetta Stone (discovered 1799)

Displays the same set of words in three separate languages, including Egyptian, Demotic and Greek. This provided the first opportunity for linguistics in order to understand history and how language works. It suggests an agreement amongst cultures (principle one of visual literacy; all that is necessary for any language to exist is an agreement amongst a group of people that one thing will stand for another).

This also required an understanding of proto-sinaitic and proto-canaanite scripts, which involved common interpretations and recognition of symbols. For example, the Greek alphabet. Through it's development, this then went on to form the characteristics of certain letterforms, as shown in fig.1.

Fig. 1. The development of the Greek alphabet.

Previously, type was only designed for specific purposes such as for use in social, cultural and political contexts. However, in 1870, William Foster changed the development and distribution of type when he produced the Elementary Education Act which allowed children to learn the ability to read, rather than it being exclusively for the privileged few.

"Since typography is a communication method that utilises a gathering of related subjects and methodologies that includes sociology, linguistics, psychology, aesthetics and so much more, there is no single approach within typography that applies to everything" - Shelley Gruendler.