Due: February 11 (two days before class)
Please add your response as a comment below. You can review guidelines for the responses here.
Due: February 11 (two days before class)
Please add your response as a comment below. You can review guidelines for the responses here.
The readings this week focus on the power of posters and how they can influence or even spark social change. Kushner talks about the idea of “graphic dissent” that packs a punch visually and is meant to both shock and convey obvious meaning; the imagery and meaning of this kind of graphic work is often taboo as well, and we see that this type of design is especially prevalent in things like political cartoons and, of course, posters. Kushner goes on to discuss how “the act of forcing the impossible is, in the history of political revolution, often catalyzed by something as flimsy as a poster plastered on a wall” (280), highlighting the reality that sometimes a singular image can be powerful enough to cause a revolution when in the right place at the right time. The implications of this can be worrisome at times; art can be used to spark movements in directions both good and bad (for instance, propaganda during WWII was used to create an environment of fear to oppress the general public), but we also see examples of provocative pieces being used for positive progression.
One such example is that explored in the interview with Emory Douglas about “The Art of the Black Panthers.” This mini-documentary showed the actual, real-life effects of powerful imagery on posters and how they not only contributed to but were a main driving factor in the movement in support of African-American people at the time. Douglas defines the “culture of resistance, defiance, and self-determination” that he helped foster with his artwork. Because literacy wasn’t as common for African-Americans then, the use of images was especially beneficial for this movement, as it increased accessibility and allowed more of the community to contribute and feel included. While Douglas’ work in the time of the Black Panthers was extremely influential, he also mentioned that his main goal is and always has been “enlightening and informing people about issues” with his posters, which doesn’t always inherently involve dissension or controversy.
The interview with Elizabeth Resnick also discusses using design as a platform to advocate for marginalized people, one example being those who are struggling with AIDS. In looking more into her work, I also found that she focuses a lot on speaking out for women, and especially women who are oppressed for reasons other than (and in addition to) gender, making her work a good example of intersectionality overall. Finally, one quote from the interview that I think will be good for me to keep in mind is this one: “I would like to think that poster design has evolved to reflect changing conditions in our world.” It’s simple and seems self-evident, but at the end of the day the main purpose of such posters as the ones discussed is to act as a concentrated mirror that brings light to relevant issues, and so the main purpose of a designer in this field is to try to think with and then ahead of the times. (The posters below are not Resnick’s work, but part of a collection she curated called “Women’s Rights are Human Rights”: http://alfalfastudio.com/2016/10/18/elizabeth-resnick-womens-rights-are-human-rights/)
http://www.graphicart-news.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/melanie-cervantes_indigenous-woman-e1469098384396.jpg
http://alfalfastudio.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Charutha_Reghunath_Educate_women.jpg
Understanding the power of political posters is extremely eye opening. I enjoyed Michael Bierut’s argument that posters may not be as effective as many people may think. The day and age that we live in is so absorbed in digital content that posters are not as influential as they used to be. I was caught off guard by this observation, even though in retrospect it is no surprise since technology is changing at a rapid pace. The first political poster that came to my mind when reading this article is “The Pageant of the Paterson Strike”. This piece of work was extremely influential in bringing together people in support of factory workers in 1913. The presence of this poster in the streets of New York increased the amount of participants in the strike, so I was surprised when Bierut claimed political posters are not powerful. However, this poster was created over a year ago, so it would only make sense that it would have a different effect on people.
The second poster I thought of was not as political as “The Pageant of the Paterson Strike” image. “The Endless Summer” poster was an advertisement for the movie in 1966, but still has a presence today. I personally had this poster hanging in my room at one point because it made me feel a certain way, which is what I think posters do best: conjure up emotions that you forgot or didn’t know you had. Emory Douglas did exactly this with his posters during the civil rights movements. His comment about transforming the mindsets makes you the #1 public enemy resonates with this idea. Graphic design doesn’t just create awareness, it conjures up emotions which is the most powerful thing in political change.
I also found a poster on Pinterest that isn’t as well known as the others. This one depicts the sinking of Venice because of Global Warming. Even though this poster touches on a very serious topic, critics have said the beautiful colors and composition have influenced more tourists to travel there. It is extremely challenging for graphic designers to create something, deliver a specific message, and encourage a distinct change.
https://i.imgur.com/zfbsy67.jpg
What stood out most to me from all of the readings was the idea that messaging and arguing from a certain point-of-view in graphic design helps to change people that then have the power to create change around us. I saw this to be true especially in the video on Emory Douglas’ journey to his career in graphic design surrounding the Black Panther movement. His goal was to inform, enlighten, and educate from his personal perspective on the movement. His perspective of those abusing power as being portrayed as a pig created a symbol that we still see in today’s media and it. His work, and the work of graphic designers who advocate for various social issues, leave “a blueprint for people to be inspired by.
Three techniques of poster design that I thought could be brought into my project are cut and paste, use text as image, and double the meaning. These techniques are similar to those that I used in my four illustrations, so I feel as though I can utilize these to convey my message in my poster design. A poster that I saw as both use text as image and double meaning was one by Antonio Castro as a part of Elizabeth Resnick’s Graphic Advocacy project. The poster shows a shovel curved into a back bone in portraying migrant workers as the backbone of the economy, which it says on the bottom of the image. With my eyes being drawn to the back bone design, I instantly understood the double meaning behind it. I can bring tactics like these into my poster on reproductive health and reproductive rights.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/da/68/20/da682096c05e69c1be8975af92a4d7c9.jpg
Design has always been a powerful tool. But as always, with great power comes great responsibility. A design can ignite positive change or a design can be a symbol of discrimination, and many things in between. We have the freedom of living in a country where our designs can make a difference. Luckily, I have the privilege of living in a time where the vast majority of the poster designs I come across and see are used to ignite positive change within our country. This week’s readings only stood as a testament to this statement.
The Women’s March poster archive was incredibly impactful. The power of the words and symbols that were used speak great a volume to the power of design. The posters were simple, yet effective, just as a poster should be.
While the first article did discuss how posters might not be as effective as we would hope, I think that this may not quite be the case. I look back on the past few women’s marches that have taken place in our country: while not everyone can attend, everyone can see the photographs that have been taken and shared around the world. These photos have great power. We see the power behind the posters and their words and we see the power in the number of human beings present and holding those posters with pride.
I think this is a really exciting time for design. With the help of the Internet, we are more easily able to spread our truths, our beliefs, and we can do it with a well thought-out design.
Here are a few examples of impactful posters that speak to how a poster can have such an impact:
https://i.pinimg.com/564x/cb/82/23/cb82232968cdd3c946ca03bb6199de7e.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/564x/fe/88/d5/fe88d534378531e2d620a349794e52c9.jpg
This week’s readings were centered around poster design, spanning from poster design techniques (Ellen Lupton) to the power of posters within movements. These readings were then followed by vast visual examples of posters throughout history, ranging from those dedicated to movements to social issues within our society. From the interview piece with Elizabeth Resnick, she shares her viewpoint on the best designed posters: “Many of the best socio-political posters created in the 60s and 70s are still meaningful 50 years later because they are timeless” (Resnick). Resnick continues on, stating that these posters condense information into one layout, enabling the audience to immediately grasp and understand its key message. I believe that this idea unites the variety of readings, as well as visual examples. To me, the most effective designs are timeless and creatively condense a concept, sometimes a very complex concept, into one clear and visually compelling design.
While roaming Pinterest for some poster inspiration, as well as an example for this post, I came across a contest link through The Daily Good (https://www.good.is/articles/poster-about-women-s-issues-winners-announced). The link shares three winners’ designs for a contest on key issues that affect women all around the world: human trafficking, childhood marriage and childhood obesity. I was especially drawn to the childhood marriage poster (see below). I can see several of Lupton’s techniques at play in the poster, such as its manipulation of the surface, clear focus, as well as its use of the human eye to draw the viewer in. These various techniques create a visually compelling poster, as well as condense the subject at hand, childhood marriage, into one clear and concise visual form.
https://imgur.com/a/HzemhaP
https://imgur.com/xuZID0j
I thought this week’s readings, and the video we watched on the power of graphic design in political posters was extremely influential and eye opening. At the end of the video, he says “art is a language, and that is the power of it”. I think this is so true, and we see it as people who view these posters. We are able to absorb information, and become informed by the design. When I am on Instagram and people post pictures of posters that they take to protests, I like to research the topic after seeing them because the posters catch my eye, and make me want to learn more. I think from what I have seen in the examples from this week’s readings, the posters that have a simpler design are the most powerful and easy to understand.
I found the poster that is below on Pinterest and I thought it was a perfect example of a simple design being so powerful. I think that by depicting a bird trapped in a microphone emphasizes what they are trying to get across. They use a design with a bright yellow background, and make a serious issues seem less intimidating while managing to show how significant the issue is. I think by putting “freedom of speech” at the bottom, it reminded me a little bit of the OWS design, but the only reason I think it wouldn’t take away from the design is because ‘Freedom of Speech’ is already a term we have heard unlike the #occupywallstreet.
https://i-h2.pinimg.com/564x/e4/93/1f/e4931fb5d558baaaf9a11d9baa87fc0f.jpg
While going through this week’s reading a main idea stood out in my head: Art is a major player in protest and political movements. In the final lines of the article by Michael Bierut, he states: “Sometimes, the key to political change isn’t designing a logo or poster. It’s simply having the courage to show up and make your voice heard, no matter what the cause —and no matter what the risk.” While I believe this to be true in some ways, I also see the extreme importance of having a visual element that positions itself as the face of a campaign, protest or movement. A design can stand as a symbol for such important events and is the reason as to why they spread so rapidly as well as being widely recognized.
Tony Kusher stated in his article, “Art can’t change anything except people—but art changes people, and people can make everything change.” Out of all the readings, this quote deemed itself as most important to me. Art, design in particular, is the main medium in which these movements thrive. Whether it’s the designs you see on social media or the hand held designs people carry in the form of posters at a protest, all are an important part of spreading a message and evoking a feeling. When a piece of political art makes someone feels personal towards a type of movement, change is bound to happen.
When Bierut talked about the importance of the hashtag in the OWS movement, my mind automatically thought of the #metoo movement and what an important aspect art became within in. When paired with a movement, Art can be one of the most powerful things in the world. When the #metoo movement started to spread, I was captivated by the types of art circulating around social media with the words “me too” becoming the main focus. These sparked an emotion with women of all over; art fueling the need for change.
https://mir-s3-cdn-cf.behance.net/project_modules/1400/91345357855095.59e661e9ef140.jpg
Out of this week’s assigned readings, I found The Poster the Launched a Movement (Or Not) to be most intriguing. So often, we look at how design is successful and why, but is also beneficial to see how design – and even good design – can be taken over by other things. In this case, it was a hashtag. And then a video. And then a set of designs – with no central focus. This acts as a good reminder that design cannot exist in a vacuum. It is informed and shaped by the world around us. A perfectly executed poster utilizing a variety of elements of design can still miss its purpose if a connection to its audience is missed.
The image I chose is another poster from Occupy Wall Street. It has a simple design – black silhouettes forming the number 99 with a contrasting white percent sign over a red background. The idea behind the poster has been stripped down to its most essential parts while keeping the message relevant to the audience. Because this poster lacks words, the designer told a story in simple pictures by applying what they knew about the audience. And like this week’s video stated, “Art is a language.” The designer had to make sure the audience could understand this language by making the poster as clear as possible. There are no words to fall back on.
The world we live in is cluttered. Oversaturated. Busy. We see design everywhere. Sometimes using less can draw attention. Because design overlaps and interjects, it is important to recognize how our designs will fit into a greater world.
http://graphicadvocacyposters.org/posters/posters/92.jpg
The power of a political poster has long been felt throughout our nation’s history. From the propaganda posters seen in World War II to the political posters we see now, designers have always found a way to take hard hitting political issues and turn them into eye catching designs. Reading the Design of Dissent brought out some interesting points such as how something as simple as one poster can create such a political uproar, as Antoine-Jean Gros’s did. Another thought that stuck with me was how the point was made that someone is always available and up to the challenge for a design job when it needs to be done. Someone always steps up even if there is a chance of danger, the prime example of this being Emory Douglas in the short video. He knew what he was doing was risky, but felt that it was crucial for the public to be updated and informed.
As I read the article on the Occupy Wall Street poster, I was surprised to see that I too had never seen this poster. It is amazing that something as simple as the hashtag at the bottom is what stuck with people and became famous. I enjoyed how Bierut posed the question “In the age of social media, does political graphic design matter?” It is interesting how he cites the Obama campaign as being a reason why it does. That campaign was definitely strong graphically and really changed how political posters could be viewed.
When I began to read these articles I immediately thought of World War II propaganda posters. One in particular that I found was “Someone Talked!” During this time there were many posters being made that stressed the importance of keeping information to yourself. These posters definitely created tension just by saying phrases such as this, people did not know who they could trust. Posters like these really reinforce an idea presented by Tony Kushner in The Design of Dissent, “The best of these posters speak with a direct force, past all our qualifying, temporizing, even our scrupling and wisdom, to our passion, our appetite, our starved hunger for communal understanding, for collective agency, for belonging, for justice, and for change.”
https://www.history.com/.image/c_limit%2Ccs_srgb%2Cfl_progressive%2Ch_2000%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_2000/MTU5MDI5NDAwMjcxMDcxMDAw/wwii-postergettyimages-524879788.jpg
I started this selection of editorials with the short documentary on Emory Douglas. It was fascinating to hear how such a provocative and influential designer stumbled into such a significant language – graphic design. He was right – art has power, and with power comes great responsibility. You can choose to enlighten or pacify, strengthen or deceive.
What fascinates me the most about all of these articles is just how succinct these posters can be. They don’t quite simplify issues that have so many moving parts and emotional complexities, but they do manage to make the issues more “bite-sized,” in that parts of the public who decide that enough is enough can take a bite of the action.
#OccupyWallStreet and the Obama administration’s campaign are two fantastic examples of conflicting reasons to make a message more manageable and succinct. On one hand, the hypnotizing juxtaposition of a serene ballerina balanced so delicately on a statue of a raging bull is already compelling enough, but the kicker is the language used to punctuate the awe of the composition: words like “demand” and “occupy” get straight to the point. No syllables are longer than the hashtag, leaving the message both short and assuming. On the other hand, Obama’s series of “Hope” posters employs similar juxtaposition in its composition of colors: a fierce red accompanied by layers of calm blue, accentuated by a warm beige rather than the typical stark white of our nation’s flag. And with a serious expression is the bold word dominating the lower third of the poster – hope. The message may not be as focused as that of #OccupyWallStreet, but the theme is straightforward enough.
What I want to take away from these powerful posters (especially the styles featured in our textbook) is simplifying my designs, and playing up juxtaposition and contrast. I found myself inspired by the posters found here (http://guity-novin.blogspot.com/2013/09/chapter-70-posters-of-spanish-civil-war.html). I was mainly drawn to the subject because the Spanish Civil War was definitely a very complicated and violent issue, and then found myself mesmerized by the simplistic, but dynamic and vivid graphics on these posters. In particular, I found the following three to be the most evocative, and hope to emulate them in the upcoming assignment.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-tuGkGZpKnpI/UjY88GSgCGI/AAAAAAAAWt4/BrMuNzEipV8/s1600/a1.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nLPnWdxyitg/UjYsvByAs8I/AAAAAAAAWps/T1ipifi7Jag/s1600/a1.jpg
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-phQLi8wFOjA/UjYzl2Ci7cI/AAAAAAAAWrA/E351m6iRFcI/s1600/a1.jpg
The reading for this week focused on poster design. My favorite piece of reading this week was Michael Bierut’s, “The Poster that Launched a Movement (Or Not).” The article started by asking a question, “in the age of social media, does political graphic design matter?”
Bierut quickly gives a “yes” answer to this question with the following evidence of, the Obama campaign poster. This poster was designed by Shepard Fairey. Elements of the poster were simple, including the overlap of shapes and lines. The photo on the poster was of President Obama and incorporated red and blue color. The word “HOPE” was written at the bottom. This poster was not only iconic, it was effective. The effectiveness of this poster was not the reason Obama won but the fact that the same general idea could be used in different ways. The word “HOPE” could be switched with other words like, “CHANGE”. The consistency to which this one poster was able to have made it so successful.
Bierut then goes back to his earlier discussion about the Occupy Wall Street poster, in which the hashtag below received more attention than the poster design itself. This was the turning point that made the article interesting. Bierut explains that neither Shepard Fairey nor Jake Levitas played the “most dramatic role” in the Occupy Wall Street poster design. Instead graphic designer Chelsea Elliott, who was the central figure in a viral You-tube video showing peaceful protesters getting pepper sprayed.
Bierut ends with saying, “Sometimes, the key to political change isn’t designing a logo or poster. It’s simply having the courage to show up and make your voice heard, no matter what the cause—and no matter what the risk,” (Bierut https://designobserver.com/feature/the-poster-that-launched-a-movement-or-not/32588).
After going through both of Ellen Lupton’s How Posters Work PDF’s, I isolated four elements that she talks about. Overwhelm the eye, Simplify, Cut and paste and Make a system; each of these elements have either been used before in one or multiple of my designs or will hopefully show up in the next project.
Below I have added a poster that I found to show simplicity and effectiveness.
http://thesumof.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Push-For-Change-Poster.jpg