Final Poster Designs
My final poster designs for the Barcoded Nation project.
Bullets are a commensurable item for a gun. People wonder how many guns there are in the world but often forget about the amount of bullets that must be produced and that are wasted through guns. Are these going to be stocked on shelves at your local supermarket in the future?
Bombs are an item of war. Designed to cause maximum damage and maximum causalities.
“The level of gun ownership world-wide is directly related to murder and suicide rates and specifically to the level of death by gunfire.” (Professor Martin Killias, May 1993.) Guns have become a highly commensurable item of death. Guns are sold both legally and illegally and wanted for the feeling of power they can bring.
As people have now become numbers, what about human life? To some people, human life is expendable and even a consumable. These people take human identity away and give human life a number.
Gas mask:
As we destroy and pollute our planet. Will the air we breathe become a commodity. Will the gas mask become a mass produced item? This also links back to warfare will human greed and ignorance fuel a chemical warfare were the gas mask could be come a daily item or even a fashion piece?
Barcoded Nation T-shirts
Some T-shirt designs for Barcoded Nation Project. Might be added into the project. They can be added into a kit which could comprise of a bag, stickers, t-shirt and maybe more.
Money Bags V2
I made some more moneybags. Might take this further outside of university, as now it is not part of this project. Want to get better photos of them showing peoples reactions. Will have to do this when I am finished. See my previous post for my rational behind this stunt.
Progress Report V2
Updated posters slightly for our meeting on tomorrow. I was thinking of some more ideas for these posters. Some items that could have barcodes on them are.
Weapons: hand guns, grenade, machine gun, bomb(mass destruction)
Life: baby, dead body(toe tag), coffin
Body Parts: heart, brain
Pills/drugs/syringes
Grim reaper
Handcuffs/chains/shackles
Gasmask
These items may go over 3 posters, this maybe good to play with scale and if posters are placed on the same wall they will work together.
Progress Report
After having a meeting with our mentor, David Lancashire, we ironed a few issues I had been having with the project. The main issue I had been having was that our message was not clear enough and was getting clouded behind to many different applications. This is mainly due to being a group project with different minds coming together. From this meeting we are heading down a direction I wanted too.
We decided to go back to do a proposal for a poster exhibition or a poster series and website. The poster will be more in your face but yet simple and straight to the point. I have done some real rough concepts. which are below.
Barcoded Nation – Money Bags
I made some money bags with the dollar sign on them. Took some mock photos also. Want to put these somewhere with a bit more exposure. The use of the dollar sign ads a comical touch to the message as most people are familiar with money bags like this in cartoons, usually bank robberies.
These bags are to question peoples addicition and want for more money, this linking back to the Barcoded Nation’s messages of over consumption and over production. Also were our identity gets replaced by a dollar sign, this conforming us down to number.
The bags will hopefully create curiosity and play on peoples addiction to money and get them to question themselves to weather they should pick them up to see if they are real.
Barcoded Nation
After our last meeting, we changed the direction of the groups message, which was needed. We came up with the idea of Barcoded Nation. Barcodes are everywhere, on everything and very recognizable. They are a label, they break down something or someone to a product or number. Barcodes are synonymous with money, over production, conformity and even loss of identity.
This activism is quite open and we didn’t want to tie our selves down to a single directed message but leave it quite open to interpretation. Its not in your face activism to get people to change, but more just to get people thinking.
Our executions will vary from your usual poster campaigns, and may involve a public installation or other public stunts. More information on these in other posts.
I would like to do a campaign with a positive message or thought provoking message. I have a few ideas up my sleeve, one being the “Stop and smell the roses” and I have a few more which I hope to develop some more, but would like to keep them seperate from this group project, maybe for a collaboration or something.
Stop and smell the roses
An activism campaign that I thought of tonight while having a rant about how people these days always seem to be in rush, weather they are walking, driving etc. This is also leading on from my mapping project (which is also on this blog) where I wanted people to take in their surrounding envonment with all senses to show them what they are possibly missing out on.
“Stop and smell the roses” is a simular concept, with the message being “hey slow down, look what your missing in your life”. This would not just apply at the location but in their whole lives. This could be something like take time out and spend it with your family or something simular. People are getting so wound up by social, polictical issues lets make them step back from that for a minute, relax, free their mind.
This could envolve placing real, fake roses in a public space with ’stop and smell the roses’ message near by.
I’m sure other ideas will follow. Will have to put this forward to the rest of the group.
Project thoughts
Brief:
Designed Activism (DL)
To utilize targeted media and prototype executions designed to instigate change in social and/or cultural values.
Group project with potential to come out with some real interesting concepts and outcomes, straying away from your usual activism campaign.
Important word in the title of this breif being “designed” activism. I see this as a more conceptual campaign, that uses a designed execution to get people thinking or even better questioning it’s message.
I found a good example of this called Everthing is Ok
The following type is from the website www.everythingisok.com
The Past
Everything is OK began as a simple project in our design studio. Faced with the mounting inequities in our world and culture, we set out to assemble a list of resources that would point people toward positive action. We launched a simple website (everythingisok.com) as a means of sharing these links. To promote the site, we created barricade tape with the incongruous message “everything is ok.”
The tape was first deployed during the 2006 US election, and then again during a massive pillow fight in San Francisco.
The response to the tape was overwhelming, and we quickly realized that people were more interested in the tool we had created than the project it was designed to promote. It started showing up in design annuals, museum collections, books and blogs. People started writing to us asking for tape of their own. Gradually, we became interested in exploring the possibilities represented by this intersection of design, art and activism.
Today, Everything is OK exists as a kind of social design experiment in subversive positivism. It explores the relationship between medium and message, challenges accepted modes of communication, and provides everyday citizens with tools for social commentary.
We read “Everything is OK” as both an affirmative phrase and a condemning indictment of mediocrity — a tension that is amplified when delivered through the cautionary medium of barricade tape. Once deployed, the message takes on additional layers of meaning as it becomes an interactive caption, modifying spaces, objects and events.
The Future
Everything is OK is a testing ground for new ideas in design and social interaction. It is a place for us to explore the connection between visual and verbal communication, and a space in which we examine what constitutes “average” in a culture that promotes conformity as a form of unique expression.
Image courtesy of Scott Beale / Laughing Squid
I think ‘Everything is Ok” is a very interesting activism campaign, don’t know how well it spreads its message of positive thinking, but it does get people to question it and interact with it.
This is the direction I would like to take with our activism project. Something a bit left field of your everyday activism/student activism/poster or advert campaign. Although the rest of the group is stuck with the idea of going straight down the line.
From this a possible outcome could be some sort of activism kit to allow people to spread our message.
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