OUGD505 - Studio Brief 02 - Research into social, political and ethical change

We live in a world shaped by the work of graphic artists. The logos, images, signs and symbols that surround us has a powerful impact on many of our decisions. 

Political Issue:

Politics is something that I have learnt in the past however, it is something that I do not find interesting in the design world. However, something that I did find very interesting in college was the rise of Obama and the rise of the 'hope' poster created by Shephard Fairey. This shows a poster that consists of American colours blue, red and white to help promote the rise of Barrack Obama. With the use of the word 'hope' alongside a strong iconic image of Obama it is easy to say that this poster easily recognisable, eye-catching and minimal.  The word 'hope' is there to give you belief that there is hope in this candidate (now president). By using a strong, bold, easily legible typeface it is an iconic image and also very expressive. The poster became a structure to express political stands. 

Social Issue: 

Looking at Amnesty International I have chosen to look at freedom of speech. Here is what amnesty said about freedom of speech: 

"Communicating with each other and expressing ourselves freely is central to living in an open and fair society."

We forget being in the UK that we have freedom of speech, this is not so much the same in different countries. People have been thrown into prison if not worst. People have tried to stand up for themselves even backing to the 1st of December, 1955 where Rosa Parks refused to stand up on a bus  to Khadija Ismayilova who is an award winning journalist. It was her work on the corruption of Azerbaijan led to her seven and a half year prison on spurious charges only last year.  We are very unaware of freedom of speech in other countries and it would be interesting to create my own campaign much like Amnesty on freedom of speech. 

Here on the poster you can see the impact a design can have, which uses tape across the persons mouth on the image showing no freedom of speech. From this research, I want to create something that will be beneficial to my campaign and will be something different than a usual poster like Amnesty have done within this poster using tape to keep a poster up whilst covering his mouth. 

Ecological Issue:

Fishing is something that I myself do and a campaign that I was not very aware of is overfishing. Although I fish very rarely I researched that due to the amount of fishing that we do it is potential that if carry on fishing then there may be no fish left in 2048. This is a massive problem as fish is a source of protein and something that everyone eats around the world. It also means interrupting the food chain which could potentially affect us. 

Although this is a campaign that a lot of people wouldn't really know about I would like to create everything for this campaign. It is a campaign that is on a very low scale and doesn't even have a website to inform people about. I would like to take this small campaign and see how far I can take this campaign and to see if people would be more aware of overfishing with my designs and research.