OUGD505 - Studio Brief 2 - Ethical Work Preliminary Research

I aim to use this module in order broaden my understanding of ethical issues in design and explore my responsibility as a designer.

POLITICAL

Shepherd Fairey, 2008
Barack Obama 'Hope' Poster

Positive political campaign
Heavily parodied in commercial art

Jim Fitzpatrick
Che Guevara

CND Logo
Campaign for nuclear disarmament

May 1968 Protest Posters
Student revolution in France
Occupied the school of fine arts and produced posters objecting to conservative government, unemployment and politics against the arts.

Anti-Apartheid
1980s

Stylistic
Quick and Cheap materials to produce mass communication


Emory Douglas, 1970
Black Panthers Party
Fighting for equal rights for black citizens
Aggressive tone of communication

Contributions to Ficciones Typografika by Erik Brandt

Identified some consistent visual characteristics:

Stencil
Bold upper case
Cheap and impactful
Agreement
People associate the bold text as an important message - Protest posters
Socialism fighting capitalism
Metaphors, puns and linguistic changes to create a tone of voice and message.


ENVIRONMENT

Greenpeace
BP Oil Spill

Highlights dishonesty

HEALTH

Advertising that promote an emotional response can be seen as unethical because some make the viewer feel guilty/awkward in order to try to make them do something

Smoking
NHS

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

OCCUPY

The Occupy movement is an international socio-political movement against social inequality and lack of "real democracy" around the world, its primary goal being to advance social and economic justice and new forms of democracy.

V&A - Disobedient Objects
http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/disobedient-objects/

Disobedient Objects is an exhibition about the art and design produced by grassroots social movements.

Plane Stupid

Researching into the exhibition made me aware of Plane Stupid, a grassroots group that take non violent direct action against aviation expansion.

The 4 demands:

• End to short haul flights and airport expansion
• A significant reduction in the number of planes flying to help address the threat of climate change
• Stop aviation advertising
• A just transition to sustainable jobs and transport

Based on the evidence provided by Plane Stupid it is clear that the aviation industry is continuously expanding which is having a devastating effect on the environment due to increased CO2 emissions. 

Plane Stupid demonstrated the 'LOCK-ON' technique that peaceful protestors adopt in order to make it hard for the officials to remove them from the site. Police forces have developed specialised removal teams, however the designs have evolved to out-wit them, using plastic and glue to prevent the removal forces from using high power tools to break them free as they create toxic fumes. Instead, the forces resort to using scissors which makes it a very time consuming process. 

Arm lock-on:

As part of the V&A exhibition, instruction manuals were created on how to create your own 'disobedient object' in response to Plane Stupid's protest:

This creates social and ethical engagement which almost encourages people to unite and take action against issues and topics that they believe in.

Having looked at a brief overview of how design can create positive change, I aim to continue researching in order to identify an issue to take forward. I intend to find a current issue that I can engage with here and now.


I brainstormed some potential issues that I can take further into my research stage:

• Death penalty
• Sea pollution - Plastics
• Male suicide 
• Prison
• Drones - Privacy 
• Youth absorbed in digital culture from a young age - How is this effecting them? Good or bad?
  Struggling to find relevant material so I will ask if anyone has any suggestions in the crit to come.