Critical Design asks a designer to change from their usual route, rather than creative problem solving, critical design asks me to delve into events throughout the world and find the problems that exist within. From my introduction lecture I have extracted that critical design tends to exist in the bastardisation of the affirmative, effectively finding problems and bringing attention to them through the ability to take language and preconceptions made by the human mind, and then implementing subversion to create a new and attention bringing message.
Critical design has been executed throughout history and is often done without realisation by the creator/author. This makes interesting prompts for research, as I should be able to extract meaning out of projects and designs that were not built for the purpose I will be researching within.
Inital Research
Initially I think this project would benefit from taking my research from my dissertation, my dissertation is a large and well researched document that discusses the transgression of propaganda as well as having a focus on the emotional manipulation and preconception that occurs within advertising on a daily basis. I find that people will often buy products that “feel right” and this is the main reason for brand loyalty, through my dissertation research I discovered that this is not due to effective and well made products, but instead subtle psychological manipulation by the creators of the products themselves, they will attack the viewer at the areas of their brain responsible for emotional responses and due to the lack of audible communication, their bodies are literally feeling wrong when they do not agree with the advertisement in front of them.
A video can be found here that discusses this phenomenon in further detail: (Start with Why video).
This is extremely interesting and contemporary from a graphic communication perspective, the minds association with certain typefaces/visuals will take focus away from the actual product themselves, this would be an interesting thing to subvert for my criticality project, seeing if I can potentially persuade people to do something or have people minds engage with the material I create simply due to their minds association with the material put in front of them.
Further research into different industries finds that high end fashion is a good example of this. The branding and language used across the vast majority of companies is concerningly similar (Examples Below of several ‘different’ companies logos)
The similarities do not end with the typeface and marque choice, after research into the magazines themselves, the heavy visual approach often uses a very similar structure, with some examples below.
This structure of hero image accompanied by smaller, similar images with a neutral background is common and thus easily replicated, alongside the very small variation in typeface makes, in my opinion a perfect opportunity of critical design and bastardisation.
After a (very short) browse on adobe fonts, even this early into the project I am able to find typefaces that perfectly reflect the vast majority of the largest companies within the fashion industry, which are shown here.
This can then be quickly turned into my own visual material that allows individuals minds to think of high fashion, until the message is actually read.
This effect would only be greatly increased once the material created is created with a greater sophistication and especially once fidelity is incorporated into the fashion adverts themselves, using supported visuals that could be made myself, allowing me to exert my graphic design skills to create a piece of critical design.
Critical Adverts
As my topic of interest at this stage exists within an advertisement space, and my interest also lies within bastardising the affirmative, I would benefit massively from some research into what already exists within this area.
Satirical advert creating photography Jack Daly’s works appear to exist in a similar space to where I want mine to exist, the subversion of already existing visual language, this being a call back to 1980s advertisements the actual material is looking dated on purpose in order to increase the level of fidelity found here. The adverts seem almost light hearted and thus I think it makes the message behind the slogans and imagery just that much more powerful. I think this is where the most powerful and successful subversion will occur.
I think the fidelity is a key factor here, if the audience and their emotional responses in their minds do not jump to the 1980s before they even have the chance to read the messages on the poster, then the poster will have failed at its purpose. I think I will have the best chance at achieving this myself in the experimentation phase by exploring the fashion industry, given my previous research as well as the easy replicability of the material due to a lack of variance.
However, I do not think I will create my final outcomes on the fashion industry, I do believe I need to find an issue that I am more passionate about, and then expressing that issue through critical design, My explorations in fashion are simply allowing me to explore and confirm my theory of how to create the advertisements that I hope to make, if this turns out to be true then I should then hold the ability to make ads for a large variety of issues in a short amount of time.
A point for thought is that I do not need to only attempt to trigger peoples emotional preconceptions only through the material, it could be possible to do this through my context, for instance if I were to use a certain paper stock, or present my work in a certain document style, then the actual holding of the document or device could take my audience to a desired place, before they are able to access the full information and have the truths revealed before them.
Moving forward I think I should explore further into creating examples of this within the fashion industry, but I should also, in the background, comb for better personally suited topics and issues that I can use my research for.
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