Recieving an overdose of ionizing radiation is generally split into the catagoreys. after being exposed to an unsafe amount of radiation you can either be diagnosed with ARS, Acute Radiation Sickness. Or Chronic Radiation Syndrome. ARS is normally caused by much higher doses of radiation and will often result in death. Below is a chart listing the effects that different amounts of radiation can have on the human body.

 

Ionizing radiation sends particle beams at almost the speed of light (roughly 300 million metres per second) through any matieral that it comes into contact with, when going through a human body, it will literally shred cells and DNA strands that it comes into contact with. The dead cells will then cause other cellular parts of the body to malfuntion, in smaller doses this will cause caner, more oftenly thyroid cancer due to inhilation of irradiated air. However if the body is exposed to extremly high amounts of radiation, this is will happen, instead the body cannot heal the wounds that the radiation has caused, effectively unwravelling the extremly complex structure of the human body, causing cells to stop being produced, allowing skin to decompose and organs to malfuntion. I think this aspect of “unravelling” is interesting, it plays into several elements of my exhibition, the unravelling of the reactor, the facts surrounding the event, as well as the unravelling of the soviet union swiftly following the Chernobyl disaster.

These effects and ARS would have occured to people such as the firefighters putting out fires on the night of the disaster and the plant workers who were on shift on the night of the explosion occuring. short and high doses of radiation cause this condition whereas Chronic Radiation Syndrome is caused being exposed to lower doses of radiation for a much longer duration.

Chronic Radiation Syndrome is present within the majority of those workers who were part of the immediate cleanup effort surrounding the reactor. Such as the roof clearers and the 14,000 residents of Chernobyl that had to be evacuated following the explosion.

The effects are felt less intensely and the latency period is over a number of years as opposed to days, this condition is not as fatal as ARS however it still caused widespreads deaths and cancers throughout the surrounding region.

As my experimentations and research are currently inconsistent, I feel a unification of type systems are needed. I am very much decided on using a sans serif font for large titles, however serif fonts for body copy could potentially be advantageous to offer an amount of contrast and potnetially offer different aesthetic alternatives.

Looking for an appropriate font that both suit my work and also would have to have the cyrilic alpahbet available to it, exploring with heavy weighted fonts increases the legibilty but then it does not leave much room for experimentations with the text, I feel thinner fonts do leave my opportunites more open to experimentations.

I then began looking at eastern bloc types, this solved the issue with the availabilty of the cyrilic. It also fits the time period and gives off a Russian Aesthetic without needing to include the cyrilic alphabet.

Finding a font called “Myra 4F Caps”. An eastern bloc themed type, containing the full cyrilic alphabet, the font is medium to thin weight and contains plenty of room for kerning adjustment and other changes. I personally find the sharp curves of the letterforms and the uppercase letters giving off a neat, uniform finish which makes the font extremly legible while still matching the rest of the criteria that I wanted from a typeface. However the only issue with this typeface is the lack of lower case letterforms makes it largely unsuitable for mass amounts of body copy, meaning i will have to find another typeface for body copy. My initial thoughts are still remaining with sans serif but choosing a much lighter font as so not to make the spreads look too heavy with text.

Marque and name generation.

Following on from my research I have begun creating some digital imagery relating to my on chosen on display topic, Glitch.

Firstly I began working on the logo marque as well as the name that would become the title of my exhibition, I wanted to avoid words that related too closely to radioactivity and radiation. But still a name that would entice potential customers to come and view my exhibition, Initial thoughts were the name “Chernobyl” But I thought that left the topic far too open to deliberation. As my Exhibitions main purpose is to educate people about the Chernobyl disaster and the people I thought the name “Hidden Heroes” would be appropriate, however once I created some digital outcomes I became distanced with the name, I felt it was too generic of a name to brand to an entire exhibition, however it lacked the attention grabbing aspect to invite potential viewers to come and read more. Although I do like the name and will likely make it a smaller part of my overarching brand and exhibition.

 

Moving on from this I then looked further into what my exhibition was representing, It was too obvious to simply name It something relating to the entire event of “Chernobyl”. My exhibition is going to specialize in the education of those who visit it, much of the information is hidden away in articles online and research papers, It simply needs someone to announce it in a visually interesting way that grabs viewers attention while still focusing on the actual educational and knowledge part of the events. This is where I began looking at the thesaurus to find alternative words to “Announce” I wanted something that means “to announce something publicly that has been purposefully hidden away”. Initial Ideas involved

“Over Time,

Out of Memory”

 

“Potent Adumbration”. I liked this name and the meaning behind it, however although the actual meaning of the words sum up my idea perfectly, I don’t think that it is sufficiently attention grabbing to attract a large group of people to my exhibition. I tried to remove the purposely hidden element of the name and arrived at my favorite outcome, simply the word “PROCLAIM”. I then made some digital outcomes with this name in mind to see how it looked on paper, pleased with the outcomes I decided to add the Russian type under the heading to both make it bilingual and add to the eastern bloc type more, making it look more fitting and to open up the opportunities to include multilingual typography throughout the exhibition. My personal Favorite outcome included the fingerprint texture over the text, I wanted to include some corrosion to various bit of text and imagery however I thought it would look too cliché, but this fingerprint texture gives off this corroded effect by introducing large areas of negative space where any fingerprints aren’t present, effectively avoiding the cliché corroded effect.

 

Moving forward with my imagery identities. I was pleased with my text editing concepts for large titles and headings. I now need to create examples that use these effects in context.

Evolving the typrgraphy forward more I have decided to look further into the divide between the English and Russian truths by placing a line through the center of the headings and then cutting off small parts of the type with the line, and then having the translation appearing out the other side of the dividing line, Im using this line to symbolise a physical divide between the different nations. The layering effect is still present within this piece to an extent however I wanted to use up more of the divide as well as the fact that the legibility is already slightly distorted by the cutting off of the typography with the divide, If I were to then distort it more by layering the text behind themelves, It may then make the text too unlegible for use inpartularly in posters, as the titles will need to be read from a far distance.

Removing the layering text effects also allows me to potentially explore with more colour alternatives. As the text does not overaly I am then able to make the entire title the same colour, allowing me to include graidents into the backgrounds as a potential for layout developments. I think the diagonal line helps to add to the sharp, clean edges of the letterforms within the font (4F caps) that I have chosen to use. Making me feel that this may be the more effective alternative than my previous experimentation. However I feel this outcome may be more useful within smaller paper based alternatives. Such as leaflets and smaller booklets.

Effects of potential 2nd explosion:

Cause; Heat going up, Core melts downward, hits water tanks- water vaporizes and expands, tanks contain 7000 cubic meters of water turned to steam instantly.

Explosion Factors: 2-4 megatons, everything within a 30km radius is completely destroyed, radioactive fuel from buildings 1-3 and the remains of 4 ejected over the 200km shockwave.

Impact:

no water supply, no livestock, no food farmed and a sharp spike in cancer rates and birth defects within the countries of; Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Byelorussia, Poland, Czechoslovakia (Czechia), Romania, Hungary, East Germany

The entire population of Kiev and Minsk would be killed 52 million in Kiev and 10.04 million in Minsk during the year 1986.

Over 60 million more people would need to be evacuated over the regions of Ukraine & Byelorussia.

Event was spotted 48 hours before it occured.

Forced the divers (Alexi Ananenko, Valeri Bezpalov & Boris Boranov) to drain the water wthin the water tanks.

Exploration of “Hidden Hero” Examples

Artur Korneyev- Elephants foot photographer https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-famous-photo-of-chernobyls-most-dangerous-radioactive-material-was-a-selfie

 

Alexi Ananenko info-

Alexei Ananenko is still working in the nuclear industry. He dislikes the sensationalism attached to himself. Valeri Bezpalov is alive and living in Russia. Boris Baranov died of heart failure in 2005.

None of them had any mutations passed on to children.

Valeri Bezpalov info-

Boris Boranov info-

 

Alexei Ananenko, Valeri Bezpalov, Boris Baranov – the three divers of Chernobyl – https://www.chernobylwel.com/blog-detail/113/who-saved-europe-the-three-unsung-heroes-of-chernobyl

 

Miners Effect

The Core would continue to melt down through the earth eventually into the groundwater below, rendering all the water supply into the Prypiat River- Water Supply for over 50 Million people as well as the food and livestock that would feed off the water supply. Poisoned from Kiev- Black Sea.

Solution: mine under the reactor and install a heat exchange pad using liquid nitrogen to cool down the core and stop the meltdown.

400 Miners used in total, over 100 died before they were 40 years old. Worked in conditions of 50+ degrees for 4-6 weeks, exposed to lethal amounts of radiation.

Mining Crew Chief- Andrei Glhukov

Andrei Glhukov Info-

Andrei Glhukov lead a group of around 400 miners to excavate a tunnel under the melting down reactor core, they were given six weeks to do the job, as after the six week period there would be a very real risk of the reactor melting all the way through the earth, into the tunnel and passing into the water table.

There was only a 50/40% chance of the core melting into the water table, however, the workers were not told this. They were told bare minimum, Glhukov did not even wait for additional protective gear to arrive before beginning work on the slow mining of the tunnel. The job was made even more dangerous by the fact that

 

Firefighters-

Vasily Ignetenko-

Conscripted Soldiers & Liquidators

A total of 750,00 liquidators were used within the total clean up of the Chernobyl Disaster.

600,000 used to Cleanup within the Chernobyl Exclusion zone. Various roles including; Excavators, Plant Cleanup Workers, Animal Control.

Particularly, Roof Cleaners 3828 men used to remove the graphite blocks on the highest level of the Chernobyl reactor 4 roof. Radiation levels were equal to 12,000 roentgen, in full lead-lined protective gear, spending 2 minutes on this roof would half your life expectancy, 3 minutes of exposure would reduce your life expectancy to only a few months.

2,000 roentgen- 1 hour exposure fatal

1,000 roentgen- 2 hour exposure fatal.

Roof cleaners were given 90 seconds to access the roof, shovel off as much graphite as possible, and they were forced to retreat from the roof and the next group did the same until the radiation level was low enough.

Artur Korneyev- Elephants Foot Photographer

Artur Korneyev- Elephants foot photographer https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-famous-photo-of-chernobyls-most-dangerous-radioactive-material-was-a-selfie

Future Effects

Total Chernobyl Exclusion zone- remains at 2,600 square kilometers, over 400 times more radiation was expelled than the nuclear explosion at Hiroshima. in total 300,000 people were evacuated and the residents were not allowed to leave the surrounding area until 32 hours after the explosion occurred.

New Safe Confinement Building (NSC)

Cost: roughly $2 Billion

Built to last 100 years

Large enough to cover the Notre Dame

3x heavier than the Eiffel Tower

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Section 1: Overview and intro

Talk about where and when the exhibition is happening, attract visitors in and provide all the needed information, but tell the visiters that any potential questions can be answered internally within the exhibition.

Section 2: About Chernobyl

“Why Worry about something that isn’t going to happen?”

It not only sums up the thinking that went into the minds of the government, certain plant workers, pro-government scientists, and perhaps even some civilians before the explosion. Everyone believed that something on this scale was not possible, as such, it was refused to be belived by the govenment and officals at the time within the soviet union.

Its the absolute faith in the perception of your superiority, rightness, and institutional merit that causes tragedies like Chernobyl to happen. And when comparing it to non Soviet disasters like the Love Canal clean-up and the Great Recession, it appears that many people need a wake up call like this.

Write about how the explosion at Chernobyl happened?

Eager to get promotion -> incomplete safety test involving withdrawn safety measures -> initial positive-void coefficient flaw flare-up -> steam explosion.

Give the readers small amounts of facts to lure them in to the exhibition

Section 3: Hidden Heroes

Talk about the people involved, use large numbers to attract focus and make people want to learn more.

800,000 liquidators

15,000-50,000 roentgen of radiation

90,000 deaths

minutes of exposure can cause extreme radiation sickness, resulting in painful death.

Discuss the fact of why they are being hidden. How the Russian govenment still refuse to change the death count for the Chernobyl disaster.

 

Section 4: Past, Present, Future

Talk about the long factors leading up to Chernobyl, however focus on the longevity of the impact of Chernobyl but also about how it remains a glitch on the landscape that will eventually dissapear into nothing.

40,000 liquidators were diagonsied with cancer by 2008.

200,000 people had to be relocated.

800,000 people were affected by radiation so far.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190725-will-we-ever-know-chernobyls-true-death-toll

 

My plan for the aesthetics of the leaflet involve origami techniques so that once the leaflet is folded outwards it will create a large radiation hazard symbol.

While I do think that this technique is very relevant to my chosen exhibition topic, I do think that it is however very cliche, it does not carry the serious tone of imagery that I wish to convey, I think that the cliche of the outcome does make my exhibition seem much less serious and will therefore hurt my visual style overall. Due to this I will likely redesign how the leaflet looks, however the information that I plan to input onto the eight pages remains intersting and topical to what I want from a leaflet.

Choosing an inital theme

when first presented with the brief I was also given a large selection of themes that i could choose from. These themes were as follows:

Artisan

Author(ship)

Beyond Borders

Brutalist Architecture

Codification

Etymology

Glitch

Initial thoughts on the glitch theme there seems to be a large amount of potential. An interesting concept while attempting to avoid thinking of a too linear concept is a glitch in history, looking at the dictionary definition of the term glitch, it seems that “an event that is caused by something going wrong” fits the description of a large amount of historical events. events such as; world war one and disasters are commonly appearing in my mind.

Concepts: Glitch in History
A historical event that should not have happened, and will likely not happen again, something
significant enough for large amounts of information to be gathered about it but not too well
known to the point where any information given is already known to large portions of the audience.
Potentially explore a lesser known area of a well known event

Topic 1: Chernobyl Disaster
Recent T.V show realised so people are aware of the event and will many will now want to know more in
perhaps, a less cinematic and more informative manner.

Fits meaning of “glitch” without engaging too much with the cliches

After a short amount of research, I realised there Is large amounts of the event to design about, Much of the interesting information is heavily coated in advanced scientific vocabulary, WILL NEED TRANSLATING TO ATTRACT TO LARGE AUDIENCE. If done correctly it will yield large amounts of interesting information to design around, due to this reason, there is a clear opening for an artistic and communicative opportunity
communication will be key due to not only the different languages used, but also the fact that much of the information is still locked within a “nuclear physicist” language which will not attract people to explore
my work.

The event itself is interesting personally, giving me the motivation required to complete the workload and more.

Further Glitch criteria. How the event could only get that bad due to the exact time period, the exact country with
that exact reactor, even down to it having to be those exact staff on shift that night.

However explore the opinion that it had to happen within the soviet union as because technology was
advanced enough for machines to operate in heavy radiation. The soviets were potentially the only
collection of people willing to sacrifice that large amount of life to correct the error.

Potential to dip in and explore “Profiles” of those involved with the accident, as well as explore the actual
event itself as a whole. Provides me with more than enough information to complete the multiple sections
of the exhibition.

Opportunity to explore both english and Russian/Ukraine Typography, yielding many fresh design concepts.

Modify

Uniform

Widerlife

 

Further Research

Cause of Chernobyl-

The building was unerfunded and so the control rods were tipped with graphite.

The head staff in the room at the time (Dyatlov) was too focussed on completing a safety test

Exract of an article detailing some of the mechanical factors leading up to the explosion:

“One of the most crucial causes of the accident is the large positive void coefficient possessed by the nuclear reactor. One characteristic of the RBMK reactor is that it can have a positive void coefficient. This means that an increase in voids or steam bubbles is associated with a rise in core reactivity. Most other reactor designs have a negative coefficient, which means that the reactor responds to the formation of steam bubbles by decreasing heat output. This is because if the coolant contains lots of steam bubbles, fewer neutrons are slowed down. The faster neutrons are, in turn, less likely to cause fission of the uranium atoms, thus resulting in a lower power output. This is an example of negative feedback that is used to prevent the reactor’s heat output from reaching dangerously high levels. However, the RBMK reactor used had a positive coefficient, which means that the reactor becomes very unstable at low power levels, and vulnerable to dangerous rises in energy production levels. This was one of the reasons for the reactor explosion during the Chernobyl accident.

Another cause was a flaw in the design of control rods. Control rods are meant to control the multiplication factor k of the reactor. Since control rods absorb neutrons, a withdrawal of the rods causes an increase in k value, and vice versa. Of the control rods, 163 are inserted from the top of the reactor and are made of graphite. The rods were found to be 1.3 m shorter than stipulated, which is unacceptable. The upper portion of the rods, which acts to absorb neutrons and slow down the nuclear reaction, was filled with boron carbide. When the rods were inserted, the graphite part displaces some of the coolant, thus leading to an increase in fission rate. This is because graphite is a more powerful neutron moderator than light water, i.e., it absorbs less neutrons. This resulted in a dangerous increase in power output. Moreover, post-accident investigations determined that at the point of the accident, the number of rods in the reactor was equivalent to 8 control rods. However, according to international standards, a minimum of 15 such rods were required at all times. This flaw in the design and number of control rods was one of the important causes of the disaster as well.”

 

 

 

BBC Two “The 2 Curve”

The television channel, BBC Two is presented as being well known for its diversity, with the need for a rebrand long overdue, it presented the challenge of matching up the principles of unity within branding and the need to still express the feeling of diversity that are present within the channels programmes.

The result was creating “The 2 Curve” implementing wild variety into a familiar shape. The end product of this rebrand would have had to been tested and perfected given not only the size of BBC Twos audience but also the previous problem of conflicting factors concerning the brands extreme variance and a need for unity under one brand. I think the final result reflects that very successfully. Not only are the animations aesthetically pleasing the watch coupled alongside the soothing audio clips, but it’s very clear from the start that there is clearly meant to be a curve that represents a two down the middle of the screen. This instant recognition of the curve then allows viewers to enjoy the animation that follows. I think this is why the visual “two” within the screen had to be so clear, so that viewers don’t spend the whole time trying to work out what they’re looking at. The reason for directly contrasting colours being used for either side of the screen support this point, having two shades of orange that almost match would make the curve far too difficult to recognise and so, would therefore diminish the overall impact of the animation. Without instantly recognising the curve, that key aspect of a unity under one brand is lost, and therefore the work is not deemed a success. However, the animations vary widely, different colours and textures are used as well as different audio clips, I believe this design decision has been made so that each animation loosely corresponds with the following program, whether that be taking the colour palette from the actual programme itself or simply attempting to recreate the lively and bubbly atmosphere of a baking programme within a short animation. Implementing this introduces visual metaphor into the work, effectively making the view more interested in the animation, as allowing the viewer to figure out the connection between the animation and the following programme allows not only the animation to feel more connected but also rewards the viewer slightly for thinking and being rewarded with this new information, all of this is achieved through purely imagery and sound, I feel due to the fact that this is made for a television channel, that it appears entirely appropriate. Overall the rebrand seems entirely successful with a very innovative solution to a particularly complex issue, creating a brand that is “unmistakably BBC Two”.

Amsterdam Sinfonietta

The branding for Amstedam Sinfonietta intersted me due to the striking appearnce of the transforming type as image elements. I think the descion to brand the work this way is to combine it with the very princioples that the client “Amsterdam Sinfonietta” strives for. the key word being “Transformative”, as the typography on the page literally transforms to form different images within the page. Text both appearing and dissapearing to mimic sometimes lighting, or to seemingly react to the intensity of the music being played. I think the smooth transitions seen within the work are particularly vital as they naturally refelct the progression of a music piece, following a rythym like the music, seen to be in something simlar to a GIF format allowing the animations to reapeat themelves endlesssly, not unlike that of a musical chorus or an enitre song itself. however i think that some view classical music as being outdated and old, this may be perhaps why the branding has been made using modern, digital elements. to help remove the interpretation that this type of music and the company behind the musical pieces are only aiming for older generations, this is clearly to strive for a wider audience base by reaching out to a wider target market. the innovative and striking finish helps to quickly grasp any viewers attention immedatly and ivite them in to learn more about what this company is all about, I think they have done a wonderful job of this as i only had to quickly scroll though this article and i was struck by the quality of the work but still slightly mystified enough so that i only wanted to learn more, for that purpose i would consider this a very successful rebranding.