Design Principles SB2 Briefing (inc. Susan Sontag Research)

DESIGN PRINCIPLES STUDIO BRIEF TWO:

- submission deadline March 5th 13:30-15:30
Hand in:

• Blog
• Minimum of 6 x design boards 
• 3 posters

3 posters based on a chosen theme (uncomfortable images in the media) to be shown in public space.
- 1 type only
- 1 image only
- 1 image and type
Need to show, use and understand previous study tasks from DP studio brief one.
Think about what is meant by image, could be a diagram, doesn't need to be a photo.

Submit to: @oripeau
- black and white only.
- pasted up like billboards.
-prefer typographic images.
- if got bleed inc crop marks.
- printed onto white paper, can be colour if specified.

Things to consider for a topic:
Trolls
Neo-cons and snowflakes
Triggered, Gaslighting
Gentrification
Gender identity
Immigration
Student Debt
Censorship
Brexit
Austerity
Body Politics
Cultural appropriation
Wealth
Status
Local issue

How it changes opinions?
How it manipulates?
How it's influenced propaganda?

Ask Self:
What makes these ideas uncomfortable?
What is the purpose?
What is the image for?
- keep supporting text, could use later on.

What's the purpose?
Informing: the the graphics about imparting knowledge, informing the audience.
Persuasion: to convince or change the thought of another.
Decoration: aesthetic function enjoyment or pleasure, intended to please the audience.
Magic: 'making something different from what is truly is'.


Look up Packards something of persuasion for COP.
Look up Art workers coalition 


SUSAN SONTAG Contemplation of images is to fulfil 3 needs:
- to steel oneself against weakness.
- to make self more numb.
- to acknowledge the existence of the incorrigible.
What do you do with the knowledge of scaring images, how do we respond to these?
What emotions would be desirable?
- sympathy or suspicion.

SYMPATHY, a valid response?
- spectator 'suggests a link between faraway sufferers... and the privileged viewer that is simply untrue'
- impotence'..mystified our real relationship to power'
- innocence' we feel we are not accomplices to what caused the suffering.'
to that extent it can be an impertinent if not an appropriate response.

SUSPICION, a valid response?
'Flooded with images of the sort that once used to shock and arouse indignation, we are losing our capacity to react'
'We live in a "society of spectacle”.  Each situation has to be turned into a spectacle to be real-that is, interesting-to us. People themselves aspire to become images: celebrities. Reality has abdicated. There are only representations: media.'

“It is common to say that war, like everything else that appears to be real, is mediatique. …that the war would be won or lost not by anything that happened in Sarajevo, or indeed in Bosnia, but by what happened in the media.”

- we cynically assume images have little effect through over saturation.

- we are cynical f the images ability to record reality as it really is.

- we're cynical of their actual purpose and intentions. 

Ecology of images that there should be a cutting back of the endless on-slaw of images, should be used in a limited way to that their effect will come back. have more of the intended effect on the audience. - recognises that there isn't going to be an ecology of images. 

- the ecology of images is a conservative critique, it assumes that every spectator is equal, that images play the same role in the lives of different people. So the western reader and viewer, who has the right to say what is the maximum and minimum suffering. 

Any use of images need to appear real. 

“WHAT TO DO with such knowledge as photographs bring of faraway suffering?”

“our capacity to respond to our experiences with emotional freshness and ethical pertinence”-Susan Sontag