COP Week: I enjoy Harvard Referencing!

A little bit of an update and a reflection on my draft essays for interim submission...

I have now written and refined my essays to the point that I am happy with them and ready to submit. I think my image analysis is really in-depth and looks at the images from a variety of different stand-points, drawings comparisons from Zeegen's quote and debunking, it in a way. The images I have chosen are all illustrative in nature, with an overarching theme of politics, and show a deep understanding of design thinking and design doing, comment and content.

There is definitely room for improvement though, especially in terms of a theoretical lens in my triangulation piece. While I have looked at a variety of books, magazines, newspapers, manifestos, blog posts and websites, I couldn't find any relevant theoretical texts. This will most certainly be flagged up in my feedback and I am ready to improve on that!

I am so proud of my bibliography though. I found last year, during the Access to HE course, when writing my Postmodernism essay on whether a certain children's book could be considered Postmodern, that I enjoyed Harvard Referencing. A LOT. I think it has something to do with my sense of organisation, to the point of immaculacy at times, and how I love systematically sorting through information and making sure things are labelled correctly! This goes for all aspects of my life as a result of my severe visual impairment... everything has to have its place so that I know where it is!

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Bibliography of Awesomeness

• AdBusters (2000). First Things First Manifesto. Eye Magazine [Online]. Available at: http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/first-things-first-manifesto-2000 [Accessed: 4^th December, 2016].
• Alderson, R. (2014). Lawrence Zeegen talks his new book and his hopes for illustration. It’s Nice That [Online]. Available at: http://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/lawrence-zeegen-fifty-years-of-illustration [Accessed: 3^rd December, 2016].
• Alderson, R. (2013). You can see why Quebec-based illustrator Sébastian Thibault is so in demand. It’s Nice That [Online]. Available at: http://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/sebastien-thibault [Accessed: 10^th November, 2016].
• Bodleian Libraries. Posters Collection. [Online]. Available at: http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/cpa/collections/posters-collection [Accessed: 3rd December, 2016].
• Banks, A. and Caplin, S. (2010). Illustration: Pocket Essentials. East Sussex: The I L E X Press Limited.
• Benson, T.S. and Khrushchev, S. (2012). Drawing the Curtain: The Cold War in Cartoons. London: Fontanka Publications.
• Chow, S. (2015) Donald Trump Balloon New York Times Cover. [Online]. Available at: http://www.stanleychowillustration.com [Accessed: 10^th November, 2016].
• Creative Bloq. (2015). Does illustration need a ‘kick up the arse?'. [Online]. Available at: http://www.creativebloq.com/illustration/kick-arse-11513958 [Accessed: 16^th December, 2016].
• Cumming, L. (2012). David Shrigley: Brain Activity – Review. The Guardian [Online]. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/feb/05/david-shrigley-brain-activity-review [Accessed: 8^th January, 2017].
• Fenton, L. and Zeegen, L. (2^nd edn. 2012). The Fundamentals of Illustration. Switzerland: AVA Publishing SA.
• Garland, K. (1969) First Things First. [Online] Available at: http://kengarland.co.uk/KG-published-writing/first-things-first/ [Accessed: 5^th December, 2016].
• IndyStar [Online]. Available at: http://www.indystar.com/opinion/varvel/ [Accessed: 4th December, 2016].
• It’s Nice That. (2014). Opinion: Lawrence Zeegen is left unmoved by this year’s Pick Me Up. [Online]. Available at: http://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/opinion-lawrence-zeegen-pick-me-up [Accessed: 3^rd December, 2016].
• Kalman, T. (1998) Fuck Committees. Manifesto Project [Online]. Available at: http://www.manifestoproject.it/fuck-committees/ [Accessed: 5^th December, 2016].
• Life on Mercury. (2015). Post #25 – Outrageous! The psychology behind morality, mass indignation and self righteousness. [Online]. Available at: https://lifeonmercury.org/category/politics/ [Accessed: 10^th November, 2016].
• Monbiot, G. (2015). There are issues that really matter at this election. But Britain’s media are ignoring them. The Guardian [Online]. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/05/election-issues-media-ignoring-nation-arrested-development [Accessed: 3^rd December, 2016].
• Navasky, V. (2013). 15 Historic Cartoons That Changed the World. BuzzFeed [Online]. Available at: https://www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/victornavasky/15-historic-cartoons-that-changed-the-world [Accessed: 3^rd December, 2016].
• Overbey, D. (2011) Tibor Kalman’s Fuck Committees. Wordpress [Online]. Available at: https://odudesigntheory.wordpress.com/2011/01/26/tibor-kalmans-fuck-commitees/ [Accessed 2^nd January, 2017].
• Pibworth, M. (2012). David Shrigley - Hayward Gallery. Distorted [Online]. Available at: http://distortedarts.com/david-shrigley-brain-activity-hayward-gallery-london/ [Accessed: 28^th November, 2016].
• Pick Me Up: Graphic Arts Festival. [Online] Available at: http://pickmeup.somersethouse.org.uk [Accessed 3^rd December, 2016].
• Pringle, B. (2010). Conservative ‘Big Society’ Posters. Political Advertising [Online]. Available at: https://www.politicaladvertising.co.uk/2010/10/07/conservative-big-society-posters/amp/ [Accessed: 3^rd December, 2016].
• Pringle, B. (2010). Conservative posters on phone boxes. Political Advertising [Online]. Available at: https://politicaladvertising.co.uk/2010/04/19/conservative-posters-on-phone-boxes/ [Accessed: 3^rd December, 2016].
• Siddall, L. (2014). Isn’t it time the world of illustration had a bit of a kick up the arse? It’s Nice That [Online]. Available at: http://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/illustration [Accessed: 3^rd October, 2016].
• Varoom: The Illustration Report. (2014) Style Issue 26. London: Association of Illustrators.
• Wikipedia. (2016). Illustration. [Online]. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illustration [Accessed: 6^th December, 2016].
• Zeegen, L. (2009). What is Illustration? Switzerland: RotoVision

Election! Britain Votes at the People's History Museum

• I recently visited the 'Election! Britain Votes' exhibition at the People's History Museum in Salford, Greater Manchester.

• The exhibition highlighted 100 years of election campaigning posters from 1900 to 2010 as well as documenting the ephemera from the 2015 election.

• I visited with a group of visually impaired and blind people for an accessible visit so we had an audio description session of the posters and a historical background session in regards to who won the elections and how the posters were received at the time.

• Another interesting dimension to the visit was a huge gallery space of wall-sized interactive infographics - detailing how to vote, who can vote, forms of government, our system, the counting process and election night.

• A multicoloured line chart bordered the bottom of the walls depicting the popularity of the parties in the past century - showing the rise in Labour and the fall of the Liberals. They were the most popular in 1900 so it was fascinating to see, in context, how people began to respond more to Labour and their output for the everyman and the hard worker.

• Observing the growth of the political poster and what it can mean, I looked at the slogans and imagery emblazoned across all kinds of ephemera - the marketing strategies have remained very much the same over the past 100 years! Belittling other parties policies, depicting them as caricatures, scary characters, toxic and poisonous... to front page newspapers reporting scandals and commenting on someone's intelligence.

• I learned that the Queen can vote (though she tends not to so as to stay neutral) MPs can vote (and they do, usually for themselves!) and homeless people can vote. Nice!

• The replica of the famous number 10 door was my favourite! There was a prop box to dress up and have your picture taken so I decided to wear a St. Trinian's-style hat and a sash stating 'votes for women'.

Getting back to COP though, the evolution of illustrative and graphic design styles on the election posters had me reflecting a lot on how styles and trends change and how it impacts on effectively communicating a message THROUGH choice of medium. The infographics also had the cogs in my head turning! Using simple shapes and forms with flat expanses of colour made it very easy to understand the wall-length flow chart regardless of your age, reading ability and even sight (I was with elderly partially sighted people who understood how to read it). Simple vectors are legible and inclusive to all and this is something I want to consider for my visual journal. Could I retell the 'Fight the Nothingness' poster through vector shapes in Illustrator?

Lecture 10: Consumerism - Persuasion, Society, Brand, Culture

Suggested reading: Century of Self by Adam Curtis and No Logo by Naomi Klein (a bible of the 1990's documenting the Seattle protest of G8). Consumerism is a mechanism to keep us controlled. It acts on our innermost want and desires. We need to understand what it is that drives us to covet thing, to desire, to want things, to spend by exploring Sigmund Freud's ideas. He was the inventor of psychoanalysis as a method. He theorised the unconscious mind and the level of psyche that we are unaware of but affect our actions. Accessing the unconscious through dream analysis - the section of our psyche bubbling under the surface. Theory of human nature; we as a species retain our primitive, animalistic, instinctive behaviours. The desire to satiate every whim and become violent, if necessary. Conquer anything that becomes a barrier to our wants.

Prevent a certain status in the world we want to destroy them. Animalistic tendencies are incompatible to a society. Repression of the urge to satiate our desire. Civilised society cannot work if we all want sex and violence. Civilisation is incompatible with human instinct and human desire. A conflict emerges... However, he talks about the pleasure principle. If our desires are met we are momentarily happy and therefore pacified. The conscious desire is what we think about and are aware of. It is the tip of a giant iceberg which makes up Freud's model of personality structure. This is what we understand of ourselves, what our aptitude is. There is an unconscious block of repressed memories of the id - animalistic, childlike, monstrous, primal, the driving engine of our desires. It motivates our actions. The unconscious is where we store our dangerous experiences.

Animalistic tendencies are incompatible with civilisation as a whole and it makes people repress their instant gratification for the benefit of everyone else.The First World War shouldn't have come as a surprise; this is how we should expect people to behave. When there is a whole world where people are repressing over and over again there will be an eruption of apocalyptic violence. Those are the characteristics of a human. The single most important influence on the rise of consumerism came from Freud's nephew - Edward Bernays. Freud didn't just influence him with his work, but Bernays knew him and his work personally from a young age so was very familiar.

During the War, he was employed as a propagandist. He knew Freud's theories about people's desires and the unconscious and used his background and familiar knowledge to come up with a sophisticated form of advertising. He was employed to sell products to public relations, where this discipline of PR was created by him. Bernays fused advertising and organising public opinion together using propaganda to persuade the masses. He came up with strategies for making products, brands and companies really popular. He didn't shy away from any negative connotations with the word propaganda. He single-handedly organised a PR stunt during the 1929 Easter Day Parade to draw attention to women smoking cigarettes - as during this time it was a social taboo. It wasn't becoming of a woman of gentile status and not a classy, ladylike thing to do; which was difficult for tobacco companies as half of the country is their market! Glamorous actresses dresses as high-class debutantes and walked past the crowd lighting up a smoke. Bernays tipped the newspapers and received massive publicity for this stunt - lighting Torches of Freedom. All across America smoking was seen as a symbolic act of feminism and freedom, emancipation and equality of men. IT was so successful that the taboo was smashed overnight. However, it was so successful that the same thing had to be done again in the '50s with the Marlboro Man to make smoking appear more macho.

This system of influence was so successful that politicians wanted to start getting into it. 'If you can make people love smoking, you can make people love me!' Coolidge, a socially awkward man who wasn't very popular, went to bernays for assistance and by using a pop song he became cooler by extension. This was the beginnings of celebrity endorsement where celeb qualities were placed onto a brand. They weren't against paying doctors for pseudo-scientific reports - more Doctors smoke Camels, proven to sooth your throat, lose weight, curb cravings and so on. All of these tactics are attempts to to attach desirable qualities to things that otherwise wouldn't necessarily have those things. A celebrity's endorsement equates to desire of being in charge, desired, a leader, status and wealth. All of these desires that society doesn't allow us to realise for various different reasons. The system of this time is known as Fordism - originating from Henry Ford. This idea of creating things on a production line, accelerating the speed of production. Rather than micro production, mass production - caused by industrialisation - of a thing and applying it to every product by 1916. A society where in a small amount of time the market became saturated with stuff. It was a very real problem and the crisis of overproduction.

Companies wanted to continue to make more things but there was the danger that people think they already have this product or have enough stuff and do not want to purchase anymore. Overproduction and underconsumption... Brands become prevalent at this time; branding is not too dissimilar to public relations. Companies needed to distinguish their products in the market and start to give things human names to imbue human qualities; providing an essence of the home made, artisan connotations, craft behind it. Taps into our desire for human contact. Aunt Jemima, for example. Another route was to use the illusion of increasing sexual dire and virility. A man dominated the house, a man was in charge, so show advertising from his point of view. Adverts traded off the lifestyle you could have if you bought this product. A gateway to this life. Dominant, successful, loved. Access to desire. Through focus groups it was discovered that people didn't like pancake mix as they thought of it as cheating; embarrassed by the fact they couldn't cook. It made no difference to Aunt Jemima - they took our the dehydrated egg ingredient from the pancake mix so that consumers add their own egg and milk and people felt like they were cooking then. Attaching the idea of creativity and involvement to something then made it desirable.

What is created as a society is a shift from a society based on needs (providing what people need) to a society based on wants (creating a desire culture). People don't need things anymore, but want - desire - it. 'I need the latest car, not because I need it, but because I believe it will change my identity.' We understand ourselves as composites of these magical totems, accessing a certain status unaccessible to us. We become a collage of the totems around us. Vance Packard looked at 'The Hidden Persuaders' and 8 tactics of this age; selling emotional security, reassurance of worth, ego-gratification, creative outlets, love objects, sense of power, sense of roots, immortality. If you can attach the promise of emotional security in the belief they will be more content or less nervous, for example. The fridge freezer was sold on the advertising line of 'buy a fridge freezer and you will always have something in the freezer for your family. Your family can eat dinner together all the time.' However, research shows that owning a fridge freezer wastes much more food. Reassurance of worth - to be loved by someone, to feel like you are meaningful in the world, part of a group, community, society. Love objects - sexy, desirable or more powerful to a community. Roots - The American beer, the American car, embedding yourself into the idea of being a true American for buying the item.

Edward Bernays made a killing inventing this discipline of PR and he enjoys as much success as a celebrity. He had many high-status clients and changed the way brand culture was marketed. Other people started to look at PR as a social phenomenon and thought you could apply this to the organisation of society. Walter Lippman looked at forming a social system where people's needs are catered for and a PR group of people working, beyond government, will stop moments of eruption. Our pleasure principal is met and people are happy; meeting our desires through consumption. We might not really feel happy but through little acts of micro-consumption we are bonded, part of a community, loved and wanted. We believe that we can make a variety of independent choices and live meaningful lives. The extent of that is questionable; we live in the most unequal society ever. People aren't happy, we haven't mounted together to create a worker's revolution, we haven't followed a world war - we are sat content, passive. Making us poorer but making us think we are richer.

The great Depression threw America into crisis for years. Capitalism to keep expanding, recirculating to shareholders, only works when you have a profit. It reached a point where it couldn't expand anymore and there was a monster explosive depression. Mass unemployment, poverty, fortunes and incomes lost. Roosevelt came into power and instead of backing big business he said he would tax businesses more. This creates restraints on the market, the welfare state looked after people, businesses couldn't do what they wanted anymore. It was the start of a challenge to renegade market capitalism. Business didn't like that things would be regulated and clubbed together to try and lobby roosevelt out of power. They came up with a giant publicity stunt at the New York World Fair - a giant advert for consumerism. Consumerism is the best way of life, dragging us out of depression. It is the key to the problems of the world. Giant trade show disguised as entertainment; robots who would do your wooking, gadgets, space age cars driving themselves. It was organised by Bernays to depose a government. A world where it isn't governments or people but commodities and companies - giant Democracity. Dictatorship of big business; far from democracy. It goes back to Freud again who argued that democracy and freedom were incompatible with society.

Conclusion: You are not what you own. The public relations discipline and people to attempt to use those tactics do so to organise the world and society. We are all part of this system constantly falling into the trap. There must be more to humanity than just meaningless commodities. Even though we are reduced to this at times. Advertising still exists today and still works. Have we really moved on from the '20s or '50s? This isn't a historic concern, it is now. Consumerism is an ideological project. We believe that through consumption our desires can be met. The legacy of Bernays and his public relations discipline can still be felt in the 21st century and is still as at the forefront today. The conflicts between alternative models of social organisation continue to this day; Labour and Tories, G20 and grassroots activists. To what extent are our lives free under the Western Consumerist system?

Study Task 6: Focus

Presentation
My CoP presentation can be found here on ISSUU: https://issuu.com/kimberleyburrows/docs/cop.pptx_f66c2c76c9fa43

I think my presentation went really well! My peers were interested in the content and my opinions and commented on how clear I made the subject matter and the presentation itself. I explained my quote thoroughly, dissecting why I chose it and the fundamental elements of it - who it is by, what it is communicating, who it is criticising, the context that it exists in, and the extension / continuation of that, which was posted 2 years later. I made links to other texts I had read, images I had found and sketchbook development I had started relating to political imagery, design thinking and design doing. Talking about my project to other people helped me to understand it better and start to appreciate how much work I've actually done and put into this module. Someones I do feel like I haven't connected with CoP as well as I could have, but talking with my peers and seeing their projects made me feel a lot more confident with my own!

Peer Review

Next Steps
Now that I have collected texts, quotes, images and made a start on my visual journal - I now need to start combining all of these elements into my essays. I have already constructed my bibliography of everything I have looked at, and made a start on the bones of the writing, but need to properly sit down and give some thought to what I want to get across in my pieces.