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Does illustration have relevance as an influential and persuasive medium in today’s society?
Context 1 Unit 8 Research Report 2014 Anna D’Assaro - Das11335461 - BAGD stage 2
Introduction Thematic Exposition: Political Street Art
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Thematic Exposition: Illustrated Advertising Campaigns
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Case studies: Propaganda Posters
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Case studies: McBess - TFL
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Case studies: Street artist - Blek Le Rat
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Plan
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Introduction We live in a world where strong visual communication is everywhere around us. Eventually we become attracted to images on a daily basis while getting persuaded, encouraged, and sometimes manipulated to take or continue to take some action. The major points that I am considering in depth research is to find out whether illustration is relevant as an influential and persuasive method to communicate in today’s society, how the street has the potential to communicate effectively to the public and why hand drawn material is used to attract the audience in some advertising campaigns without the use of photography.
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Propaganda.
A weapon of war As both a starting point and a crucial part of my research I looked at how propaganda was used to persuade the public in previous times.
Taking into consideration how propaganda worked during these troubled times I feel that this form of communication can be addressed and connected with the same approach today with political street art and advertising campaigns even though they communicate from different perspectives.
During the second world war, illustration was used within propaganda posters as a weapon of war that was used to control public opinion, to fuel hate towards enemies and to kindle revanchist attitudes in society and the armed forces. During my research I found some very interesting theories In the book called “Propaganda and Persuasion�. Theorists Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell pointed out that the intent of persuasion is to serve the interests of both the persuader and the audience; Propaganda, however, generally serves only the interests of the person acting as its source.
The two thematic expositions that I am considering to look further into are about political street art and hand drawn illustration advertising campaigns.
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Political street art. Political street art uses illustration as powerful propaganda but in this day and age these can be recognised as illegal acts of vandalism. No more is the government persuading people to act out the target result of propaganda posters; it is now the civilians influencing others using cynical design messages and using public spaces as their system of communication. Over the years, the world’s city walls have become a political battlefield where the artists are the soldiers. Today, the choice of using illustration for 10
political purposes has perhaps become diminished when compared to the use of illustration in war time periods and I am very interested to discover why. However Street art has gained some notoriety for its presence in political campaigns such as Barack Obama’s 2008 candidacy for President of the United States by the street artist Shepard Fairey and it’s additionally been used to unify Egyptian women and children to promote social justice and women’s rights. Recently, Afghanistan’s first female street artist, Shamsia Hassani, spoke to Art Radar Asia about her drive to illustrate that art is stronger than war. During the past two years, street art has also become a new wave of expression for locals in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. It has gained media attention most recently in the Egyptian uprising and around the controversy with whistleblower, Edward Snowden. Whatever the content, there is no denying street art can provoke political debate.
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On the other hand, some advertising campaigns are using illustration as the main approach to attract their audience. The use of illustration, for example: interesting hand drawn images, always seemed to get some attention in the past and still at present has perhaps always been competing with photography. Both advertising and illustration have been dependant on each other ever since
Advert Illus the first marketing efforts were conceived and deployed. Before the popularity and feasibility of photographic imitation, advertising depended on illustration as the means of producing visual images to compliment the message of advertisements.
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tising & stration
Today, even with the successful creation of computer programs, it has not replaced traditional illustrators but has given them a new set of tools to create and develop varying visual styles of illustration. I feel it is important to understand why illustration is in use at certain times and how efficient it is today as a powerful communication medium. Thus illustrating a campaign is a matter of illustrating it distinctively. Successful communication results from the proper integration of two elements: the medium and the message. The medium refers to the means by which the message is delivered. The message, of course, is the content.
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Illustration allows you to provide a snapshot that simplifies complex concepts.
Illustration allows you to provide a snapshot that simplifies complex concepts or helps investors visualise products and/or places of business. A good illustration can capture attention far quicker and can also be more visually appealing than text, especially at first glance. This is the reason that a considerable amount of advertising campaigns are accompanied by illustrations. Perhaps it’s my love for drawing that originated from my childhood days, which drives me to seek out great illustrations and drawings in advertisements. 16
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Second World’s War Propaganda posters.
Second world war posters were aimed at the influence of citizens to join the military, buy war bonds, join the workforce and sacrifice in ways that many people in the U.S.A, Australia, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere have a hard time imagining today. However, today are cherished for their campy nostalgia and patriotic messages.
participate actively in the war effort in various ways. Some of the posters aimed at women, who played a huge part in the second world war, persuaded them to join military and civilian services. These posters targeted a sense of duty and national pride to encourage women, especially young single women to get more involved in the war efforts. One of the posters I have been taking into consideration is “we can do it!� designed by Howard Miller.
Propaganda posters were, in reality, sales tools. Their aim was to sell the population as a whole on the war, and to get them to
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“In short, the stories within my work are more or less what happens to me. I guess just in a very extrapolated way so there isn’t a story, per say, it’s more about living with those characters which are a representation of me, or people that I know” Matthieu Bessudo, best known as Mc Bess is a French illustrator living in London. He produces very intriguing surrealist illustrations with a unique style that can be recognized in an instant. The main character of his illustrations is based on Bessudo himself. He also tends to abstain from colours creating the majority of his illustrations by using black and white.
“In short, the stories within my work are more or less what happens to me. I guess just in a very extrapolated way so there isn’t a story, per say, it’s more about living with those characters which are a representation of me, or people that I know” Mc Bess has recently been commissioned to work with Transport for London to create a new poster campaign. At the moment these posters are shown on almost every Tube and station platform in London, and to emphasize some of the passenger travel behavior that can disrupt our journeys, to remind us all that a little courtesy can make travelling better for everybody.
McBess
Referencing to an interview between Mc Bess and ‘the big book of character design” it is fascinating to understand what his work is about and how his work connects with his personal life.
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Transport for London.
According to Transport for London, McBess created both the ‘behaviours’ posters and the iconic logo for the campaign. All the typography is hand-drawn and McBess has also added himself as a character in many of the posters
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Blek Le Rat.
everywhere, just like street art”. He has also been credited with being the inventor of the full life-sized stencil inspired by Richard Hambilton who painted full size human figures, also considered to be the godfather of street art in the early 80s in New York City. Blek was arrested in the early 90s while stenciling a replica of Caravaggio’s Madonna and Child and from that moment he has worked mainly with pre-stenciled posters to avoid further arrests if caught. According to Shepard Fairey “Blek le Rat’s stencils distill the essence of the human struggle into poetically concise images. Blek shows clarity in his work, he makes every stylised mark count, yielding art that is at once personal and universal, economical in gesture, and bountiful in statement.” I find his artwork a crucial showcase that can be taken into consideration for its originality and to understand what has pushed Blek to expose his political views in the streets as an influential medium.
Xavier Prou known as Blek Le Rat is believed to be the first graffiti artist in Paris in the early 80s, the originator of stencil graffiti art and first to transform stencil from basic lettering into pictorial art. Today at the age of 63 he is still continuing to produce art related to street culture and expressing global issues. He began to print stencil art of rats in the street walls of Paris describing them as “the only free animal in the city”, and the one, which “spreads the plague 28
“Blek le Rat’s stencils distill the essence of the human struggle into poetically concise images. Blek shows clarity in his work, he makes every stylised mark count, yielding art that is at once personal and universal, economical in gesture, and bountiful in statement.�
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I am considering analysing the reasons why drawn or illustrated imagery is persuasive in a different way than photography is.
Plan.
I feel large-scale images and posters play a pivotal role within advertising and marketing, mainly because we are exposed to Illustrations and various kinds of images from a young age. These are used for education purposes from the very beginning of human life. Illustration can be used to draw attention to certain information, as it is often what a person sees first even before reading the text that usually accompanies the illustration that makes the greatest impact.
As a starting point and experimentation based on my research for unit 8, I tried to connect unit 7 to my major project by focusing on the idea of making an illustration as part of the artifact that I am selling at the pop-up shop with the intent of spreading a significant social issue. After carefully thinking about social issues that are effecting me personally, I decided to base my message on how we sometimes can be judgmental towards other individual’s external appearance and so I wanted to influence people to think that it is not how people look on the outside that matters but it is what’s on the inside that really matters.
I am considering setting up an interview with the illustrator Mc Bess to refine my research of why illustration is chosen to be part of such an amazing social campaign, like the one he has done for travel for London. During my research I came across some very interesting street artists in London, some of them come from Italy of whom I am already keeping in touch and coordinating various viewings in London with.
The reason I used a tote bag as my final object was so that it can be seen in different locations and perhaps be an effective route to spread my message. Furthermore I am hoping to get some feedback from the public to identify whether my message has persuasive meaning to it and also to understand what other peoples’ thoughts are concerning persuasive illustration. 30
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References Abduzeedo Design Inspiration, (2011) Interview with Matthieu Bessudo (aka. Mcbess). [online] Available at: http://abduzeedo. com/interview-matthieu-bessudo-aka-mcbess. [Web interview] Beautiful Losers Documentary. (2008). [film] BIG MOTHER. (2014). Available at: http://blog.mcbess.com/ post/7650615316/big-mother. [Web magazine] Blekmyvibe.free.fr, (2013). Blek le Rat. Available at: http://blekmyvibe.free.fr. [Web site] Creativereview.co.uk, (2013). Creative Review - Travel Better London posters by McBess. [online] Available at: http:// www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2013/november/mcbess-tube-campaign. [online] Cull, N., Culbert, D. and Welch, D. (2003).
Propaganda and mass persuasion. 1st ed. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO. [book] Designweek.co.uk, (2013). McBess teaches the art of courtesy | We Like | Design Week. [online] Available at: http://www. designweek.co.uk/we-like/mcbess-teachesthe-art-of-courtesy/3037283.article. Hall, S. (2007). This means this, this means that. 1st ed. London: L. King Pub. [book] Klanten, R., Bieber, A., Alonzo, P. and Krohn, S. (2011). Art & agenda. 1st ed. Berlin: Gestalten. [book] MacLuhan, M. (2005). The medium is the message. 1st ed. Corte Madera: Gingko Pr. [book] Mathieson, E. and TĂ pies, X. (2007). Street art and the War on Terror. 1st ed. London: Rebellion Books Ltd. [book]
McBess. (2013). The big book of character design. [book] Moore, C. (2010). Propaganda prints. 1st ed. London: A & C Black Publishers. [book] Morris, T. and Goldsworthy, S. (2008). PR - a persuasive industry?. 1st ed. Basingstoke [England]: Palgrave Macmillan. [book] Obey Giant, (2013). OBAMA HOPE article about Obama. Available at: http://www.obeygiant.com/headlines/ obama-hope. [online] Obeygiant.com, (2014). OBEY GIANT - WORLDWIDE PROPAGANDA DELIVERY. [online] Available at: http://www. obeygiant.com. [online] Picture this. (2005) 1st ed. London: Central Saint Martins College
of Art & Design in association with the Herbert Press. [book] Rennie, P. (n.d.). Modern Publicity/ advertising and Illustration 1920-1970. [PDF on line] Vimeo, (2012). GRAFFITI WARS. Available at: http://vimeo.com/39575088. [online] Wacawek, A. (2011). Graffiti and street art. 1st ed. New York: Thames & Hudson. [book] Wright, M. (2004). If you're not a terrorist then stop asking questions. 1st ed. New York: Seven Stories. [book]