Earth Artefact
Matt McGough U1458749
Project Plan
Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6 - Read the brief and outline any key information and identify the point of the project
- Begin to develop any initial ideas and focus research to reflect these initial ideas.
- Continue in-depth research
- Begin initial research around The Golden Record
- Start collecting mood boards of related and relevant imagery on Pinterest
- Begin practical development of this idea (sketches, initial concept of style etc)
- Gather any feedback
- Gather any feedback
- Produce a mind map for the project and begin to generate ideas for the brief. - Gather any feedback
- Start to focus efforts on one idea
- Continue development of the idea, clarify a visual style and develop a strong identity for this outcome
- Continue development of the idea, clarify a visual style and develop a strong identity for this outcome
- Finish product with any final details and finshes
- Gather any feedback
- Begin to finalise the product and consider final medium and presentation
- Evaluate the product and the process undertaken
- Gather any feedback
- Print if necessary
- Consider presentation
and
create
final
- Hand in / present final product - Get any feedback and await assement/ marking
Mind/Road Map
The Voyager and ‘The Golden Record’ ‘The Golden Record’ is best described as ‘a message in a bottle thrown into the vast ocean’ that is Space.
“ This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours.” - Jimmy Carter
(US President)
The records were launched in August and September 1977, aboard two probes that were part of the Voyager space programme from NASA, which Voyager 1 & 2 launched into space with no particular destination in mind. The Golden Record was a gold plated copper phonographic record that contained written messages by the sitting US President Jimmy Carter and Secretary General of the UN, Kurt Waldheim. It also contained greetings in 55 languages from around the world, 90 minutes of various examples of music from across a variety of countries and genres, a selection of sounds of Earth which included sounds from natural and beings and manmade objects such as trains, jetplanes, crickets and elephants. The selected content should provide a good representation of the inhabitants of planet Earth, should the probes encounter a race from another planet, solar system or even another galaxy. The committee responsible for what was put onto the record also included 116 images of scientific nature - detailing human anatomy, the solar system, animals, amongst other examples from a variety of scenarios from across the spectrum of humanity such as group of children, a man from Guatemala, a sprint race and a school room.
Initially Carl Sagan, the head of the NASA committee set up to organise the Golden Record project, planned to include a photograph that showed fully naked men and women, however NASA declined this request but allowed a line drawing instead but was limited to a silhouette, however a diagram depicting the evolution of vertebrate organism featured diagrams of naked men and women which featured external organs. All this was selected in an attempt to portray the diversity of life and culture on planet Earth. On the cover of the record was also symbolic instructions as to how to play the Golden Records) - each of the Voyager Probes carried copies of the Golden record. However both Voyager probes were sent off in slightly different directions and launched at different dates, probably to increase the likelihood of contacting another space faring race.
Research The 55 recorded greetings include (alphabetically); Akkadian - language used in ancient Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq) Ancient Greek Amoy - dialect used in Southeast Asia and southern China Arabic Aramaic - a hybrid of contains both Arabic and Hebrew Armenian Bengali - spoken in parts of India and Bangladesh Burmese Cantonese Czech Dutch English French Ganda - a language spoken mainly in Southern Uganda German Gujarati - a language spoken in Western India Hebrew Hindi Hittite - an extinct language spoken in modern day Turkey Hungarian Ila - a language spoken in Zambia Indonesian Italian Japanese Kannada - a language spoken in parts of India Korean Latin - an extinct language spoken by the Ancient Romans Mandarin Marathi - a language spoken in parts of India Nepali Nguni - a language spoken in southern Africa Nyanja - a language spoken in central-southern Africa
Oriya - a language spoken in parts of India Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Quechua - a language spoken in the Andes Rajasthani - a language spoken in parts of India Romanian Russian Serbian Sinhalese - a language spoken in Sri Lanka Sotho - a language spoken in Lesotho and South Africa Spanish Sumerian - language used in ancient Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq) Swedish Telugu - a language spoken in parts of India Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese Welsh Wu - a vartiant of Mandarian Chinese
Carl Sagan “ The spacecraft [Voyagers] will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this ‘bottle’ into the cosmic ‘ocean’ says something very hopeful about life on this planet.” - Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan was the David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences and Director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies at Cornell University. He played a leading role in the American space program since its inception. He was a consultant and adviser to NASA since the 1950’s, briefed the Apollo astronauts before their flights to the Moon, and was an experimenter on the Mariner, Viking, Voyager, and Galileo expeditions to the planets. He helped solve the mysteries of the high temperatures of Venus (answer: massive greenhouse effect), the seasonal changes on Mars (answer: windblown dust), and the reddish haze of Titan (answer: complex organic molecules). In their posthumous award to Dr. Sagan of their highest honor, the National Science Foundation declared that his “research transformed planetary science… his gifts to mankind were infinite.” Sagan was also heavily involved in the production of the Pioneer Plaque - a similar, earlier and much more simpler version of the Golden Record that was placed on the Spacecrafts Pioneer 10 & Pioneer 11, that were launched in the early 1970’s. Sagan was asked to produce the message for the plaque as he was seen as the one of the worlds leading authorities on extra-terrestrial communication at the time.
Research Included on this Pioneer plaque was a Pulsar map of the Solar system, a map showing Pioneers origins within our solar system as well as the rest o the solar system, a basic diagram of male and female anantomy, and a diagram depicting the hyperfine transition of Hydrogen.
Sagan On Voyager In the annals of exploration, the achievements of the Voyager spacecraft are unprecedented. The piddling journeys of Columbus and Magellan spanned a few tens of thousands of miles on the watery surface of one small world. Voyagers 1 and 2 have traveled billions of miles through the ocean of space, exploring dozens of new worlds along the way and revolutionizing our knowledge of the solar system in which we live. And as a gift of the brilliant mission design, these robot ships are no longer bound by the Sun’s gravity. They have passed the outermost planets and are on their way to the cold, dark near-vacuum that constitutes interstellar space. Nothing can stop them. Their radio transmitters are unlikely to work beyond the year 2020. Thereafter, they will wander silently and forever in the realm of the stars.
If you could send a long message to such extraterrestrial beings - words, pictures, sounds, music - what would you say? How would you describe us? What would you leave out? Could you communicate intelligibly to very different beings with a wholly independent evolution? In 1977, at NASA’s behest, a few of us had a remarkable opportunity to attempt such a (one-way) communication. Frank Drake suggested not a plaque, but a phonograph record.
Who knows who’s out there? Perhaps the rest of the Milky Way Galaxy is populated by desolate, wasteland worlds circling a hundred billion stars. Or maybe the Galaxy is rich in life forms and intelligence and technology much further beyond our reach than the Voyagers are beyond the reach of Columbus and Magellan. Someday - maybe millions of years in the future - one of these ghostly, derelict ships may be detected and captured by the representatives of some devastatingly advanced interstellar culture. They will wonder about the ship builders.
This is what the extraterrestrials will learn about us, should the spacecraft - now the fastest and farthest machines ever launched by the human species one day encounter someone else in the depths of space.
As described in the book, Murmurs of Earth, we designed and prepared the record to carry a rich message to the stars - 116 pictures and diagrams about our global civilization and our species, greetings, samples of the world’s great music, the brain waves of a young woman in love and much else.
A billion years from now, when everything on Earth we’ve ever made has crumbled into dust, when the continents are changed beyond recognition and our species is unimaginably altered or extinct, the Voyager record will still speak for us. - Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan
Initial Ideas And Concepts A modern cover of The Golden Record
A beginners guide to Planet Earth
An Advert for Humanity - New Planet Wanted
A Tourist Guide to Taking Over The Planet
Simply a modern retake of the original Golden record that was produced in 1977, whilst modernising the content and removing content that has since been proved wrong or is no longer used (eg removing most of the extinct languages or scientific elements which have been disproven or altered in the intervening 38 years).
Assuming that one of the Voyager probes was intercepted by another space faring race, and that this race was curious enough to find Earth, this guide would aim to educate the alien organism about life on Earth, its inhabitants and the physical aspects of the Planet itself.
The human race is quickly running out of space to house its ever increasing population, this combined with the irreversible effects of climate change, means soon enough humanity will need to seek new accommodation. An advert would therefore need to sent out to see if there was any race out there willing to share a planet with humans, and in order to do this humanity would need to present it, and its culture, and the best light possible to potential suitors.
What if the Voyager probes were interceptied by a less than friendly race of Aliens, and that they used the Golden Record to gather intel on a planet and its inhabitants that could be enslaved or could be used for food (not all aliens are friendly like ET and the Autobots). This guide would aim to make taking over planet Earth as easy and as hassle-free as possible for humanity’s new masters, educating them as to who talk to and the best and worst bits of the planet and its inhabitants.
David McCandless “ By visualizing information, we turn it into a landscape that you can explore with your eyes, a sort of information map. And when you’re lost in information, an information map is kind of useful” - David McCandless
David McCandless is a London based British designer who is most known for his work in the field of data visualisation and infographics, having produced two books of his infographics (“Information is beautiful” and “Knowledge is beautiful”). The graphic on the right is a time line of a predicted and forecast events that will effect people on this planet, the planet itself and events in Space and our solar system between a thousand (1,000) and one hundred quintillion (100,000,00 0,000,000,000,000) years from now. The graphic was produced by McCandless’ IIB Studio for BBC’s Future website. This exaple is particularly good as it includes many events that will occur in space and effect our future as a race and planet. The main design theme of this a new take on a traditional time line. Traditionally, time lines are presented in a horizontal, left to right manner as to match the convention of English speaking nations who read from left to right, but it is not unheard of for time lines to be presented in a vertical manner - from top to bottom, but again these are usually presented in a straight line. This timeline is subverted somewhat from convention, it isn’t presented in accordance with convention, and instead uses a vertical presentation (probably in order to fit with the scroll nature of the intended destination of the BBC Future website) and the time line weaves from left to right in
Research a smooth curving fashion but as it comes towards the end of the time period in question the time line weaves less as the events become less frequent. Other keys presentational devices include the addition of the key in the top right of the page which explains some of the communicational devices such as the size of the circles and the different colours used and what exactly these represent. To avoid cluttering and over crowding areas of the time line where multiple events occur around a similar milestone (such as 100,000 thousand years from now), McCandless designed a device that would allow for separation and clarity. He draws a dotted circle around the milestone in this example, and places the dots that represent the events on this dotted circle. This allows the events that occur at the same time to still be associated with the time line whilst making it clear that there is a few different events occurring in the same time frame. Using the dots on the time line before the connecting them to a dot on the other end of line also allows for clarity and separation, whilst providing a lot of information because these lines are too not straight and can be drawn any length from the time line in order to give each item its own space - again avoid over populating the page.
McCandless has also used icons and text accompany his time line. He has used one colour flat vector icons to represent the main theme of the highlighted point - I have shown an example about the end of life on earth here McCandless has used an image of the grim reaper - iconic of death. The caption copy serves to inform, and educate as well as lighten the mood when talking about the more macabre subjects such as death. I feel that this strikes the right balance between education and entertainment in terms of tone in what is clearly and educational tool. The next thing to notice about the design of this infographic is how the path of the time line seems to mirror the events within the time frame. As the planet inevitable starts to ‘wind down’ the width of the weave is drastically reduced when compared to the top half of the page. McCandless is also clever in how he changes the scale of the years to correspond with this reduced area. At the top of the page the gap between the lines are quite wide but as you get towards the bottom the spacing is reduced drastically to the point that it looks like they have all joined together. Again this feels as if it matches the feeling that the earth’s time is coming to a close. McCandless is also clever in how he jumps some of the less relevant time spans in the future because they are empty by using a jagged lined to indicate the jump in time.
Tomasz Biernat “ Often random places or objects can be an inspiration, and of course other artists.” - Tomasz Biernat
Tomasz Biernat is a Polish designer based in the Polish capital Warsaw. Biernat’s portfolio includes automotive design, fine art, branding, and packaging but his passion is for packaging and T-shirt designs, but he is most well known for his typography.
Research is still very popular. This colour scheme was probably chosen to appeal to the magazines readers Another thing to notice about this particular piece is the selection of fonts that he has used.
All the fonts are very masculine. All the type fonts are His typographic style has quite square, bold and have a a certain vintage edge to it, as he large footprint, either in terms says that his inspiration comes of width or height. There is also from “looking at old newspapers only one script based font, which from the years 1900-1930, as again is quite masculine due to well as old advertisements on the the thick stroke and the heavy walls or in the interiors of historic right lean across the top of the buildings.” But he is also often characters. The deep red colour inspired by random places or used for most of the text and obejcts as well as other artists. the accents in some of the none red copy as well as some of the I really like Biernat’s style decorative touches, is again quite because of the range of fonts, masculine and can be associated font styles, and little decorative some of the passion and anger touches that he adds to the that is connected with contact work all look very different yet, sports such as wrestling. somehow they don’t appear to clash with each other. The top image is of a quote by British science writer He uses a style that could (fiction and non-fiction) Sir Arthur often be found on chalk boards C Clarke - who co-wrote the outside drinking establishments, screenplay for the film 2001: and this style is emphasised Space Odessey with the films by the fact he often uses white producer and director Stanley lettering on a dark background. Kubrick, and subsequently a book This white on black background by the same title in 1986. I feel also adds to the vintage feel of his that the sentiments expressed work - as if his work was created in this quote are similar to those before colour print was possible. of President Carter when the Voyager probes was launched in Having said this, he has the late 70’s. also produced works in full colour, for example, when commissioned To accompany the quote to create a peice for WWE Biernat has decorated this piece Magazine he used a patriotic with what appears to be space colour scheme of red, white, related details such as planetary and blue, the colours of the flag orbits and stars, as these relate of the United States - the home to the subject being discussed of WWE, and where wrestling with the quote, but the same
can not be said entirely about the font choice used within the piece. None of the fonts appear to be particular space or futuristic in theme - accept the font used for the word ‘universe’. The mix of angular shapes, curved edges and straight lines feel as if they could be some kind of alien writing - or had been in 1980’s science fiction shows such as Star Trek. Biernat’s style appears to be using one font per line of copy - regardless of how many words are in each line. Most of the font’s used in this peice are all caps serif fonts but the size of these are quite small, the words in a bigger point size tend to be in a more decorative font. Examples such as the word ‘two’ and universe’ are much more elaborate, the word ‘two’ is in sentence case, and is in a more script styled font. I like how the word has been outlined and then half filled to add to the decoration, theme and style of this particular piece. The example in the middle on the right hand side is part of wine packaging from Biernat. This examples contains a lot more variety and information, and as such contains lots of different fonts. The flow of reading the copy is much more broken up, this may be due to the layout, the change in fonts, or just the natural flow of the phonetics of the word choice. This example is a little less decorative but much more informative - but this example has a different end product to the other examples I have included.
Front Cover Developement “ In the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people angry and has widely been considered as a bad move.” - The Book/The Guide, from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Development This is my second development of the front cover design which is much improved. I have removed the various different styles and stuck with one main style - the 3d extrusion effect as I felt this was the most appropriate, and the one that fitted best with the styling of the film posters in my research. The style have gone for, looks similar to the effects of travelling through hyperspace as seen in various sci-fi movies such as Star Trek and Star Wars. The font I have used “Outage Cut” also fits in with the theme of space and space travel because of the clean and angular approach taken by the typographer makes it feel modern and perhaps futuristic in style.
Using this is the style through the main part of the title has helped create a better This was my first attempt of Brian” film (as that film has a cohesion and maintained a more at cratin the front cover for my similar comedic tone to the tone I professional image to the cover. tourist guide to taking over the want to take with the copy in my guide) and the “Hitchikers Guide planet idea. The font I have used for to the Galaxy” film because that is the first part of the title is Bank It uses the same idea as a film based in space but doesn’t Gothic in a medium weight, I most of Biernat’s work by using take itself too seriously. used this because it has a similar a variety of fonts and font styles styling to the main font - Outage Some of the feedback I got Cut - in that it feels more modern in his work, as well as some decorative touches to make it from this design was that there and angular than some other more visually appealing. Ive tried as too many different different fonts, but it also has enough of a to use imagery related to space styles in there and as such lead personality on its own in order to travel in my cover such as adding to a lack of cohesion and a lack contrast with the other font used, a sun, or lines that could either be of a coherent voice. Some of the whilst maintaining the desired rings around a planet or lines that advice I recieved was to take a cohesion. I did not create the represent a planet or a moons look at the Life of Brian poster 3d effect on this part of the title orbit around a star or planet. again and reduce the number of because it was not necessary and styles and perhaps experiment would have confused the page/ I took inspiration from the with the point size of the different viewer because of the difference posters of Monty Python’s “Life words to increase the cohesion. in the fonts I have used.
After this, it was recommended to me that I reduce some of the opacity on the lettering in order to create more of the 3d effect, because this would allow the viewer to see more of the stars as well as the shapes behind the text which actually create this 3d effect.
Content Ideas/ Reasearch
Facts about the inhabitants, eg population,
NASA Johnson Space Centre, Houston, TX, USA
NASA Kennedy Space Centre, Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA
The Pentagon, Arlington, VA, USA
Research
MILITARY
Ratio of Land to water etc Chemical Composition of the Earths Atmosphere / Air
Nuclear Weaponry
SCIENCE & TECH
CIA HQ, Langley, VA, USA
NATO HQ, Brussels, Belgium
The Internet and Mobile Phones Conventional Ballistic Wepaonary
GCHQ, Cheltenham, UK
CONTENT
If you were going to take over Earth, what would want to see before you destroyed it? Where would you need to target in order to dominate the planet?
Quotes about Humanity & Human Nature
Christ the Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
QUOTES
Eiffel Tower, Paris, France Pyramids of Giza, Egypt
LANDMARKS
Mount Everest, Himalayas, China/Nepal/Tibet
Notable Figures on Space and Alien Life
Great Wall Of China Mariana Trench, Pacific Ocean
Flags and Pictures
The Kremlin European Union
POLITICAL
The Reichstag (German Parliament) The United Nations
White House House of Parliament & Downing Street
Science and Sci-Fi Leading Politicians Past & Present
Places of Interest “ Not all those who wander are lost”
Research
If aliens did make it to earth, would they know how to navigate around Earth? Would they know how to get the Statue Of Liberty, if you told them that it was on Liberty Island, New York City? Would they understand the concept of different cities
United States
and nations? Or would they need another form of navigation/ directions to find what their way around the planet? Would they need a GPS navigational system or would co-ordinates be sufficient? How would Aliens navigate our planet?
Europe
- J.R.R. Tolkien
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) Headquarters Brussels, Belgium 50.8762˚N, 4.4220˚E European Quarter Location of many EU buildings Brussels, Belgium 50.8400˚N, 4.3800˚E
United Nations Headquarters New York City, NY 40.7494˚N, 73.9681˚W
The Kremlin Moscow, Russia 55.7517˚N, 37.6178˚E
Espace Leopold European Parliament Brussels, Belgium 50.8385˚N, 4.3762˚E
CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) Headquarters Langley, VA 38.9517˚N, 77.1467˚W
The Reichstag Berlin, Germany 52.5186˚N, 13.3760˚E
The Eiffel Tower Paris, France 48.8582˚N, 2.2945˚E
GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters), Cheltenham, United Kingdom 51.8995˚N, 2.1243˚W
Allee du Printemps European Parliament Strasbourg, France 48.5974˚N, 7.7688˚E
Wembley Stadium London, United Kingdom 51.5558˚N, 0.2797˚W
Vatican City Rome, Italy 41.9033˚N, 12.4533˚W
10 Downing Street London, United Kingdom 51.5034˚N, 0.1276˚W
The Parthenon Athens, Greece 37.9715˚N, 23.7267˚E
The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, DC 38.8977˚N, 77.0366˚W The Pentagon Washington, DC 38.8710˚N, 77.0560˚W Johnson Space Centre Houston, TX 29.5630˚N, 95.0910˚W Kennedy Space Centre Cape Canaveral, FL 28.5241˚N, 80.6508˚W
Buckingham Palace London, United Kingdom 51.5010˚N, 0.1416˚W Houses of Parliament Palaces Of Westminister London, United Kingdom 51.4992˚N, 0.1247˚W
Rest Of The World
The Great Wall Of China China 40.6769°N, 117.2319°E Pyramids of Giza, Giza, Egypt 29.9761˚N, 31.1327˚E Mount Everest Himalayas, Nepal/China 27.9881°N, 86.9253°E Mariana Trench Western Pacific Ocean 11.3500˚N, 142.2797˚W The Amazon Rainforest South America (mainly Northern Brazil) 3.1600˚S, 60.0300˚W
Christ The Redeemer Statue Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 22.9519˚S, 43.2108˚W 10 Downing Street London, United Kingdom 51.5034˚N, 0.1276˚W Buckingham Palace London, United Kingdom 51.5010˚N, 0.1416˚W Houses of Parliament Palaces Of Westminister London, United Kingdom 51.4992˚N, 0.1247˚W