Campaign

Recording:

For this project we were asked to create a campaign for an issue we felt quite strongly about. I found that during my job as a magician I found it hard to get peoples attention due to them being on thier phones and people in general living a cyber life. in this instance I thought it would be suitable to carry out an anti mobile phone campaign that would help people to connect more to real life rather than living in a cybernetic one. Throughout the week I found that it would be suitable to ask people on how they felt about thier phone and how long they could go without it. Surprisngly most people had answered that it would be difficult even for 30 minutes whilst they were occupied with anyting else to leave the phone alone. Because of this many people had also come to the conclusion that the phone was part of them and that even having a phone that wasnt a smartphone would be difficult for them. Due to this I found that previous campaigns had been done to stop people usiong the phones on the road and areas with fast cars however none were created with the intention of getting people off thier phones completely so they could actually socialise in real life with real people. This in addition to my own survey of asking people how many hours they spent daily on thier mobile phones had pushed me to invesigate the topic further. Looking at works on the distinction between man and machine from the Serpentine gallery and that from Gilbert and george I found that my best outcome would be a series of posters and slogans displayed in schools and London undergroud station tunnels where most if not all londoners are ticking away at thier phones.

Reflecting:

Throughout this project I felt very strongly first about the subject choice, and how universal it could be. As mobiles are something that everyone has it would only make sense that this campaign whether a poster or a short movie would be something that would grab the attention of anyone who had a smarphone in thier pocket old or young. Overall with this project I felt that it was difficult to create a logo of the person (myself) wanting to get across this point and also how it could be applied elsewhere and not only just as a poster. Because of this I eventually came to the realisation that my idea of turning it into a possible brand would be extending the project too far and that this would require time looking into oranisations ans such that already investigate these social issues. I then found a strong idea could lie in the use of photography on london underground trains and the sides of the trains. This could create a very thought provoking state of mind within pople looking at it if the campaign were to be portrayed or used as such as people daily on trains do nothing but pplug into thier smartphones. In this case the use of photography on actual forms of transport could be very effective. One of my outcomes being a poster with my slogan displayed on the top and bottom I felt was very effective through the use of black and white imagery. In addition the fact that the photo I took for one of the posters showed different ways of accessing information (Books and Mobiles) also made me think that this could invoke a subliminal thought in my audiences mind on how they see themselves when it comes to thier own social interactions and how a mobile phone has taken that away from them.

Contextualising: 

When looking at contextual sources and artists for inspiration, my main influence I found was jonathan Barnbrook, who stated that "design should be used as a movement for social change". The work of Barnbrook influenced me on how I could further look into campaign possibilities of making a real difference in society, as the only previous campaign that had been done with technology was a short movie known as "Look Up" on youtube which was uploaded in 2014. In addition to this I found that my sociology studies could play a very influential part of this project, as post modernist sociologists had an objection towards technology saying that it distorted people's vision of what the real world was. This ofcourse led me to research example of Post modern art and Pop art, which related to the issue of technolgical globalisation. Through my research of sociological views of technology and artistic views of modern society, I feel that I successfully contextualised my campaign which had given me a very successful final outcome.