Seminar 5 - First things first

FIRST THINGS FIRST

The class was divided in to four groups and for 30 minutes we read a section of the text and presented our findings.

1964 First things First a Manifesto

What my group found - 

• 1960s when advertising was 'coming of age'.

• 60's Content Growing youth culture - Anti War movements

Ken Garland is notable as a British graphic designer, author and game designer. Garland established Ken Garland Associates in 1962.

The First Things First manifesto was written 29 November 1963 and published in 1964 by Ken Garland. It was backed by over 400 graphic designers and artists and also received the backing of Tony Benn, radical left-wing MP and activist, who published it in its entirety in the Guardian newspaper.

Reacting against a rich and affluent Britain of the 1960s, it tried to re-radicalise design which had become lazy and uncritical. Drawing on ideas shared by Critical Theory, theFrankfurt School and the counter-culture of the time it explicitly re-affirmed the belief that Design is not a neutral, value-free process.

It rallied against the consumerist culture that was purely concerned with buying and selling things and tried to highlight a Humanist dimension to graphic design theory. It was later updated and republished with a new group of signatories as the First Things First 2000 manifesto.

Points of interest - 

• Those working in the advertising industry are wasted on trivial purposes

• Contribue little or nothing to our national prosperity

• Reached a saturation point

• consumer selling is no more than a sheer noise

• We think that there are other things more worth using our sills and experience

• Greater awareness of the world

• We do not advocate the abolition of high pressure costumer adverting , proposing a reversal of priotiers in favour of more useful and more lasting forms of communicaition

• Hope that society will tire of gimmick merchants

• Use there skills from worthwhile purposes

Consumer boom - More useful ways in which designers can use their skills.The manifesto is suggesting Design to benefit society not trivial purpose , National purposes , worthwhile purpose, Design to inspire and  share opinion. Design as education. Reversal of priorities. 

OTHER GROUPS FINDINGS

GROUP 2

First things First (2000)

• Adbusters 

• Consumerism has developed grown and the situation has got worse 

• Change of tone - More Pressing

• Anti-Consumerist

• Self perpetuating system

• Politicisation

• Redraft

• A call to action

• Charity/education/Design activism

GROUP 3

R.Poyner

• Consumer System Developed

• Garland - Political activist

• Synergy between advertising + Design , Lack of diversity in design

• Still of relevance

• Style over substance

GROUP 4

Michael Bierut 2007

• Who could be against this?

• Techniques and apparatus of advertising?

• Persuasion

• Designers as stylists for hire

• What makes dog biscuits unworthy?

• Over-Emphasised

• What happens if designers opt-out?

• Manifesto are simple , life is complex

• A new kind of meaning?

Consider your topic & title which will form the basis for your studies for the rest of the module.

Choose - 

• Design & Consumerism

• Design & Social Change

• Design & Globalisation International Perspectives

• Form/Function

• Design & sustainability 

Make it personal , Will be interlinked with graphic design.

Fit research into the above.