Hard Sell

Graphic design is often most challenging when it is employed to change established behaviour. Asking people not to smoke, or not to illegally download films and music is difficult when you have to counter the incentives for doing so. I have been frustrated when I have asked friends and family to give up smoking. They express a lack of will-power, and position themselves as ‘light smokers’ against theoretical worse candidates who would be more worthy of (my) positive peer pressure. Because it is so difficult to overcome this stubbornness, many attempts will misfire by adopting the wrong strategy. In recent years, British anti-smoking campaigns have largely fallen into two camps. The first places emphasis on shock images to hammer home the negative health impact of smoking: pictures of charred lungs, tumours and rotten mouths placed on cigarette packets. How successful is this form of campaigning? I suspect that after some initial shock value, some smokers can tune these images out. If long-term smokers are comfortable with ignoring the risks to their health then they will find it easy to ignore the same repeated warnings in the same place on their cigarette packets. Supermarkets make this easier by displaying their cigarette packets with large price labels to cover the health warning.

The second anti-smoking strategy is the emotional campaign. These campaigns often focus on the negative impact of a family member’s smoking on young children. Where they have a greater chance of success is by challenging the idea that smokers are responsible only to themselves for their health. Whether the fear is that you are setting a bad example for your child, or that they will suffer by passive smoking (cue CGI smoke wafting out from the mouth of a smiling baby), or by risking your own life you risk depriving you and your child of something hugely important, the sense of responsibility to someone other than yourself is an important step in reaching out to people about the dangers of smoking because it diminishes the capacity for self-delusion.

These emotional campaigns are therefore perhaps the more effective strategy to adopt. This is not the 16th Century, we do not smoke tobacco believing it to have medicinal qualities; the health effects are well-known in most societies and many people continue to smoke in spite of this. That being the case, I believe that emotional and shock campaigns work best together; it is important that health campaigning does not relent in targeting smokers but seeks to communicate the dangers in meaningful ways that are hard to ignore. In 2004 the British Heart Foundation ran a gruesome advert Give Up Before You Clog Up. The advertisement featured a scientist in white gloves squeezing the thick fatty deposits from a smoker’s artery. A survey by Hall and Partners research agency indicated that of 500 smokers interviewed that there was a 94% recognition level, and 83% had considered giving up smoking.

From YouTube to UKIP

The British Local and European Parliament elections have passed and The Labour Party is feeling the electoral vengeance that has been dished out to it. Gordon Brown has to contend with the backlash over the MP’s expenses controversy, which although a cross-party affair, has fallen more so on the governing party. This problem was exacerbated on Wednesday by certain MPs ‘rocking the boat’, timing their resignations from the cabinet to the day before the elections and so hoping to the further undermine the PM’s position. One of the prime offenders has to be the ‘poison dwarf’ Hazel Blears. Blears has exhibited marked self-serving behaviour with disloyalty to the Prime Minister, and her avaricious expenses claims, whilst maintaining a sickly-sweet exterior for the media. She probably fancied herself as a potential contender for the top job when she mocked Gordon Brown’s YouTube appearance for being out of touch with the Thatcher-esque line “YouTube if you want to”. Thankfully, public opinion about her flipping of second homes and actively using up her expenses allowance with spending sprees will most likely prevent her from gaining enough support within her party.

My concern about MPs like Blears is the damage they do to our perception about British democracy. Not all MPs are greedy careerists, but fringe parties like the BNP, who hoped to make sweeping gains from the public backlash, would certainly like you to think so. At least, the ones from the three main parties.

I read an article in The Guardian by Charlie Brooker about the BNP’s publicity attempts. He makes an interesting point (though not entirely seriously) that their crass production values and poor graphic design may serve to help them present themselves as an alternative to “professional politicians” whom we hold responsible for the current crisis of confidence. “Extremist material of any kind always looks gaudy and cheap… because anyone who's good at graphic design is likely to be a thoughtful, inquisitive sort by nature. And thoughtful, inquisitive sorts tend to think fascism is a bit shit”. Morality and political beliefs would certainly deter many graphic designers from working for the BNP, but these cannot be the only factors. Graphic design is commercial, and ultimately the biggest political parties with the largest pots of money can attract the hottest design agencies and the talent that works for them. What this means is that the smallest parties in general will generally have the worst advertising campaigns, because they have less money to spend on branding and marketing.

Here I come to the bad example of graphic design I referred to in my last post. It came not from the BNP but another small party, the Euro-sceptic UK Independence Party. Situated near Loughborough train station a fortnight ago was a billboard poster featuring wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the slogan “He’d get our money back!”. UKIP are in favour of a complete withdrawal from the European Union. The European Union never existed in Churchill’s lifetime, it came into being in 1993, so any claims that he would have opposed it are speculative. However, in the aftermath of The Second World War Churchill gave a speech in Zurich. He proposed that that in order to avoid the “frightful nationalistic quarrels” of the past and for Europe to be “united in the sharing of its common inheritance” that we must “re-create the European Family [and] build a kind of United States of Europe”. So, I would assume that Churchill would not endorse UKIP; Churchill after all was not to the right of the Conservative party as many Euro-sceptics are, but was a former Liberal. My next point would therefore be: why would a politician endorse another political party to their own? I think that the level of woolly thinking that UKIP exhibit is of the same kind that they expect of their voters and for that reason they will continue to find it difficult to break into mainstream politics.

I love... Marmite ads

      

There are occasions when notably good and notably bad examples of graphic design hit you in the same day. In this post I shall address the good: Marmite’s poster advertising campaign (DDB London). The idea behind the series is based on their current slogan for Marmite, “You either love it or hate it”, and seeks to increase awareness about their expanding product range. These two opposing views are embedded in ambiguous graphics whose meaning changes depending on the angle of viewing.

       

I am very fond of this technique; it’s an economical and intelligent way to use space and a perfect way of symbolising the dichotomy of opinion that exists about Marmite. I suspect, however, that there are many people who (like me) are rather more indifferent about Marmite, but this polarisation of love/hate is an effective way of presenting the product as something of an acquired taste and encouraging people to try something that have heard they may not like. I only appreciated the campaign when I saw the middle poster and was amused by the idea of Marmite making someone sick. I also engaged with the advert because I went to the effort of rotating the newspaper. It has clearly stuck in my mind because this day was two weeks ago.

The campaign is not perfect, however. Creating images that work from two different vantage points is difficult. In the third poster the breadstick has been placed on the hand so that it appears in the palm when viewed under the normal orientation. When rotated it either appears to be floating or stuck to the back of the hand, though the contrast between the black and the other breadsticks tends to draw the eye towards those that appear to be falling back into their packet.

I shall address the bad tomorrow...

Books

With the assessment deadline having passed I returned to the printmaking workshop to have another go at book binding. The opportunity to enjoy the post-assessment quiet was too big to resist. This is my third visit in two weeks and marks the end of a long lull after my cack-handed attempt at book binding on foundation (the outcome being so bad perhaps it should have been called an anti-book). Thankfully, I have improved, to the point where I can pass my knowledge on to others. My recent outcomes are a container for a poster (in its folded state) that I have been working on, in support of UNAWE projects to bring astronomy to disadvantaged children. I hope to put photos online in a few weeks.

One important thing I have learned is not to underestimate the humble book as a presentation device. It is more than that. Books are so varied in size, shape, texture, function and complexity that there is a lot of scope for designers to intelligently use these options to produce beautiful books that add meaning to their content. Today I saw a remarkable example, a miniscule book with type that could only be read with a magnifying glass. It was a book about dolls houses. Simple idea, but difficult to make. It was impressive, I only wish I’d had my camera.