(B6) A Book A Day: Day 5

Final Day! 

Trending Topics:

1. Priti Patel
2. #WandaVision
3. #YearOfTheOx
4. #FridayFeeling
5. Anthea Turner
6. Djokovic
7. Thiem
8. Mings
9. #halfterm
10. #FreeBetFriday

Tweets:

• @Kevinjo75398168
  Priti Patel, fantastic home secretary, the best for some considerable time, she knows what she is doing going forward, listen to the moaners winding themselves up.
  -
  @Venoustwo398
  Ah yes, racism is the best isn’t it Kevin?
• @Femi_Sorry
  Sometimes I think when Boris Johnson needs the public to be distracted from his failures he just pushes Priti Patel out the door and says "Go be yourself!".
• @eoinburgin
  Priti Patel: I oppose violent protests 
  Interviewer: Here is an example of peaceful protest 
  Priti Patel: I oppose peaceful protests
• @Number10cat
  As Home Secretary Priti Patel is naturally against violent protest, so obviously she’ll recognise the importance of non-violent prot... Ah, no, she’s against that too.
• @Femi_Sorry
  The Right-wing strategy of saying "Don't protest like that, or like that, or like that" is well known. Priti Patel leaned into it so obviously, it was almost parody. She literally says "I don't support protests or those associated with [BLM]". They just want outrage distraction.
• @lozcast
  Priti Patel just doesn’t seem like the kind of person who has the temperament of a politician for the modern age. Her lack of understanding for protests and the way she talks about it is a huge part of what’s up with this government.
• @greggwatson90
  Priti Patel was one of the 128 Tory MP's who voted against same-sex marriage! Never forget that!
• @MTRiddler
  Just been outside and it's colder than the vast gaping void where Priti Patel's heart should be.
• @bethaniestentx
  Priti Patel would deport her grandad for her seat at the Tory table and I honestly despise her
• @mrjamesob
  Weird how people who are told to protest *peacefully* if they want their grievances to be taken seriously by politicians get criticised by Priti Patel for kneeling.

• @davidschneider

  DREADFUL 

  Saying Black Lives Matter 

   

  NOT DREADFUL

  Locking asylum seekers in Covid-ridden barracks

  Suggesting we starve Ireland

  Losing 400k police files

  Shipping refugees to a rock in the Atlantic

  Inciting violence against lawyers

  Actual bullying

Thinking about where to do with this topic.

Of course I need to be respectful of the content, this topic has stemmed from comments about BLM which is a sensitive weighted issue. I need to we aware of where it's coming from but shouldn't be scared to use graphic design to document the happenings at this present time.

- Focusing more on the documentation of the content rather than the content for inspiration.

Newspaper paragraphs:

The home secretary, Priti Patel, has described the Black Lives Matter protests that swept the UK last year as “dreadful” and said she did not agree with the gesture of taking the knee.

- Guardian

Ms Patel described the anti-racism protests - sparked by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, USA, on May 25 last year after a white police officer held him down by pressing his knee into his neck for almost nine minutes - as "dreadful".

- The Telegraph

Criticising the targeting of statues, Ms Patel added: “Protesting in the way in which people did last summer was not the right way at all." 

- Independent

Ideas:

Could adopt a newspaper layout for the design.

- Small sections of information presented in a grid.

- Rigid structure, how could it be made more contemporary?

- Not very successful, they have too much structure.

- Like Day 3 about PMQs I think this should have a sense of chaos to it. People are angry, frustrated with what priti patel has said.

- The newspaper's are already documenting it on the internet, I should document people's comments and reactions in a way that's appropriate. 

Could think about threads, people commenting and replying to tweets. Confusion within the text. 

Layering text to show a depth, get this layering effect, many sides, many laers, representing politicians?
Using red and blue, politically charged colours, bold, heavy text to communicate a sense of distress and frustration.

The images feel flat, they don't communicate anything to the audience, the idea of layering is an interesting one that could be explored further but in a different way, thinking maybe more practically. 

Not getting many ideas because I'm not looking at contemporary design stuff.

Design:

Think about how politicians show one side but always seem as though they have another, personally I never feel like I can trust a politician. Read in a newspaper article that Patel's team had to do some damage control after her comments. Think of ways that demonstrate this within publications:

- Embossing/debossing 

- little difference in colour

- folded paper 

- french folds

Could use the french fold idea to present the clean external perception of a politician and then when you open it you get the burst of chaos that's underneath?

Or dodging questions:

I like the idea, but the execution isn't there.

- Feel like the content is what I'm struggling with. I'm unsure on how to present it, why it should be presented in a specific way etc.

- Can't think of a visual. Maybe think back to peggy's suggestion of zoom ins?

- This one doesn't work, it looks like a colour palette image.

- Think more about how it's designed on twitter. 

- Again doesn't look right.

- I think the imagery is what's not working, could focus on text only?

RESEARCH: Looking at type-focused design. 

Teasing Typography:

How does typography behave under extreme conditions? What visual phenomenons, patterns, artifacts, and graphic elements can be provoked by pushing type through extreme grids and using extreme typographic parameters? 

When does text become something else: a graphic element, a gray surface, a static noise, or a haptic pattern?

- I find these questions to be really interesting, how could this work within the publication thinking about representing Twitter in type

Starting with the InDesign default-settings, a range of font-sizes and columns were used to generate a broad spectrum of diverse typographic outcomes. The outcome of this research leads to a variety of visual peculiarities, creating absorbing patterns, interacting with the grids, sometimes making them visible while disappearing under other parameters.

The visuals developed in the book are really intriguing, they make you look harder at the content to try and understand it, but at a glance, you see pattern and shape before you see text. 
- Think about playing with text moving forward. 

Priti Patel would deport her grandad for her seat at the Tory table and I honestly despise her

Wanting to showcase the confusion and mind games within political talk, but this isn't working either.
- Takes too long and wouldn't be able to do for the whole book.

Here justifying making the process quicker for production- Again not successful.

Need to think about what I want to communicate?

1. Sense of frustration

2. The two sided nature of politicians

Spoke to Rosie as this was a difficult one, we spoke about the idea of mirroring, having black with white text on one side and white with black on the other. The text could be mirrored.

-This isn't too successful, it looks as though it belongs to cards against humanity. 

- Could layer the text over itself?

- This could be an interesting idea, it showcases the layering, two sided tone.

- Also represents a twitter feed well as people reply and they get layered buried within the tweets. As someone who doens't usually use twitter this was really confusing. 

- Feel this could be a good way to represent the content from today.

- Could be really interesting to print onto tracing paper so all the content is layer and visible at different opacities, could test with imagery also. 

Really like how it looks on tracing paper, is presents the confusing multisided face of a politician but also has a personal things for me in terms of finding twitter threads confusing and difficult to navigate.

The text has become the focal point of the page rather than imagery (better since the image based tests weren't working).

- Could try adding in images to see how they interact with the text, develop layers etc. 

- Added in images, the printer accidentally took a piece of white paper but I really like how it worked, was a nice separation between the text and helps it not get too complicated.

- The imagery was nice, I liked the effect but felt the placement could be considered more. Having imagery go off the sides or into the centre would be a good idea, again showing not the full picture of a politician. 

Final Book:

Reflections:

Really struggled today, learned that the content really affects the design process for me, if I'm not passionate or interested in the content it's difficult to think of designs or be creative.
- But on this day I found I was able to pull ideas from other areas, it was difficult but I feel I was able to push through and think about other ways to generate designs.