Testing to adapt the style sheet from the government design standards.

Government of Canada Mock Site

Link to Government of Canada Graphic Standards Guide

Propagandistic postage stamps from World Wars I and II.

Grim Future Draft

Well, after much humming and hahing, I finally got up the nerve to email Lester Russel Brown to see what he thought about my project idea. By the way, his wiki does not do the man justice. Having seen his insanely busy schedule for the next few months, combined with the fact that he’s probably got a lot better things to do than write to me about my grad project, I can’t say I expect anything more than a form letter response, but you never know. Perhaps I will manage to peak pique the interest of a man described by the Washington Post as “one of the world’s most influencial thinkers.” I’ve posted my email to him below for feedback and the framing of discussing my project, but any response from him or anyone from the Earth Policy Institute will not be posted unless they give explicit permission for it.

Dear Dr. Brown,

Having looked at your conference schedule, I know you’re a very busy man, so assuming that you’re reading this, I appreciate you taking the time. My name is Mark Stokoe, and I am a 4th year student at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, Canada. Our school focuses on providing conceptually based design knowledge for communication and industrial designers. Over the last few years, the school’s curriculum has had a strong focus on designing with sustainable living in mind, as well as providing it’s students with an increased knowledge of the current state of the world and the great challenges we, as a people, will be facing in the coming decades. It was through my studies that I was exposed to your writings. One instructor in my faculty in particular requested that our class read your book and discuss it as a group, and come to understand the implications it holds for us as designers. I just checked actually, and it seems he’s listed on the Plan B team. His name is Clement Vincent, by the way. The studies of the book, and a matter of good timing led to our class preparing and showing an exhibit based on some of the principles and facts presented in Plan B 3.0 at the Vancouver Green Living exposition back in late February of this year. We were able to inform a number of people, as well as distributing copies of the book.

This brings me to my point in attempting to contact you. The ideas of your writings struck a rather strong chord with me. I have always been relatively informed and conscious of the need for a change in the way we live, but reading Plan B seemed to drive the point home in a much more stark, jarring, and motivating way than anything else that I had come across. With this in mind, when I was sitting down to decide on what projects I would be approaching for my thesis work this year, I decided that at least one of them should reflect my desire to help start making a difference in the state of the world. I will be doing two projects this year, each approximately 4 months in duration, and each of which will involve a thorough researching of the subject matter, distillation of the information I acquire, and then the synthesis of that into a final piece that will be presented to either my peers and instructors, or the general public in a graduate exhibition.

The reason I am writing to you is that I would like to seek an informed opinion, specifically yours, as to what role you feel a designer in my field can take on to help instigate change. I am a communication designer, so my studies have revolved around creating informational systems, visual identities, and other methods of visual communication, from print, to film, to web based. The struggle I have had in attempting to find a worthwhile project to persue pursue is that my profession, on the whole, has a tendency to revolve around, or support many of the most excessive aspects of our culture, designer label fashion, packaging design, business communications, that sort of thing. Our work, if properly applied, does have a great potential to create dialogue however. Which is the direction in which my current project is heading. I can explain it a bit later, but the main question I have for you would be what you feel would be an appropriate and useful project or topic to approach in order to create something that would have a genuine application to the problems facing us. I believe from your writings that you have an exceptionally good understanding of the issues facing our world, and some very good ideas about how we can get around to fixing it, and I’d love to hear what you think. I have been given a blank canvas to work with in the form of these two projects, and would like to fill it with something relevant.

Just to give you an idea of where my work is currently heading, I can briefly outline my first project. I have always enjoyed propaganda work, specifically the wartime work produced by the American and Soviet governments around the period of World War II. It’s power and finesse as a tool for persuasion has always fascinated me. Given that the sweeping changes necessary for keeping our civilization going will require very heavy government legislation, it’s likely that the implementation of those changes will be accompanied by some form of propaganda intended to assure the public that it is in service of the greater good. That is where my first semester’s project would fit in. The project is very theoretical in concept, but the idea will be to create some of the propaganda materials that would eventually be used to help ease this transition. The applied style will probably be rather overt and draw from similar motifs that were used in WWII propaganda pieces. The intention would be to provoke dialogue on the coming changes we will be forced to make, and how, as individuals, we will adapt to them.

If you have the time and opportunity, I would welcome any thoughts or ideas you might have regarding the project or other potential ones. As I said, it and the work I do are a blank slate on which I have an opportunity to create something with the potential to make an impact and any insight would be exceptionally helpful.

Thanks for your time,

Mark

Probably too wordy, but hey, I’m a longwinded guy.

…is on September 20th, when Lester Russel Brown is giving a lecture at Mount Allison University.
Dammit.

Well, since the plan to design an eco-cultural village in the Philippines is on hiatus for the moment, it’s time for plan b (no pun intended)

Excerpt from my conversation with my heterosexual life-mate, formerly known as Lars,in which I propose the revised concept of my project:

2:50:01 PM gingerngo@hotmail.com: we’ll be projectblogfriendssss

3:05:05 PM me: here’s the rough scoop.
3:05:44 PM me: i want one of my projects tobe fairly serious, and one to be a bit more fun, just so that i don’t completely burn out by the time i’m done school
3:06:13 PM me: with that in mind, i may be doing the whole eco-cultural village thing, but i think that would need to wait until the second semester
Changed status to Available (3:06:28 PM)
3:06:39 PM me: i’ve really taken this whole sustainability and climate change thing to heart
3:06:46 PM gingerngo@hotmail.com: awesome
3:07:18 PM me: the world is pretty fucked up, and i think that if noone does anything proactive about it, civilization really is headed straight down the shitter.
3:07:39 PM me: therefore, i do want one of my projects to reflect that mode of thinking.
3:09:16 PM me: cvo’s belief in lester brown’s ideaas has rubbed off on me, and despite the fact that i don’t see eye to eye with brown’s thinking on some issues, i really believe in his notion that what we need to implement change is a shift to a war-time mentality
3:09:29 PM me: on tackling these issues at least
3:10:15 PM me: in some ways i feel that the commons has let down society as a whole, and it’s time to start forcing people to adopt a new way of living, whether they like it or not
3:10:23 PM me: but that’s a bit beside the point
3:10:33 PM me: (not to mention kind of fascist)
3:11:20 PM me: anyway. the need for a wartime mentality struck a particular chord with me, and got me thinking about something i’ve always visually enjoyeed
3:11:26 PM me: that being propaganda art
Changed status to Idle (3:11:59 PM)
Changed status to Available (3:12:01 PM)
3:12:12 PM me: i love all sorts of retro graphics, old school ads, prre-political correctness documents, all that sort of thing
3:12:45 PM me: but i think the pinnacle of that is propaganda work, specifically the stuff down arund the time of the second world war
3:14:08 PM me: so, since the ideas behind a lot of the propaganda of that time involved anb inducement for people to make sacrifices for the greater good, it seems, as a visual metaphor to really resonate with what i think the world could use as a kick in the ass now
3:16:27 PM me: thatbeing said, i’m considering the creation of a propaganda campaign that focuses on environmental issues, maybe not actually as a persuasive tool, since that would require a better understanding of psychology thatn i have, but more as an engaging and visually/conceptually approachable way of illustrating the need for action in defense of the world’s common inheritance
3:16:31 PM me: *whew*
3:16:42 PM me: guess i have my first entry for the project blog

and the response is…

3:18:54 PM Lars: it might be good to break out of the pre-war aesthetic (i may be getting ahead of you here)
3:19:42 PM Lars: pastiches as in using the same visual language as the america bearded mr sam (whatever his name is) or the “we can do it!” lady
3:20:03 PM Moi: ah, gotcha
3:20:17 PM Lars: if anything i’d really like to see something updated, more in tune with contemporary visual approaches
3:22:46 PM Moi: well, the general track along which i’d been thinking was to persue some sort of integrated campaign technique. posters placed in the public domain would be an intial point of contact, potentially with magazine ads or something, movie psa’s (ala “Manny makes Movies” and posssibly supported by a website that would utilize the same visual approach, but with more concrete supporting information
3:23:59 PM Lars: ah
3:24:39 PM Lars: yea that sounds pretty in line with how i’d think of it too
3:25:03 PM Lars: but another dangerzone is the whole granola thing
3:25:08 PM Moi: as far as the actual visuals go, the first thing my m ind jumped to was the traditional look, but i haven’t wanted to go to far along that line of thinking until i have a better idea of the concepts’s solidity
3:25:16 PM Lars: you dont want to come off as too hippy
3:25:31 PM Lars: yea
3:25:51 PM Lars: i think strong consideration of audiences is key
3:26:09 PM Moi: well, i know that the “sustainability thing evokes a lot of skepticism in people, since they’ve heard so much about it, but i think that there is no way to avoid some of that in broasching the topic
3:26:21 PM Lars: like, we can’t assume because that only makes asses out of u and me.. and our hypothetical japanese friend ume
3:26:30 PM Moi: the key is to minimize the cheese
3:26:38 PM Lars: yes
3:26:40 PM Lars: there it is
3:26:59 PM Lars: well in terms of green movements, al gore isnt really stooping to the cheese level
3:27:14 PM Moi: se, one thing that made me think about it is some of the work being done by team manila, the design company with the shop in powerplant
3:27:25 PM Lars: he seems a bit more clean-cut and uh, political? which i think really enforces the gravity of his causes

Looks like it’s stay the course.