Proper Propaganda

Grim Future Draft

Poster Campaign

Website

The title pretty much says it all.

Again with the heated debates.
Art vs Design
Designer as Author
Concept vs Design
Student vs Teacher
Dogs vs Cats
Can’t we all just get along?

Anyway. Getting back to the project…
Morning
Went over a brief status update, which was brief as a result of my lack of significant progress over the last week. Presented some of my research on the ration card deliverable. It went over reasonably well, although it would definitely need to be simplified down from the system they used during the war. There wouldn’t be any newspaper followup to explain it, and frankly the system they used was confusing as shit.
The likely form would be ration coupons of some sort which entitle the holder to purchase X amount of whatever commodity would be scarce, gas, energy, etc.

Again the notion of a hard scary approach, vs a lighter approach that potentially makes use of humour to pass along the message. The rationale behind questioning it is that a hard/scary take on the subject has a very good chance of just coming off as preachy. Alex recommended that I create something for next week that carries the message from the other side of the board as well, recommending consumption at high levels and a “stay the course” sort of ideology, in order to get a better handle on how I can approach the topic effectively, and have an understanding of the other side’s perspective.

Afternoon
Not a whole lot.

So, after getting some feedback regarding the timeline and placement of the project, I’m going to go ahead with the identification of the key issues to focus on, and how to relate them back to useful communications for everyday folks. For the next little while at least, that will leave the audience question a bit open, but the materials could be adapted to both approaches. For instance, a poster meant to be developed for the “future” concept, could be implanted into an image for a present day campaign, so that we could see a view of things to come.
To make things nice and simple, the two frameworks will be called 2008 and 2018 from now on, or untilI get better names for them.

Potential Deliverables for 2018
Posters: Messages urging citizens to conserve resources, utilize carbon neutral technologies, drive less, support mass transit, etc.
Billboards: Similar content to posters. Less text, harder imagery.
Website: Provides actual resources on how to conserve, etc.

Potential Deliverables for 2008
Posters: Depictions of a future where government propaganda covers the walls of buildings and other surfaces with messages urging citizens to conserve resources, utilize carbon neutral technologies, drive less, support mass transit, etc.
Billboards: Similar content to posters. Less text, harder imagery.
Website: Interactive site serves a government resource platform done in future style.
Mailers: Ration books detailing month’s rations for citizens under the new legislations. The rations would indicate the scarce supply of resources available for purchase in order to highlight the need for conservation now.

So, during times of economic crisis, or shortage of resources, one policy that governments use to control the distribution of goods, and ensure that all citizens have access to resources is rationing. “Each person may be given “ration coupons” allowing him or her to purchase a certain amount of a product each month. Rationing often includes food and other necessities for which there is a shortage, including materials needed for the war effort such as rubber tires, leather shoes, clothing and gasoline. Towards the end of the First World War, panic buying in the United Kingdom prompted rationing of first sugar, then meat, for the rest of the war. During World War II rationing existed in many countries including the United Kingdom and the United States.” [wikipedia]

The United States is a key example of rationing in support of the war effort.
“To get a classification and rationing stamps, one had to appear before a local War Price and Rationing Board which reported to the U.S. Office of Price Administration. Each person in a household received a ration book, including babies and small children who qualified for canned milk not available to others. To receive a gasoline ration card, a person had to certify a need for gas and ownership of no more than five tires. All tires in excess of five per driver were confiscated by the government, because of rubber shortages. An A sticker on a car was the lowest priority of gas rationing and entitled the car owner to 3 to 4 gallons of gas per week. B stickers were issued to workers in the military industry, entitling their holder up to 8 gallons of gas per week. C stickers were granted to persons deemed very essential to the war effort, such as doctors. T rations were made available for truckers. Lastly, X stickers on cars entitled the holder to unlimited supplies and were the highest priority in the system. Ministers of Religion, police, firemen, and civil defense workers were in this category.[2] A scandal erupted when 200 Congressmen received these X stickers.[citation needed]

Tires were the first item to be rationed in January 1942 because supplies of natural rubber were interrupted. Soon afterward, passenger automobiles, typewriters, sugar, gasoline, bicycles, footwear, fuel oil, coffee, stoves, shoes, meat, lard, shortening and oils, cheese, butter, margarine, processed foods (canned, bottled and frozen), dried fruits, canned milk, firewood and coal, jams, jellies and fruit butter, were rationed by November 1943.[3] [wikipedia]

The format of a ration book/card may be a potentially effective method for conveying an sense of the situation to come. The piece, which would likely take the form of a card or mailer, would be a ration card for a month in the year 2018 indicating the available allotment of resources which are currently under threat, such as gasoline, water, electricity, foods, etc. The notion being that people will be able to see the result of dwindling resources in a format that would directly apply to their everyday lives. One of the main potential drawbacks of this approach may be a unfamiliarity amongst people today with rationing and how a ration book would work.

Functionality:
“Each ration stamp had a generic drawing of an airplane, gun, tank, aircraft carrier, ear of wheat, fruit, etc. and a serial number. Some stamps also had alphabetic lettering. The kind and amount of rationed commodities were not specified on most of the stamps and were not defined until later when local newspapers published, for example, that beginning on a specified date, one airplane stamp was required (in addition to cash) to buy one pair of shoes and one stamp number 30 from ration book four was required to buy five pounds of sugar. The commodity amounts changed from time to time depending on availability. Red stamps were used to ration meat and butter, and blue stamps were used to ration processed foods.

To enable making change for ration stamps, the government issued ‘red point’ tokens to be given in change for red stamps, and ‘blue point’ tokens in change for blue stamps. The red and blue tokens were about the size of dimes (16 mm) and were made of thin compressed wood fiber material, because metals were in short supply.” [wikipedia]
In order to make the message communicate a bit more readily than this, a much simpler system would be devised, or they would take the form of coupons that would indicate a specific amount of a resource that would be rationed.
This piece could take the form of a single mailer, or of an entire ration book, complete with instructions on how it is to be used. That might make it harder to understand quickly, but allow for more in depth information to be provided. So aside from the general message, the audience might gain tips for conserving resources now, but in a language and form keeping with the ration book format. In other words, include information directing citizens on steps they can take to make the most of things during ration times. Note: That probably didn’t clear up anything. Oh well.

For seminar we were asked to present a summation of our Phase Two research and concept development. This presentation uses simple graphic techniques to illustrate the stages the project has progressed so far, as well as featuring some of the most current visual explorations.

CoreVI_Presentation_Phase2_Oct2 (pdf 1.6mb)

Feedback
Well the concept seemed to hold up fairly well, and there were quite a few less blank stares than anticipated. Nelson offered an interesting suggestion. “Why can’t this be a contemporary piece, which projects the subject matter into the future, as opposed to a theoretical piece which existing in the future?” (paraphrasing heavily) The reasoning being, amongst other things, that it’s highly speculative trying to design for an audience that may potentially exist, as opposed to one that can be assessed today.
Thus the revision would be to still have the content of the campaign be a vision of a propagandistic future, but frame it as a warning/premonition for people today. The only difficult part of that to assess would be how far to push the visual language towards the totalitarian, since it would need to be reasonably overt to come through.
Tricky.