Continuing with my idea

Here is my idea in design progress. just showing you the rulers and the way i layer everything out. This is not the final design as this is just my idea to show to my group. I chose this sort of mind map idea because i thought it would be ideal for a info graphic poster. The reason I’m doing this quick idea is because then the other members in the group can look at what i have in my head as an idea and possibly take some ideas from my design and possibly create the final piece.

Font Selection

Still going with the theme of having a dark background colour, i quickly looked at some fonts that i thought that would look exception for the main font for the final design and we decided that apple symbols would be ideal for the titles of the poster and next light would be ideal for the text that will be in the poster. We all thought that using a sans serif would be better than using a serif for this type of environmental poster as we are not trying to put a type of history within the font for the audience to look at as we are just looking for a clean font that suits the style of the topic and a font that looks simple and good.

We were going to choose the very first font but we all thought that the extra lines on the ‘I’ didn’t look and work that well.

A little idea for the group poster

Here is just a little idea that our group had and i just quickly designed a bit of a poster. Our idea consists of having different points about keeping design ethical and sustainable so for example we would have points about: ink, paper, printer, energy, equipment etc. then next to the point will be some writing to talk about how a user can make it sustainable and more ethical within a design workplace. I chose the colour green as the main colour due to that it fits a dark background and its quite a environmental colour to choose from.

Infographic Posters

I started looking at some ethical info graphic posters to get some ideas on what i could potentially have in my group’s poster and these are the posters that caught my eye and that i found very interesting and unique. Most of the normal info graphic posters that i have looked at all have facts and statistics involved with them so I’m thinking that i should try and include some facts and statistics into our group poster as well as there are normally a bright colour scheme and charts within these types of posters. I think that info graphic posters should contain more images that text in order to keep the poster more entertaining as well as keeping it eye-catching for the audience to look at.

Out of these 4 ethical info-graphic posters, i personally like the first 2 poster designs as they are both simple as well as they both involve strong messages in them to make the audience see what it right and what is wrong with and in the world.

Boycotting

boycotting has been a big advancement in ethical consumerism and has inspired others to help the people in need, the people that are still not “free” and are forced to create products that is transported to different countries for a certain price while the people making it are just slaves and are getting nothing for the work they are producing for the world.

One of the earliest examples was the boycott in England of sugar produced by slaves. In 1791, after Parliament refused to abolish slavery, thousands of pamphlets were printed encouraging the boycott. Sales of sugar dropped by between a third and a half. By contrast sales of Indian sugar, untainted by slavery, rose tenfold in two years. In an early example of fair trade, shops began selling sugar guaranteed to be have been produced by ‘free men’.

A more famous boycott that happened was of course the Montgomery Bus boycott and this is when in 1955, Rosa Parks was riding a bus home from work and was ordered to yield her seat to a white passenger. This was Alabama law at the time, and some black men had already started toward the back to make room for her in the ‘Colored’ section. But Ms. Parks refused out of principle, and authorities arrested her.

The news of this spread fast and once the law was changed so that different coloured people can sit on a public transport freely and is not criticised because of their skin colour, everyone was happier and everyone had equal rights, well when they are on public transport. But before this happened, dark toned people were 3 quarters of the Montgomery bus clientele so for the economical side of the story, people had to do something as the blacks were boycotting of not taking the bus at all and taking taxis where the same skin coloured people were driving. The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted until December 20, 1956, when a federal ruling (Browder v. Gayle) led the U.S. Supreme Court to declare that the Montgomery laws requiring segregated buses were unconstitutional.

A prime example of planned obsolescence

One brand that is a prime example of planned obsolescence is apple and their iPhone products.

They have iPhones that are only meant to last around 1-3 years because apple makes new versions of the iPhone every year and they also come out with a new operating system for apple users to download to free but then newer phones can only download the newer operating systems and that the old phones are not able to update at all and therefore the user is mainly forced to buy the newer version if they want a phone that doesn’t feel “sluggish”. Especially with the iPhones, the battery life is not meant to last that long for example the iPhone 4 battery life decays after 2 years and that when people downloaded the IOS 7 update on their old iPhones, the battery life started to run down a lot faster than usual. Also the operating system (iOS 7) was being pushed out to existing users and was making older models unbearably slow and however the iPhone batteries had a infinite amount of charges in them to begin with, were drained by the new software. A new battery for these phones would have cost people around £50 and to get a new low end iPhone 4, it would still cost people around £75+. So therefore pretty much, apple is making people a stupid offer, get a battery is that more than half the price of the phone or get a entirely new upgrade for just £20 more than the individual battery. There are literally nearly any difference between each new model of the each version of the iPhone brand except from little tweaks and changes but then comparing it the price range between each iPhone is just bigger than what it should be.

Pros and Cons of planned obsolescence for businesses:

Business:

(Pro)

• Gain more money – profit
• More money for time to make new upgrades – make more products = more money (Only if the customers are loyal to apple)

(Cons)

• Could potentially lose customers due to unreliable products.
• Bad reputation for a brand – poor quality
• Slow innovation – the technology is purposefully “hidden”

Here is a interesting video about apple using and practicing with planned obsolescence:

Planned obsolescence

Planned obsolescence is pretty much where a company or someone makes a product where in a certain time period, the product will be become out of date or useless.

An example of this is my phone is meant to last 3 years and the reason behind this is because all the component in the phone are deliberately designed to last for a certain amount of time and therefore during the years products are literally raising in prices but are not lasting that long so then the company is getting more profits and the consumers are blindly buying these products. Also products ranging from inexpensive light bulbs to high-priced goods such as cars and buildings are subject to planned obsolescence by manufacturers.

For planned obsolescence to work, the customer must feel that the product that they are going to buy has the value for money therefore the consumer must have enough confidence in the manufacturer/company, to replace the original product with the modern equivalent product, from the same manufacturer.

Ethics in Consumerism

One topic on ethics that i found interesting was Ethical consumerism and it is pretty much the understanding of purchasing products and services that is produced to minimise social and/or environmental damage while avoiding products and services that are deemed to have more of a negative impact on society or the environment in general.

So pretty much buying stuff only what you need and making sure that what you buy is not wasteful as well as only 1% of products last around 6 months while only 3% of the UK market is devoted to the production of ethical goods. Furthermore, being an ethical consumer would mean that you would need to buy products that were ethically produced which is not harmful to the environment or our society so for example you could buy products like organic produce, fair trade goods, energy-efficient light bulbs, electricity from renewable energy, recycled paper and wood products with Forest Stewardship Council approval in order to help the environment more.

Another example of ethical consumerism is consumers buying food that comes from a local farm or to make your own food as then you know its natural and ethical.

My understandings on ethics

I think ethics is about the moral principles that we as a human being have on certain activities and that ethics can affect how people make decisions and lead their lives. Also that ethics shows what is good and bad for the society and an individual. Ethics is also known as moral philosophy.

Ethics covers the following dilemmas:

• how to live a good life
• our rights and responsibilities
• the language of right and wrong
• moral decisions – what is good and bad?

The way we get our ethics is delivered through and from religions, philosophies and cultures. Ethics can also cover some topics like abortion, lying, human rights, sport and many more.

Philosophers nowadays tend to divide ethical theories into three areas: metaethics, normative ethics and applied ethics.

• Meta-ethics deals with the nature of moral judgement. It looks at the origins and meaning of ethical principles.
• Normative ethics is concerned with the content of moral judgements and the criteria for what is right or wrong.
• Applied ethics looks at controversial topics like war, animal rights and capital punishment

New Assignment – Ethics in Design (Group work)

In this new module i am to combine information graphics with a theoretical or philosophical topic – in this case ethics in graphic design. I will have to work in groups and i am free to decide on what material is appropriate for our infographic. But we should show that we have considered ethics holistically, seriously and from not just your own perspective. The piece should be informative and meld type and imagery in an effective and engaging manner.

We are to design a A2 poster that is folded and inserted into the magazine and the magazine we are designing this poster for is called “Communication Arts Magazine” and they are producing a series of information graphics fold-out posters about cultural issues and theories that impact on the creative industries.

I am to design, as a group, an information graphic that explains ethics for graphic designers as straightforwardly as possible. Use a mix of type and imagery in information graphics style. Be informative rather than dogmatic!

My group is:

• Kyle
• Will
• Rick

We have created a blog where we will be re-blogging all the important bits that us three all together have posted on our  individual blogs so then it will be easier for our tutors to give us a grade.

The blog link is:

ethicsgroup3wkc.wordpress.com