Initial Idea
The initial idea for my creative practice artefact idea, I decided to create a concept for a seminar about ‘Feminist theory about media and our society’. The main theme which generated this idea was the objectification of the female body. I wanted to take this to it’s simplest for as a laugh in the face of patriarchal ideologies which through research with my essay and Laura Mulvey’s Male Gaze I found this was a key problem with Western Society.
To take the objectification of the female body to its literal sense, I had the idea that the message could be projected in its simplest form by instructions, specifically IKEA instructions. IKEA instructions constitute of mostly pictures, making it easy to understand for the consumer. This developed the idea of creating a parody company called FlatPack Female. This was going to be first part of a type of gorilla marketing campaign to shock audiences. I firstly wanted to produce a poster in the form of an instruction manual for a female body, suggesting that a) All women are the same b) women are simple and therefore can be easily put together and understood c) women are just objects or consumable goods which their purpose is to solely be there for male gratification. These are the extreme patriarchal ideologies in which I wanted to address and make fun of.
Target Audience
The target audience for the seminar would be university students, specifically Sheffield Hallam students. Narrowing the demographic, I aimed my work towards knowledgeable feminist individuals as well as students who want to be more informed about sexism in the media which still exists. The idea which stemmed my development for a concept seminar was through watching research on YouTube of a Ted X talk by Holly Baxter who wrote an online magazine called ‘The Vagender’. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcpBFFClymY) This Ted talk was based around how women are perceived in the media especially around magazines and advertisement similar to the concept of my seminar. The style of the talk was a sort of comedy sketch making fun of the media and so this appealed to a student audience.
To appeal to a student audience, and stay true to the IKEA style of simplistic instruction, I had to be creative in how to project information affectively but powerfully. My first poster I tried to create something colourful that would catch the eye of a busy student walking by however this didn’t stay true to the IKEA style.
As you can see there is no similar style to IKEA or my original gorilla marketing artefact and there is too much information being addressed and therefore I needed to strip it all back and go back to it’s simplest form.
Design
As graphic design isn’t my best discipline, I had to do some research into using AI (Adobe Illustrator) as well as basic rules of graphic design and typography such as grid systems for example. I used knowledge from my lecturer and internet sources such as (https://medium.com/@anahatrawal/10-basic-principles-of-graphic-design-b74be0dbdb58) to help make sense of graphic design and ease the process.
When creating the artefacts, I used actual IKEA instruction manuals as guides to then draw certain aspects of IKEA instructions on my iPad. I then exported these drawings and image traced them to ensure they were pixel perfect and able to use throughout my projects. On the basis of simplicity, a lot of the drawings were used over again to a) maintain brand identity b) to keep the same look and feel, so that audiences weren’t confused by different styles of posters and that they can easily associate the different posters with the seminar.
I created altogether, 4 individual posters, tickets (front and back) as well as a leaflet. The leaflet is the artefact which has the most information. However, I still wanted to stay true to the simplistic form. Throughout my different artefacts instead of using words to project information, I replaced them with symbols as this seemed a creative way of doing it. Throughout my poster design I used balance as well as grid systems, I tried to also incorporate visual hierarchy to catch the eye of the audience. This being a drawn body of a woman.
Also in the development of the artefacts, it was important to me to include the same font as IKEA, to stay true to the IKEA iconography I also wanted to include the same layout for one of my posters as this would be something that would catch the eye of my target audience. My hope for the poster was for someone to look at it thinking it was a genuine manual until they read and looked closer.
The leaflet was initially going to be an 8 page booklet. This was until I considered my target audience and as students I considered them as being more environmentally aware so instead I created a TriFold leaflet which gave the required information about the guest speakers and the event schedule all on one piece of paper.
Evaluation
I feel that my overall idea of using IKEA as a basis for female objectification in its simplest form is a clever way of projecting an advertising campaign for a seminar. As it helps the audience understand how ridiculous it is that we as a society still hold patriarchal ideologies which are represented in our media. As graphic design is not my main discipline, I feel as though I have pushed myself into creating different pieces of work individually, originally with very little knowledge of the subject. By researching techniques and rules of graphic design, I have been able to create work which looks aesthetically pleasing as well as being informative for the audience. Utilising space with symbols and simple diagrams instead of pictures and texts has revealed a new way of looking at minimalistic poster design. Looking on Pinterest, there is not anything on there similar to my idea and so I feel that the work I have produced exceeds in originality and creativity.
-Joshua Poole- 