The use of Graphic Design is believed
to have influenced political changes in the UK during the 21st
century, as ‘we assign graphic design, like all forms of communication,
cultural significance because it appears everywhere’.
Visual
communication is used by political parties to effectively spread the policies,
opinions and messages to members of society in the hope to gain a vote in their
favour. One of the main influential factors of Graphic Design and political
changes within the UK is the ability for each party to build a strong visual
identity that can instantly recognised by more than just the target audience.
Visual communication methods such as typography, colour, illustration,
photography and advertising are all used by each party and applied in a
consistent way through the whole campaign to ensure a strong visual identity
and ‘cultural significance because it appears everywhere.’ Graphic designers document
each of these methods in branding guidelines, enabling a consistent application
to all visual outcomes used by the parties.
Alina
Wheeler says that ‘design is intelligence made visible’ (2006), effectively
communicating with elements such as colours, shapes, layouts, scales to ensure
messages reach target audiences. Graphic design has allowed for political
parties in the 21st Century to establish visually consistent branding and effective
methods of visually communicating policies with ‘cultural significance’
throughout society. A very dominant focus is colour, representing each party
with one main colour such as the #6AB023
for the Green Party, ensuring that all outputs have a consistent identity.
Although
graphic design can be shown to influence political changes, there are also
other factors such as an individual’s cultural upbringing and personal
interests that also play a part in political opinions and followings within
society. There are large amounts of studies on colour influence by the likes of
Goethe (1810) who focused on the experience of colour in his Zur farbenlehre,
Sir Isaac Newton’s whose rational approach looked at the separation of light
into a spectrum when passed through a prism, and also Max Lüscher’s (1999) best
known research into colour psychology based on the reactions to different
coloured cards. These studies have all shown that as individuals we respond
differently depending on a number of factors. Rather than colour influencing
the political followings of individuals, it is predominately used by political
parties to build established identities that can then lead to a number of
effective associations within the campaigning procedure for example the red of
the Labour party.
The
Labour Party uses the colour red which within the political world it is a
colour that holds the most historical relevance. The colour red is known to
symbolise left-wing ideologies as it was initially chosen to represent the
blood of the workers who died in the struggle against capitalism. The communist
associations to the colour effectively reflects what the Labour party stands
for and with the associations throughout history, a strong visual identity has
been established and maintained still today through the adherence to branding
guidelines. The ‘Let’s give our NHS the 350 million the EU takes every week’
campaign relies heavily on the medical visuals to remind them that this is
about saving the health service. The use of visual language to persuade the
audience is seen with the use of red, a colour which holds subliminal messages
of ‘change’ due to its use throughout history; resulting in the persuasion that
agreeing to this statement is the correct thing to do.
The
natural human instincts such as fear, happiness, attachment, familiarity are
often taken advantage of as a visual communication strategy. The added pressure
of something desired disappearing soon is an effective way to build fear within
the target audience. The Labour party released a poster in 2017 with the quote
‘ON JUNE 8TH, DON’T PUT OUR FUTURE ON THE LINE’, an example of how
scarcity can be used in political campaigning. The use of the word ‘our’ effectively
makes it more personal, ensuring that the target audience is left to fear the
impact of voting for the opposing party. The research into the effectiveness of
visual communication that psychologically challenges the audience in a number
of ways has proven to successfully influence members of society. This knowledge
on the visual communication methods allows for the political parties to now
have a larger influence on members of society within the 21st
century in comparison to the past.
Wally Olins stated that for about a hundred years the
world of communications was dominated by advertising agencies which all had the
idea that there was only one important audience to target – the final consumer.
If this was an approach that political parties were to take, then they would
only be communicating to those that already know about the policies and want to
vote for the particular party. Visual communication methods in the 21st
century have considered the various audiences and successfully communicate to
all of them through the use of a number of different methods. Consumers,
pressure groups, financial community, competitors and the media are thought to
be the most relevant audiences for Political Parties to be targeting their
designs and content to. Addressing all of the various audiences will allow for
new people within society to become aware of the political policies, those that
already follow to widen their knowledge and for competitors to respond to what
is being published within their own designs. Labour has some well-known
campaigns that respond to the opposing parties and the policies that they
release. The Labour campaign which quotes ‘the choice at this election is
between a labour party who will build a Britain for the many and a tory party
who stand only for the few’ plays on this advertising knowledge that has been
established, targeting an audience that may already be more inclined to vote
for a particular party, but morally want to feel as though they are helping
more than just themselves with their vote – so with influence may change their
minds.
21st
Century methods of visual communication rely on the power of effective advertising
to capture the attention of a wider target audience, in comparison to the
release of a simple list of policies by each of the parties. The UKIP ‘No
border. No control’ advertisement was thought to be one of the most powerful
advertisements released in the most recent European election. The imagery has
been chosen to instantly shock the British public into seeing what membership
of the EU means in the opinion of the UKIP party. The White Cliffs of Dover are
seen to be symbolic of Britain’s island status, a status that the party
believes should allow for the ability to choose the people who come to live and
work in the UK. This is something that will not happen under the EU free
movement laws, so the connotations of the imagery show this in a simple but
powerful way. The size and hierarchy of the type on this advertisement installs
a sense of importance and impending concerns, something that would not have
been established if it was just the image alone or the type was of one small
size. This advertisement will predominately catch the attention of the British
community who have let the racial opinions of UKIP become instilled as their
own, but also it may catch the attention of those following different parties.
This visual communication method may influence changes within the 21st
century UK because of the ability to publish it in a lot of different formats
and to a larger target audience than before, establishing that ‘cultural
significance’.
The
statement of change in the Labour ‘Let’s give our NHS the 350 million the EU
takes every week’ promises an ideological world, a technique that the political
sphere relies on. A method of visual communication is the inclusion of a
statement of change as ‘brands are often defined as the psychological
representation of a product or service or organisation, providing symbolic,
rather than tangible use-value to consumers’ (Scammell, 2015, p. 12). This
analogy expresses the need for a statement of change symbolically rather than
realistically, in order for a campaign to be successful. This method is present
in both the UKIP campaign ‘No border. No control’ and the Labour ‘Let’s give
our NHS the 350 million the EU takes every week’.
The
digital age that we now live in means that advertisements and prints that
previously only existed in a physical form, can now also be published online
and available to a much larger audience of people within society – particularly
the younger generation of voters. Wim Crouwel says that ‘you can’t do better
design with a computer, but you can speed up your work enormously’. This
increased distribution of designs, ideas and campaigns within society in the 21st
century once again relates back to the idea that there is more ‘cultural
significance because it appears everywhere’.
The
increase of young people voting in the 2017 election may be due the 21st
century digital age and the ability to continue the political campaigning on
social media and not just using the traditional methods of print. The 2005
election showed that 18-24 year olds accounted for only 7% of all votes cast
and, but with the years progressing the engagements from this age range
increased. 60% of 18-24 year olds voted in the EU referendum on comparison to
the small amount of 43% in the previous year’s general election. The political
visual communications target the social media platforms with the largest amount
of activity, widening the target audience to include the younger generation.
The
digital age has enabled subliminal advertising which is the placement of hidden
messages in commercial content so that the viewers process them unconsciously. The
creative environment of social media easily opens up the opportunities for the
established association the parties colour identity to be taken advantage of
and used in the social media platform so that the ‘mindless’ scrolling may lead
to the unconscious processing of the specific message as it is published in the
associated colour, such as red for Labour and blue for Conservatives. The
individual noticing the colours as part of their social media feed is likely to
then assign ‘cultural significance because it appears everywhere’ and therefore
has been influenced to favour a party. Social media was also used in a positive
way, a way to reach the younger generation and spread the reminder to vote with
the hashtag #RegiterToVote. The communications on the social media platforms
encouraged the younger generation to develop more of an interest in political
happenings, but it may be argued that by having the presence of all of the
strong political opinions visually communicated on the likes of Instagram a
cultural significance was established ‘because it appears everywhere.’
As
well as using the well-known methods of visual communication to influence
society with particular political policies and opinions in a non-biased way,
another method used within Graphic Design is purposefully breaking the
conventions known. Pierre Bernard (1991) states that ‘graphic design […]
continues to be created and to structure itself in an autonomous and
diversified manner’ meaning that the diversity and ability to go against
factual and serious ways of expression can also be used within society to
influence the political changes in the 21st century.
Illustration
is an example of this slightly more informal method of visual communication as
it can be used when photography or typography alone does not portray the
message effectively. An effective use of illustration as opposed to photography
was for the ‘end period poverty’ campaign released by the Green Party. The use
of photography would not have been appropriate for this particular topic
without being uncomfortable for the audience to witness, so a repetitive
illustration has been used instead. The illustration uses the two shades of
green associated to the Green party, documented in the branding guidelines. The
hierarchy of text on this campaign has been considered, with the phrase ‘end
period poverty’ at the top in a white text box to make it stand out instantly
and grab attention. This method of visual communication has been successful because
it has brought to surface some of the policies and campaigns that the party
stands for but may find it hard to visually communicate with a more traditional
approach. Assigning campaigns such as this ‘cultural significance’ because they
are appearing everywhere can be seen to be accurate because with the visual
communication method of illustration, it creates a more informal format that
can be appropriately published on social media.
To conclude,
visual communication strategies have the capability to have a large influence
on political changes within the 21st century society. As Alina
Wheeler states ‘design is intelligence made visible’ (2006), the political parties
have the ability to inform a wide target audience on a variety of political
issues and policies. Cultural significance is obtained by something that appear
everywhere, colour being one of the visual communication strategies to most
achieve this. The well-established visual identities of each of the parties
allows for colour alone to subtly influence those within the 21st
century society. A much larger audience of people can now be influenced by
political campaigns due to the digital age, reaching more of the younger
generation than traditional printing would have previously. Pierre Bernard
(1991) states that ‘graphic design […] continues to be created and to structure
itself in an autonomous and diversified manner’ showing that less formal
methods such as illustration have the ability to communicate particular subjects
that may be hard with a media such as typography or photography, allowing for
an increase of political issues to be presented to society.
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