Critical writing: Final essay

The use of Graphic Design is believed to have influenced political changes in the UK during the 21^st 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 21^st 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 8^TH, 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 21^st 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 21^st 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.

21^st 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 21^st 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 21^st 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 21^st 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 21^st 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 21^st 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 21^st 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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