OUGD501: Dissertation Research 1

Question 6 :  To what extent has Graphic Design constructed our understanding or view of historical events and perceptions of truth?

"All truths are easy to understand when discovered; and the point is to discover them"- Galleleio 

• Graphic design has aided in masking and covering up world issues, as well as propaganda and the mass media selling us lies.
• WW2, newspapers telling widows troops were okay

• Red plaques as appose to blue English heritage plaques (socialist revolutions)

• Paris, May 1968. 

• In the US Reagan days the black man was perpetuated as a savage, as a criminal and a rapist of white women by the press and TV media. They only made black men feared became they needed them working in the fields and in low paid work, aided by design, to contribute to their profit. They were never going to be given a chance of a life whilst the economy needed saving.
•  Injustice and societal preducide is rising again and has the possibility to be covered up by design,  police misuse of power is happening much more in the USA especially,  and in turn more groups/movements echoing previous political design start emerging- e.g.: Black Lives Matter.
• Commercialism said integration would never work so racist ideologies remained at the surface, yet when we look at the past it was actually the youth and the subcultures which broke down those racial barriers, proving that with the power in the peoples hands (and the right societies hands) we may be able to start a fresh with a new society like postmodernism.
• Explore the portrayal of the black civil rights in the late 20th century, with emphasis to how hip hop is represented
• Focus on US or UK events - or somewhere else in the world?
• Nazi symbol was originally stems from Buddhism
• Nazi typography (Fraktur) rarely associated with positive connotations
• Political events which have been misconstrued 
• False branding and false advertising through history- famous fashion stuff? 
• Crimes that have been covered up
• Graphic design helped define modernism and postmodernism visual aesthetic
• Warped events
• Red plaques celebrating modern British events 
• When they print the same newspaper with two headlines for two possible outcomes of an election or trial, and send out the wrong ones by mistake
• North Korea as Platos cave
• Graphic Design as a facade 

Constructed understanding of truth via:

• news and journalism
• The news
• press headlines and photojournalism
• branding and brand identity which lied in some way
• magazines
• 'False News' - Kellyanne Conway as a smokescreen for Trump
• UKIP Bus vs "we never said we'd give money to the NHS"
• Magazine editorials
• Typography and colour
• Online- Internet articles, online pictures, videos, bloggers, v-loggers etc..
• Twitter

People who live in a alternate version of reality, especially from birth, may have not been subconsciously coded to fit in and appreciate societies ideals, or question that the information they are being fed could be ungenuine. Just like Plato’s cave, the way the world has become lately is almost unimaginable to those who are 'non-believers', non-consumers and those away from the rat-race of modern life, and in-tune with their basic human nature.

If we only believe what we can imagine and ‘you only know whats there’, in the case of Plato's cave, when you’re taken out of that environment, social naivety can make it a huge transition and subjective information can be taken as fact if it is presented to us in a trusted format (instagram, the news, online articles), via Graphic Design, so we naturally take this as fact without really questioning the truth and essence in what they’re communicating.