The deadline for 'Exploring Graphic Design' is Friday, and I feel a bit more relaxed than I usually do. Today I went to visit the crypt in the Metropolitan Cathedral in Liverpool, which I think will help me tomorrow when I'm putting my magazine together. I've not been able to do much work on my magazine at home, because I don't have the programmes on my laptop. This might start to become more of an issue as I start to work towards the final deadline, but for now, I've done most of my background work at home, and using my time in university to use the computers and other resources I don't have at home.
Today I also finished the book I was reading called 'Ways of Seeing' by John Berger, it is a a book of seven short essays, four of which combine words and images, 3, are just entirely images. The 7th essay interested me the most, because it was about advertising, an industry that is highly associated with Graphics. Below is a passage from the book, which I found quite interesting:
"Publicity images also belong to the moment in the sense that they must be continually renewed and made up-to-date. Yet they never speak of the present. Often they refer to the past and always they speak of the future. We are now so accustomed to being addressed by these images that we scarcely notice their total impact. A person may notice a particular image or piece of information because it corresponds to some particular interest he has. But we accept the total system of publicity images as we accept an element of climate."
I appreciate that as a Graphic Designer, this information is incredibly important, possibly worrying, maybe designers are finding it much harder to be influential and make an impact, when the society we live in, including ourselves as graphic designers, are not actively noticing advertisements. Or is it worrying that we are doing this, and frighteningly, are picking up the messages these adverts send subconsciously, which is an altogether more powerful thing.
