I am going to reflect on Garrys ideas in his post about Graphic design as communication and Malcom Barnard's argument that all graphic design is centred on communication. I have chosen to critically analyse a piece of image driven typography that I created in response to a task for the image module. I chose the words 'real life' and tried to interpret and present them in a way that reflected the content of the words. I think that this is a good example because visually it depicts an impression of candy canes and pink which are stereotypically what we associate with all things sweet and playful; and all together 'nice'. However, on closer inspection, the content of the words, 'real life' is very much the opposite of this idea. The reality that 'life is not all lolly pops and candy canes', perhaps unless, you are a child, in which case you are not as sociologically impressioned in the way that adults are. I knew that my target audience would be students and teachers at the art school where the piece would be displayed, so would therefore understand the irony. This illustrates part of Gary's discussion that all visual form supports structures of cultural standardisation, marking distinctions between what he calls ‘standard and non-standard’ participants. He goes on to look at how typography as a system can be used to mark social difference and how it can become an ‘agent of standardisation’. This is one of the images that Garry used to illustrate this point :
This represents stereotyping and the way that it can be used to simplify an idea of another culture. As Gary says, this simplification suggests that we are made ‘dumb’ therefore docile in the face of difference. It is assumed that we know what the norm is; when I designed this poster, I assumed that people would automatically understand the visual association of candy canes. This knowledge is in a way, hidden Panopticism.
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