Week19 : Anthropocene

Alongside completing my Critical Draft and the design for it, I’ve decided to look at creating a website to showcase the work completed here as is also required for the Graphic Design MA showcase.

In order for me to begin creating this site, I need some semblence of an identity – I’ve not specifically focussed on creating an Identity for this project as it’s main focus is the background research and understanding as well as creating mockup / renders of the exhibits for clarity.

All along, I’ve been calling this project “Their Future : Our Choices”, but as time has gone on and as this project has developed, this no longer reflects on what my project is proposing. It’s no longer looking at our future generations and encouraging people to make changes or new choices in order for our future generations to have a better life.

I’m now looking at encouraging visitors to interact with our current and exisiting situation, change and manipulate the system and explore and feel the future environment. Visitors are encouraged not only to learn about Climate Change and the effects this has on us locally, but also to experience the future and look at dismantling the rapid changes taking effect.

The Anthropocene is a word I’ve come across a lot during my research and it really helps sum up not only the past hundred or so years of humanistic effects on the planet, but also the future we all face.

The aim of this exhibition is to dismantle and disrupt the habituated experiences of our daily lives. Recognise what has become normal and look beyond that.

I was trying to tie in the title with York – but this proved tricky for a short and snappy title. I think, as has been discussed with York Design Week, we’d look at calling the week of exhibitions York Climate Week which sums up nicely the whole experience.

But for the website and identity as a whole, I wanted something which acknowledges our attempts to distrupt our current situation – I considered Breaking The Illusion but this felt all too “Derren Brown”, but I like the “breaking” aspect of this.

I then looked at Breaking the Anthropocene which works much better at linking in Climate Change but still, the word Breaking felt too harsh and vague.

Discussing this with my other half and having mentioned that I want to Disruut our existing daily lives, using the word Disrupt felt natural.

Disrupting the Anthropocene

Dismantling the habituation of our daily lives through immersive and introspective experiences.

This is a bold and powerful statement and this needs to be reflected in the website and subsequent identity designs. I’m consistently drawn to bold, large and powerful type reflective of Matt Willey and Craig Oldham but would like to look elsewhere for references too.

I’ve built a small collection of references below which I will use to guide my website and project identity:

Reset by OPX Studio

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Ken Garland : AIGA First things First

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Ordinary Things – Soil 2017 – sustainability aspect

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Craing Oldham – They Live : A visual and cultural awakening

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Matt Willey : New York Times Magazine layouts.

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Font and Colour choices

I usually choose fonts from Adobe or Google Fonts as they predominantely are more reliable – I’m drawn very much to the sans serif, bold fonts which can be used both on screen and potentially in print for posters etc.

I’ve chosen News Cycle by Nathan Willis on Google Fonts, it’s the right amount of bold for my work without being overpowering and heavy. As described by Willis, “it is designed for clarity and readability in large blocks of copy, but to still look good in headline-sizes at the top of the page.”

Colours wise I’ve always stuck to a green and black and white palette throughout this project and aim to keep this through my website, Studio Practice PDF and in my Critical Draft too. I will do the same with the font.