PROJECT 3: Climate Change research

Project 3 was based on climate change and the upcoming Conference of Parties (COP21) in Paris this year which aims to come up with a way to drastically slow down and eventually prevent the damage of climate change in the world. After listening to a presentation from a representative of ClimateUK, we were asked to produce a poster expressing the severity of climate change to persuade people to attempt to cut down and help with the fight against environmental damage and the depletion of the earth's resources. 

In preparation for this task, due to it being our first project with an actual client brief, I wanted to look at the significance of graphic design in the world of propaganda and also get more of an idea of the statistics when it comes to climate change to attempt to have a solid base to work off. I started with looking at the ClimateUK website and the NASA website. Both these sights had the same kind of idea when it came to climate change, but both gave different statistics. This made me think of the difference of opinion between the UK and the US when it came to climate change. The fact that both these corporations had the same general theme of climate change being detrimental to the human race, they both seemed to have different scapegoats when it came to blaming a particular element of damage to the environment. 

Because of this I wanted to more focus on the overall damage to the world as a whole and avoid statistics and instead focus on achieving a sense of solidarity from the viewer and try produce a realisation that climate change is real and very dangerous rather than blaming it on a particular part.

Looking at Milton Glaser's 'It's Not Warming, It's Dying.', this showed a very simple piece of graphic design that expressed an image of the damage done with a very blunt visual statement as well as the very blunt title  to project such a strong image through such simple means. Due to the purpose of this work, Glaser's work had to be strong at expressing the message he wanted to in such a vast way, and the simplicity of his piece achieves that as it was easily translated from a standalone image to an overall recognisable brand. The green to black gradient over the circle was created as a badge, shirts and even marbles which got his work out there to express his message.

From this research I learnt how simplicity is key when it comes to branding and graphic design to produce a recognisable image as recognisability is a massive part of expressing a message, which graphic design is often used for.