Posters and Advertising

For our first assignment, we are asked to design an interactive poster. I know. What the heck is an interactive poster? Well it seems as cool as it sounds.

We are used to the digital world now. Ordering food without having to talk to people and sending messages and pictures in an instant. It’s exciting and every changing with the technology. From buttons to touchscreen and fat televisions to skinny ones the cat can knock over. We are the generation that want more in an instant. Waiting is no longer an option.

With that, advertising has changed. It’s not so easy to catch our eye when we are rushing through a crowd of people in the tube station or just jumping in a car to go to the supermarket. New methods are having to be introduced to keep our attention and actually consider what we are looking at. Posters are becoming a way to entertain us and stick in our memory. Hopefully not for the wrong reasons…Let’s get some examples!

I worked in a cinema for over 3 years, so it’s fair to say I’ve witnessed my fair share of great posters, and not so great. Not that I’m a professional, but I’ve gauged from customer reaction and personal experience. So, one of my personal recent favourites:

 (Unknown, 2015)

This little gem from Marvel’s Ant Man. If you can’t see it, then get a little closer. There in the middle, you see Ant-Man. And it’s got you exactly what it wanted you to do; get up close and take it in. It’s simple, it’s funny and people loved it. It doesn't follow a trend and as said by Jesús Prudencio, "I like minimalist design and simple lines. I try to convey what I want with a few elements that make an impact and have a lasting message."

And now, for one that’s not terrible, but could have done with a little more attention when designing.

 (Unknown, 2013)

If you don’t spot it, I don’t blame you. But look a bit closer…Either he is a really bad shot or the editing was a bit off. His guns are pointed at the doorframe, yet his head is inside the doorframe. And she seems like her body is outside of the door with her arms in? I don’t know. It’s all a bit much to take in, but when a colleague pointed this out, I couldn’t unsee it. But apparently, it was finally noticed and rectified later. A bit too late if you ask me as we had this on display for a couple of weeks.

 (Unknown, 2013)

This was more like it. More colour and the perspective and proportions fixed. But it still looked very busy and I think the message was lost. I agreed with Allan Peters when he said "Pick one idea and execute it with the fewest elements possible without losing the integrity of your idea." (Peters, 2015).

But that’s just movies, what has changed in advertising? I’m glad you asked. I managed to find a few rather enticing examples.

 (Colle+McVoy, 2010)

This clever interactive poster lets you spin the globe using touch screen technology. It grabs your attention and gains the interest of the inner child within us that wants to play. Why stand at a bus stop doing nothing when you can play?

 (Constable, 2012)

A similar concept to the one before, but using a camera to put the viewer within the advertisement. Again, it’s fun and stimulating.

Posters aren’t just something we look at now. We can be part of it. Drawing us in when we are waiting at the tube or bus station, when we scroll through web pages and Facebook. We can click or tap and be sent exactly where we want to, whatever takes up little time and means you can get straight back to Pokémon Go.

Bibliography

Colle+McVoy, 2010. Caribou Coffee - Globe. [Online]
Available at: https://adsoftheworld.com/media/outdoor/caribou_coffee_globe
[Accessed 26 10 2016].

Constable, L., 2012. Transportation, Travel & Tourism. [Online]
Available at: http://www.aef.com/exhibits/awards/obie_awards/2013/12
[Accessed 26 10 2016].

Peters, A., 2015. 10 Poster Design Tips. [Online]
Available at: http://www.howdesign.com/design-creativity/ten-poster-design-tips/
[Accessed 18 11 2016].

Prudencio, J., 2014. How to design a poster: 10 pro tips [Interview] (10 February 2014).

Unknown, 2013. Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunters. [Online]
Available at: http://www.scifi-movies.com/english/poster-0004076-0-hansel-and-gretel-witch-hunters-2013.htm
[Accessed 26 10 2016].

Unknown, 2013. Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters 3D. [Online]
Available at: https://miriamruthross.wordpress.com/2013/03/01/hansel-and-gretel-witch-hunters-3d/
[Accessed 26 10 2016].

Unknown, 2015. These new ‘Ant-Man’ posters are brilliant. [Online]
Available at: http://uk.businessinsider.com/new-ant-man-posters-2015-6?r=US&IR=T
[Accessed 26 10 2016].

Project Cybersyn; What happens when we add Beer to Chile?

Chile, September 11th 1973. President Salvador Allende is overthrown after a military coup. General Augusto Pinochet takes power and becomes ruler of Chile. It was time to undo what Allende’s government had set up. What was found during this takeover, was in an office building in Santiago. A hexagonal room filled with chairs, all facing each other.

(Unknown, 2014)

This was Project Cybersyn. Created during a time when the Chilean economy needed stability and structure. It was designed to be a control room to manage multiple business efficiently. The technology was from a business consultant called Stafford Beer and he was brought into Chile in 1971, by Fernando Flores recommendation. It involved a series of 500 telex machines and two mainframe computers. Things like “Factory output, raw material shipments and transport, high levels of absenteeism and other core economic data”(Unknown, 2013) would pass through this room and be sent all over the country, daily.

The room featured chairs with simplistic built in buttons and a lack of everything else. It was designed to make the people in the control room communicate with each other without interference. The intention was to have higher level male bureaucrats in these chairs, hence the button design, as not many men had typing experience like most women.

Salvador Allende’s ruling of Chile was short lived after the CIA supported a bombing of the presidential palace by a military junta. After his final address, “Long live Chile, long live the people, long live the workers,” (Allende, 1973) he took his own life. Project Cybersyn would remain an unused furnished room.

References

Allende, S., 1973. Last Words to the Nation. Chile: s.n.

Medina, E., Unknown. The Cybersyn Revolution. [Online]
Available at: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/04/allende-chile-beer-medina-cybersyn/
[Accessed 25 10 2016].

Unknown, 2013. Allende’s socialist internet. [Online]
Available at: http://www.redpepper.org.uk/allendes-socialist-internet/
[Accessed 18 11 2016].

Unknown, 2014. PROJECT CYBERSYN: Chile & the Socialist Internet. [Online]
Available at: http://www.cybersalon.org/project-cybersyn-chile-the-socialist-internet/
[Accessed 25 10 2016].

Unknown, 2016. Project Cybersyn. [Online]
Available at: http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/project-cybersyn/
[Accessed 25 10 2016].

A bit about Alan Turing

A lot of us now know about Alan Turing thanks to a movie starring Benedict Cumberbatch called ‘The Imitation Game’. For any history buffs, he was the genius behind breaking the enigma code, used by the Germans during WWII.

After earning a Mathematics degree from a scholarship at King’s College in Cambridge, and two years at Princeton, he went on to be hired by the British governments code breaking department and in 1939, took on a role at Bletchley Park that would forever cement his name in the history books. It’s here that Alan Turing, along with Gordon Welchman saved countless allied lives by developing ‘the Bombe’, which was “derived from Bomba, a similar machine developed by the Poles shortly before the outbreak of WWII” (Unknown, Unknown). The machine was developed to decipher German communications through an ‘Enigma machine’ during WWII. The Enigma was revolutionary in transcribing coded information as it “allowed an operator to type in a message, then scramble it by using three to five notched wheels, or rotors, which displayed different letters of the alphabet. The receiver needed to know the exact settings of these rotors in order to reconstitute the coded text.” (Lycett, Unknown). What the ‘Bombe’ did was based on the idea of “traffic analysis could be used to predict the text of some parts of the enciphered messages” (Sale, Unknown). Based on the assumption of some letters, settings could be input into the ‘Bombe’ and it could test whether there were any possible Enigma settings, faster then what a group of workers could do. What's now considered as the first computer, shortened the war significantly thus saving countless lives and started a new technological era.

Alan Turing’s personal life was far from troubles, and although he greatly contributed to shortening the war, he was arrested in 1952 for homosexuality which was illegal in Britain at the time. His life tragically ended short in 1954 after he was found dead from cyanide poisoning and an inquest ruled that it was suicide. After a pardoning in 2013, a law was passed “if the Home Office agrees that the offence is no longer an offence under current law, they will automatically be pardoned.” (Unknown, 2016)

(Clements, Unknown)

Here, you can see the machine in action at Bletchley Park in 2012.

References

Clements, K., Unknown. How Alan Turing Cracked The Enigma Code. [Online]
Available at: http://www.iwm.org.uk/history/how-alan-turing-cracked-the-enigma-code
[Accessed 25 10 2016].

Lycett, A., Unknown. More information about: Enigma. [Online]
Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/topics/enigma
[Accessed 25 10 2016].

Sale, T., Unknown. Virtual Wartime Bletchley Park. [Online]
Available at: https://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/virtualbp/tbombe/tbombe.htm
[Accessed 25 10 2016].

Unknown, 2016. 'Alan Turing law': Thousands of gay men to be pardoned. [Online]
Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37711518
[Accessed 25 10 2016].

Unknown, Unknown. Bombe. [Online]
Available at: http://www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/bombe/
[Accessed 25 10 2016].