310AAD: Meeting with Simon

After I had sent what I had written so far for my dissertation, Simon offered to have a meeting about my work. I took this opportunity to do a voice recording of the meeting and later used that to be transcribed into a written document, this was used as a development tool. Below is what was said during the meeting.

I have highlighted different sections to make it easier for me to understand.
Yellow: feedback about what I have done
Blue: information/ sources to consider adding into the dissertation
Purple: how I could frame/ redirect my dissertation for the better
Green: possible new dissertation question if I was to follow his feedback

Dr Simon Bells 1-2-1 feedback:

·      Why are you doing literature review? It doesn’t say that you have to do that in the brief. Don’t call it a literature review when it is technically not that

·       This is well researched and committed, but I cannot see how you will frame it in 4,500 words.

First ideas about topics and argument feedback:

·       The elements of persuasion in mass communication:that works fine. However, it is a very big area. And there is a lot written there in that whole area already.

·       You then look at design for democracy:that’s fine as well.

·      Then I look at your argument and you say how does graphic design impact political advertising? That’s a question. That’s not an argument. If at the end of your dissertation you said, what this doesn’t address is; what is graphic design, how does this impact on political advertising? You could say that will be my big research question. And my thesis is that it needs more imagery, or it needs more of this, or it needs more technology. So, at the moment, there is not a clarity about it.

·       You then say, I want to explore and argue the case how important graphic design is when it comes to persuading people in political advertising. 

1.     First reaction, we know it I already!

2.     Now, much of what you say is focusing on this idea of what’s new?

3.     New campaigns, new technology. 

The dissertation:

·      (Following from above) You say political campaigns are slower to adopt new methods of communication with their intended audience: Simon immediately thought, do you know about Saatchi and Saatchi campaign from 1979, Labour isn’t working.I want you to avoid saying something that will bounce back. They used the technology they had at the time, their poster was massive, and they completely change 1979 general election. Margaret Thatcher won, Labour party lost and stayed out of power for the next 13/14 years.

To a certain extent, what you’re saying now, has already happened. So be causes of the 4,500-word limit.

            Design contexts 3, draft:

·      As I said,my concern is the scale.

·       What is the difference between strategy and tactics?

·       Strategy:the management of army, art of moving troops. A plan of action or a policy in business or politics.

·       Tactic: a tactically manoeuvre. The art of disposing troops. Then says skilful device or devices. The plans and memes adopted in carrying out a scheme or achieving some end.

§  So, to an extent you are right to mention both but, you need to be very careful about what you’re… like, just don’t put them together. For example: aims and objectives go together, but they are separate things (strategy is the aim and tactic are the objective).

·       Then you said from more successful campaign: Simon says, more than what? 

·      For example, look at Adolf Hitler’s campaign. He abused his power afterwards, but he won the election. He did that throw poster campaigns and new graphic language. Rejected current graphics and reverted to black letter type.

·       More successful campaign… I know what you mean but be more precise with your language. You mention Obama and Howard Dean and say he should have been successful, so when you say more, more than what?And how do you measure it?

·       You then say; political campaigns always seem to follow traditional communication strategies. Simone says, do you not think that they tried to think of new ways?

·       One of the things that helped Trump win was twitter. He used twitter so well. That’s his tactic, the strategy is not much different from Hitler. It’s a populist government.

·      They both produced campaigns, you need to tell us what is new. You talk about the development of the technology era; however, you’re writing as if it is a new thing. It’s not. It just hasn’t been in the public eye as much.

·       Again, be more measured about all of that.

·       I think that when you get going, and you talk about it, it’s very good. But…

·       For example, you said more of a design driven approach. Someone might question what exactly do you mean? Are you saying Hitler didn’t design his posters? Are you saying that Saatchi and Saatchi’s poster wasn’t designed?Be very sure of your ground when you make those kinds of comments.

·      It is interesting when you mention the private sector has to adopt more of a design driven approach. Then you say something about co-creators. Is this your argument?

·       The idea of private companies being co-creators with designers and implementing design strategy as a process, is very good.Is that what you are interested in?

·      You then talk about imagery and the success of the campaign. I just want you to be clear about what you mean by imagery. 

·       What you have produced here is really comprehensive and you’re bringing in the quotes very well. It’s very nice, I’m just not sure what it is you are trying to frame within the dissertation. Don’t discard or waste what you have done.Where can we take this?

·      Is this leading you to is kind of rethinking what it means to be a designer in a political campaign?

·       Traditionally a design has been a practitioner, you get given a brief, you then work as well as you can within the compounds of the brief, but the strategy has already been decided otherwise you wouldn’t have a brief in front of you.

·       It seems you could turn all of this study around and use all the martial you’ve got by saying that actually, what a design needs to do is be a strategist, and actually think about where the campaign is going to go,how it is going to be done, the location, how often is going to be produced.

·       You could frame this whole thing, well actually these words have been used interchangeably (strategy and tactic) Also, most designers have been tacticians and they have in the sense…

·      In this study, what I will be saying is that a tactician is someone who carries out the brief. A strategist is someone who takes a step back and decides on what the nature of the brief, decides where its going to be published, when its going to be published, how often.

·      Your argument really is, the best political campaigns will work if the designer becomes the strategist, rather than the strategist becomes a designer.This could now give you a frame work. You could now give a lovely introduction about the history, talk about Saatchi and Saatchi, Adolf Hitler, very specifically talk about Obama.

·       The designer becomes the strategist, rather than the strategist becomes a designer: you could be involved in actually targeting your abilities, skills and visuals, about when, where, how, how to convert it to twitter, how to turn a campaign, when to get you tweets out ect…