Graphics rotation: Day 1

We started off the day by watching a video of Harry Baker performing his piece of spoken word entitled "Paper People".

What I got from this viewing was how words and messages can get across and be remembered by audiences through different methods. Here Baker attracts and grasps his audiences attention through his poetry and the use of rhyming and alliteration within this. Because of this the audience are more likely to remember his speech and the messages he puts across as these features make the nature of his speeches increasingly entertaining.

Like Harry Baker's spoken word, words and phrases on posters or other forms of graphics can be remembered by viewers due to the way they are written, this could be through methods such as rhyming, comical twists or typography forms and layouts.

To experiment with this we were asked to print off a copy of a poem which particularly stood out to us individually. For my poem I chose Siegfried Sassoon's "Survivors":

NO doubt they’ll soon get well; the shock and strain
Have caused their stammering, disconnected talk.
Of course they’re ‘longing to go out again,’—
These boys with old, scared faces, learning to walk.
They’ll soon forget their haunted nights; their cowed	5
Subjection to the ghosts of friends who died,—
Their dreams that drip with murder; and they’ll be proud
Of glorious war that shatter’d all their pride...
Men who went out to battle, grim and glad;
Children, with eyes that hate you, broken and mad. Craiglockart. October, 1917.	10

I chose this particular poem because I studied it along with Sassoon's other works for my AS English Literature coursework. Therefore I still remembered some of the analysis and hidden meanings within the poem and their significance in explaining the true horrors and consequences of the First World War.

To explore the affects of poetry further we separated into groups of six and by combining a series of individually answered questions we produced a collaborative poem.

In the afternoon we experimented with typography sizing and layouts, using pre printed alphabets of different sizes of "Helvetica" font that were given to us. For my final designs I focused on the idea of how the layout of the type can visually represent the words being portrayed.