Study task 2 - Reading and Understanding Texts (OUAN401)

Analysis of Texts: 'First things first manifesto' 1964 & 2000.

Points made in text;

- The 1964 manifesto identifies that society has become saturated in consumer advertising.

- The 1964 manifesto states that there is a consensus of designers who think that there are things that designers/visual communicators think are more worth spending their time on, other than for advertising purposes.

- The 1964 manifesto states that designers believe they are told that advertising is the best means for using their skills.

- (2000 Manifesto) The bombardment on the public of commercial images is having a negative affect on how people in society interact with eachother.

- (2000 Manifesto) visual communicators/designers who signed the manifesto believed that at that time there were great issuses present that they should be using their skills to address and make change for the better.

Key Quotes;

- 'unprecedented environmental, social and cultural crises demand our attention'

- 'it is changing the very way citizen consumers speak, think, feel, respond and interact. to some extent we are helping draft a reductive and immeasureably harmful code of public discourse'

- 'the most lucrative effective desirable means of using our talents'

- 'We think that there are other things more worth using our skill and experience on.'

- 'we have reached a saturation point at which the high pitched scream of consumer selling is no more than sheer noise'

Tone of voice

I  think the tone of both the 1964 and 2000 manifestos is very much a tone of frustration with how visual communicators are being sold out in the way that most of their time and effort is spent on consumerist advertising for items that are in-essential - making them feel like their efforts are in a way meaningless,like the only purpose of thier work is to sell consumer products that have no real meanigful value.

Analysis

in the first things first manifesto, 1964 it is identified that in society the general public has come to a point whereby the visual landscape of the public's surroundings has been inundated with a bombardment of consumerist advertising to the point at which it loses all true value as individual pieces of communication, as this quote suggests, ' we have reached a saturation point at which the high pitched scream of consumer selling is no more than sheer noise.'
the manifesto also expresses that the signatories feel that there is a need to re-focus their attention/re-direct their skills into pieces of communication that have more meaning behind them and could serve a better purpose, 'we are proposing a reversal of priorities in favour of the more useful and more lasting forms of communication'.
the signatories also stated in their manifesto that they believe designers and students are taught in a way that describes advertisement as being the epitome of employability for people with such a skillset with many individuals who hold such a midset praisingthose who have turned their cretivity towards prucing advertising for in-essential consumer products, 'we have been bombarded with publications devoted to this belief, applauding the work of those who have flogged their skill and imagination.
in the updated , 2000 first things first manifesto, the signatories state that the constant bombardement of commercialism on the public has had negative effects on how the people in society intereact with one another, i quote ' to some extent we are all helping draft a reductive and immeasurably harmful code of public discourse.'.
in the 2000 manifesto, the signatories believed that at that time these were significant issues present that they felt they should be focusing their skills on adressing, 'unprecedented environmental, social and cultural crises demand our attention.'