OUGD401 Studio Brief - Research

OUGD401 Studio Brief - Research

From my tutorials, I knew I needed to do extensive research into gender equality campaigns. While researching for my essay, I found it extremely difficult to find advertisements that are gender equal, as aspects of certain advertisements still do have hints of dominance, power and powerlessness. These examples are the best examples for gender equality that I could find, but even so there is still contradiction in all of the campaigns. It's crucial to research into this for my practical work to gain a better understanding and to understand how an argument is successfully put across in graphic design and other formats.

HeforShe

HeForShe is a solidarity campaign for gender equality initiated by UN Women. Its goal is to engage men and boys as agents of change for the achievement of gender equality and women’s rights, by encouraging them to take action against inequalities faced by women and girls. Grounded in the idea that gender equality is an issue that affects all people — socially, economically and politically — it seeks to actively involve men and boys in a movement that was originally conceived as “a struggle for women by women”. Some noticed the contradiction of a campaign for gender equality which take only action against inequalities faced by women and girls, ignoring problems affecting men and boys. 

The branding for this campaign is very simplistic and minimal. This could be on the basis that gender equality is a simple thing - is it a basic human right and shouldn't be complex to understand. Therefore the simple design reflects this by being clear, consistent and legible. In addition the simplicity makes it easily recognisable which relates directly to their aim of spreading awareness.

This Girl Can

Sport England has launched This Girl Can – an edgy promotional campaign that seeks to inspire women to challenge cultural assumptions about femininity that prevent them engaging in sport and exercise. The short television clips draw upon “real” women’s bodies, of different shapes and sizes, as they move, sweat, strain and take pleasure in a range of activities – swimming, kickboxing, football, dance, cycling. However, Advertising campaigns like this push a neoliberal rhetoric of “free choice” to look a certain way, or move in a certain way; yet the choices available are narrow, restrictive and predicated on a narrow version of sexiness. It does not involve a stretch of the imagination to think about how women’s self-reference to “sweating like a pig” through exercise can shift into denigrating terms (“fat pig”), that are used against them if they don’t conform. It’s disappointing that a campaign to get women more physically active doesn’t focus on how exercise strengthens friendship, reduces the stress of work and care and gives us physical and emotional strength. And we suppose it would be far too much to ask to see a campaign that shows exercise as an opportunity to find an active space outside the cult of body worship and display.

Life Magazine

I came across Life magazine which was an American magazine that ran weekly from 1883 to 1972, published initially as a humor and general interest magazine. Looking through the cover however, most seemed to be quite gender neutral, where women and men had close up shots conveying a position of power. However although there are some exceptions it was interesting to see the women in particular not sexalised at all. Even Marilyn Monroe a huge sex symbol at the time just smiling, interesting considering the period of time. 

Dove Campaign for Real Beauty

The aim of the campaign is to celebrate the natural physical variation embodied by all women and inspire them to have the confidence to be comfortable with themselves. The campaign's mission is "to create a world where beauty is a source of confidence and not anxiety." I would still argue that their are still issues with the advertising. For example, in their real beauty campaigns the women are usually in underwear only which I feel still encourages the idea of the male gaze as well as sexualising women, even though this is more subtle. A lack of clothing was not necessary to show that the women were real. The campaign has been criticized on the grounds that Unilever also produces Fair and Lovely, a skin-lightening product marketed at dark-skinned women in several countries. The criticism has also been justified from others that state their concerns with the fact that the images that Dove portrays in their ads are supposed to be unedited and "real"; however, there has been comments made stating they have in fact been photoshopped to smooth the appearance of the women's skin, hide wrinkles and blemishes, fix stray hairs, etc. 

The Gender Ads Project

This site is an educational resource that focuses on the ways in which gender (and related issues like sexuality, social class, race, etc.) and advertising intersect. The primary focus of this Web site is print advertising. This was interesting to look at as there were controversies and constructs of the advertisements which had in depth information on. It also had roles of each men and women within advertising and deconstructions of these, also with secondary information on the politics and violence that comes with these. Although this is not a gender neutral example of advertising as all the advertisements shown are sexist in some way; it does have in depth information on how both men and women are subject to sexism and doesn't have any emphasis on one or the other. It was intriguing to see how the different roles were deconstructed and this is a good tool to use for research.