My initial ideas involve print based work, as this is something I feel I enjoy more than other areas, and would like to expand in to. I have begun developing an idea for a print based campaign against smoking and binge drinking, using art styles based on artists from the 20th century (Saul Bass, for example) and focus on the posters as 'art' rather than authoritative messages.
My theory behind this idea is based on a quote by David Hockney.
"Art has to move you and design does not, unless it's a good design for a bus."
- David Hockney
Based on my experience with a lot of these posters they often use shock imagery and very bold type demanding certain action. This must work, in it's own way but I would like to try taking a different approach to the problem. Using art would create images that are interesting in their own right, and remembered for being clever, interesting, or just visually appealing and therefore stick in a persons mind because they want to, rather than scaring them.
It has been pointed out to me that I don't have any justification or research for my reasoning, and that I would need to do thorough research in to my target audience. Is this an effective approach regarding young people? I feel it is, but feeling alone is not enough. Not only that, but also print is a medium which has been severely impacted by the digital media revolution, reducing it's impact, people's interest levels in printed media, and the reach of it's content. Most print campaigns also feature digital components, and these do not quite fit in with my ideas.
I have also been thinking about producing something web based, as I find coding relatively pleasing and a website is in a sense interactive, making it slightly more engaging. We have had several speakers come in lately, one of which spoke about UX design (User experience and User Interface) which I found very interesting and I would like to put in to practice.