OUGD603 - "Tell A Lie Convincingly" - Final Evaluation

One of the things this short brief taught me was what could be achieved in such a short space of time and will help me in particular with extended practice in figuring out how to manage my time between projects. In terms of this project itself, being to tell a lie convincingly, false messages got spread extremely quickly, showing the powerful communicative effects that graphic design can have on society and this is something to consider when working within the design industry. Although ours specifically only received one response, perhaps we would have been more successful if the timescale were longer, since what we were asking of people perhaps needed more time to mull over before applying to anything like our fake opportunity.

However, in terms of producing material for this fake opportunity, I felt as if this was quite successful in terms of how convincing and professional they looked. For instance, the flyers were printed double-sided on thin, glossy paper which mimicked real flyers in terms of their feel. The use of existing logos on these too, helped to make the material seem real and official. Despite this, the posters could have been printed on a thinner stock choice, perhaps the same as the flyers, since these almost looked a bit 'too professional' to be pinning up on university notice boards, etc.

The distribution could have perhaps also been a bit more considered, deciding more carefully where posters were placed. Most of these were pinned up on university notice boards where a lot of university and opportunity information is placed, however perhaps the mass of information puts students off from looking at such things for a particularly long time to take in anything important.

Most importantly, this short brief has taught me how important it is to consider ethical implications of something when designing. Most projects which got out of hand were to do with the use of existing branding, such as the LAU logo, used to falsely advertise within the university, whereas ours targeting an opportunity outside any institution specifically meant that our project could not be shut down quickly. This has therefore shown that problems associated with copyright of information need to be carefully considered when designing, along with ethical considerations such as the use of personal data when getting people to sign up for something.

Conclusion: The power of graphic design can be great, however this should not be abused.