Global Warming

For my project, I am looking at Global Warming as it's obviously quite a 'hot' (sorry for the pun) topic at the moment. Looking into the more immediate effects such as raising temperatures and sea levels as opposed to the long term effects such as the gulf stream effectively stopping and plunging Europe into another Ice Age which is basically end game.

I saw Al Gore's film 'An Inconvenient Truth' a couple of years ago showing one of his lectures from the worldwide tour and was amazed at the quality and clarity of information design used during the lecture that made all the complicated truths and mind boggling statistics so simple. However, I got annoyed with not being able to see all the various graphs and pictures in the film as clearly as I would like. I managed to get a copy of the book last week which shows all the slides (and more) from the lecture brilliantly and would strongly recommend this book as an invaluable book for research for anyone doing this topic of who has even the slightest interest in Information Design as you will not see clearer examples anywhere else - other than the underground map of course ;-)


For the project I am thinking of tackling the issue from more of more tongue in cheek perspective to what has been done before. I am thinking of the idea of looking at the more humorous effects of global warming - such as Britain as the new 'sunny Spain' summer resort and a range of stamps showing this.

I would like to incorporate an interactive element to the stamps whereby the stamp purchaser could arrange the stamps to make a bigger picture showing the more serious truth.

HELP

Im finding the research quite difficult, i have looked into the digital age at identity theft, artifical intelligence and aliens. I have also looked into stamps, stamp design and stamp designers.
I am now quite stuck on the graphics side of things. what else is designed on a small scale that i can look into? what graphic languages am i looking at? where do i go next? i think i need a shove in the right direction guys!! i am slowly gathering a library of my own information with newspaper articles, images and information from books, so i have got some bits to keep me goin but seriously HELP!!!
thanks
carley

stamp files

dear all,

i have uploaded .eps files (usable in adobe illustrator, photoshop, inDesign, quark etc) of stamp perforations and the queen's head silhouette. these can be found on the right of the blog, underneath the link to the research brief.

the perforations will need editing to your chosen stamp size, and will need scaling accordingly (you will need to work this out based on what looks 'right').

the queen's head MUST be used as is, e.g. not sourced from anywhere else as this is the correct format and as an .eps is scalable without any degrading qualities.

these files may not play a part in your work just yet, but will come in useful as the project progresses so it is worth downloading and filing now. if anyone has sourced other useful files, let me know and i'll add them here.

thanks

james

Human Cloning

I have decided to look into human cloning as the ethical issue I want to base my project on, I have started looking into the history of cloning and looking into the arguments as to weather its right or wrong, from the medical advances we can learn from it to questions such as is it playing god?. Im not sure how much research we need to do into the issue I have started looking into internet and magazine articles on the issue but similar to danielle i cant find anything that reflects my issue through graphical languages.

any ideas where to go next? 

Tom

Identity Theft

I have chosen for my Ethical issue Identity Theft. It seems to be a really hot subject on the News recently and with all these headlines of "Missing discs" it questions what the government are really doing to help people protect their ID. 

I have found it hard to find ANYTHING about how you can protect your identity, most of the things I have looked into have been about banks being safe and how the bank can protect your account details. I wondered if people really know how they can protect themselves from such crimes? For example I am constantly finding peoples bank receipts on/in the cash machine, now being a good person I just put them in the bin but if a fraudster came along they have your ID in their hands. 

The problems I'm having is finding government based media that explains how you can stop it, I know the basics like shredding documents, keeping passwords safe etc and I have found one website that may help but I don't it's enough.

Also how can I visually show this issue, it's mainly all text?

If anyone has any ideas, it would be appreciated. 

Steph

Climate Change

Seeing as this is looking like the rainiest, muggiest and most changeable summer ever... I'm gonna have a stab at "Climate Change".

...more specifically, trying to promote how people can help to save the planet by "grow your own" energy schemes/technology. The idea being that if people took more responsibility for generating their own electricity (solar, wind, etc), this would reduce the load on coal-burning or nuclear power stations.

So... I'm just having a play around with a few ideas for how this could be represented visually.

If anyone else is interested in this topic, I've found a few good websites:

• www.enoughsenough.org
• www.growyourownenergy.co.uk
• www.ekonoiz.com

stuck already

okay so thinking about my subject i wanted to do an issue that i'm interested in and that i know i'm passionate about. so, i wanted to do something on gay rights but i really don't know what. I could focus on homophobia to make it a social issue but doesn't it have to take a sort of positive spin? 

any ideas?