Task 6 - Theory in practice,

The post I have studied from Gary's blog is his reflection on the first lecture, surveillance and Foucault. He mentions how, "graphic design helps in the formation of social and cultural identities, it is reasonable to suggest that class, racial/ethnic age and gender groups etc. are often represented by stereotypes within the graphic design industry." A piece of Graphic Design I produced a long with my collaborative partner, was the promotional material for a new product being released by Green and Black's. Throughout the couple of weeks where we were working on this particular brief, the audience we were aiming to was constantly being considered. I think Gary is right in saying that graphic design does relate a lot to it's audience, and it has the ability to stereotype specifics into liking the same design. The target audience we were aiming our product at, were fairly young adults, who were interested in premium foods, especially chocolate. This narrowed down our design choices a lot, as the 'class' in this case, had to be considered when wanting to promote the chocolate accordingly. Technically, a consumer is being stereotyped if they are choosing to buy a product that has been designed to target themseleves. For example, a customer seeking Green and Black's chocolate wouldn't pick up a bar of 'Toffee crisp' or any other chocolate bar that didn't consist of dark colours, smooth strap lines, fancy packaging and a delicate typeface. So is all graphic design supported with an essence of 'standardization', in the sense that it is all suited for a particular reason, to a very particular audience, in a particular way.