OUGD401 - Politics, Society, Culture and History

This session involved looking at what motivates us as a designer. The things we looked at were areas which everyone is aware of and is motivated by in some way or another. The first part of the session involved thinking of 20 words which came into our head when we were given different categories to think about. Below our responses are listed.
 

This was a collective list for politics, all of which are very obviously negative views.

• Politics

Prime Minister

10 Downing Street
Controversy
Nick Clegg
University Fees
Cameron
Houses of parliament
London
Money
Headlines
News
Politicians
Conservative
Downing Street
Liberal
Law
Labour
Money
Parliament
Dispute

Society was a bit more of a diverse word which meant that we came up with more of a variety of responses, some had positive connotations and some negative.

• Society

People
Groups
Union
Separation
Discrimination
Equality
Inequality
Class
Social
Homes
Family
People
Disagreements
Dispute
Unfair
Youths
Children
Young
Old
Housing

Culture was the next word we were given, this was quite easy to do and the responses we wrote down were all quite positive.

• Culture

Music
Ethnicity
Countries
The arts
Dances
Sayings
Langauges
Belief
Associations
Dates
Race
Art
Patterns
Language
Differences
Inequality
Countries
Belief
Religion
Symbols
Flags

History was one that we found a lot of the same words for. This was maybe because we thought back to history lessons and studied the same time periods.

• History

Tudors

Dates

Architecture

Stately Homes

Henry VIII

Traditions

Language

Inventions

Hanging

Jousting

Medieval

Tudors

Victorian

Henry VIII

Timeline

Dates

Traditions

Armour

Weapons

Crown Jewels

 

We were then asked to separate our responses into positive and negative categories. Then, using the words we had categorised we had to write 5 positive and 5 negative statements about each topic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I found this session really interesting and it really made me think in depth about each topic and how I felt about each one. For some it was easier to think of words than others, this is because there were a lot of negative images to go with some categories, such as history and politics. Even though I don't have a vast amount of knowledge linking to each one, I think that regardless of whether we are aware of them or not, they have a huge impact on us as designers and the way we think and perceive the world and the happenings which surround us globally.