This week we had guest speaker Claire Campion from Anyways talk to us about Speculative design.

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Anyways is a creative branding company based in London who help bigger brands market their products and services. Their website boasts projects with Google, Sonos, Adobe, Nike, Depop and many more big brands, often marketing a variety of campaigns with graphic design material, digital content, physical gallery spaces and much more. I think their website is really interesting as they are a company that is trusted by modern day commercial giants to translate their products into digestible content to connect with their consumers. I think I am most drawn to the variety of their work, as I often find my ideas are much more creative when I am working to a brief.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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(Anyways, 2020)

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For the first workshop we looked into creating a sensationalist newspaper headline as if introducing our concept to the world for the first time e.g. in my case as if tattoo culture has never existed before. We were encouraged to use visuals and diagrams to support our work and to take a different approach so here is the board I created:

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(Extracts from Smithsonian Magazine. 2012)

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For this collage I went with the approach that tattoos were not seen in mainstream culture and they were being invented on medical/security grounds. The collage features extracts from the article "Can tattoos Be medicinal" (Smithsonian Magazine, 2012) discussing ideas that tattoos are much more culturally significant and potentially medically significant than we currently understand in the more western side of tattoo culture. I have also featured medicinal tattoos that change colour, used to detect levels of insulin and pH in the body for example. There are also images of skin stitching, acupuncture tattoos, experimental projection tattoos, sound tattoos etc. I think this gives a well-rounded view into the medicinal and technology future and past of tattoo culture and there is plenty here to expand on in my project.

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The next task was to write an article from the perspective of a scientist, politician or philosopher. The aim of this exercise was to take on a more extreme view of our topics and push our ideas much further to open up new ideas. I decided to write from the perspective of a scientist and discuss the ideas of medicinal tattoos being a compulsory measure for healthcare in the future. This document can be read below:

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I also wrote a little bit from a political report viewpoint, discussing the ideas of a dystopian future in which medicinal tattoos are compulsory to access healthcare and what faults this may cause in society. For example it may create more of a social divide between the people who can afford private healthcare and those who would have to sign up for the scheme. It could give rise to an illegal market culture in which fake tattoos and implants may be used to create false results, to give people access to healthcare they don't have, to warp data etc. I feel like this idea is leaning into a very sci-fi dystopian visual project.

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I think these few exercises were helpful in thinking about our projects in a different way but for me personally I still would have been able to generate similar ideas using my own creative methods of brainstorming and research. I really enjoyed speaking to Claire and discussing our ideas. She had a genuine interest in everyone's work and helped to pull apart what people may have been thinking when putting together their work. I feel like I have a strong sense of direction going into the deep dive presentation for next week.

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References

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Anyways, (2020). Adventurous and meaningful content, campaigns and experiences. (Online) Available at:https://www.anyways.co/projects (Accessed 28th December 2020)

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M. Gambino, Smithsonian Magazine (2012). Can Tattoos be Medicinal?. (Online) Available at: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/can-tattoos-be-medicinal-156450609/ (Accessed 28th October 2020)

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