OUGD505 - Brief 02 - Feedback on Initial Ideas

Today we conducted an informal feedback session which was designed to help us discuss and scrutinize eachothers initial research ideas and directions for brief 2 of OUGD505. This informal feedback session was useful in helping me consolidate my concepts and actually inspired me to look down different avenues of investigation. I asked a number of questions and got some very insightful responses from my peers:

Do you think this area of research is relevant? How can I make it exciting and engaging rather than preachy/condescending?

Pick a specific target audience - aiming at young adults may be more effective in the long run, such as bringing up children as vegetarian/vegan.

Focus on people reducing the amount of meat and dairy they eat rather than completely cutting it out their diets

What is your view on being a vegetarian or vegan?

I’m for being vegetarian – I’ve recently cut down my meat intake to just fish and plan to turn full veggie soon.

I’m a vegetarian and would love to be vegan but I find it really difficult living without cheese! I do substitute milk for rice milk though

Do you think we need to cut down on our current levels of meat production/consumption?

Definitely – it’s cruel to animals, such as cows milking long after and more regularly than they should ever be. It also impacts global warming – there’s just no need as there are natural alternatives to almost everything these days.

Definately! Nobody understands the cruelty in mass produced meat products such as chicken nuggets! Maybe encouraging the consumption of local and organic produce as a more humane option

Can you see any obvious issues with my initial area of investigation?

Not as such, I’d just say make sure you interview some people on their views and thoroughly research the benefits of turning vegetarian / vegan

Veganism is very extreme, maybe just focus on veggie if you don’t want to preach?

 What are the potential problems associated with producing work about food production, environmental impacts, climate change, vegetarianism, life style changes and how do I avoid running into them?

I would just try to avoid coming off preachy. Try to be subtle and not shove it in peoples faces.

People get very defensive about what they eat and would rather not think about it, just advise cutting down and suggest alternatives to meat (beans, chickpeas and talk about their nutritional value

Which communicative outputs would you engage with the most and why? (publication, zine, posters, flyers, leaflets, websites, animations, audio work)

I think animations and websites and posters – something that isn’t filled with information about the cause unless you actually want to find out about it

Possibly a publication with recipes? And posters with facts on? Maybe even a film would be effective

Who do you think would be most responsive to work of this nature? (the most obvious target audience)

I think people aged 18 – 45

Who would be the least obvious target audience?

Elderly people – it’s unlikely they will change their lifestyle as the effects of eating meat won’t effect them as they’ll be dead soon and they’re leaving the fucked up world for us.

Do you think the work should be heavy on pure imagery/illustration, pure typography or a healthy mixture of the two?

I’d say more illustration and a little bit of type – if it was type-heavy it may come across quite preachy.

Do you think guerrilla style distribution would work effectively for this project?

Potentially yes. Although, I think cowspiracy was so successful as it showed the negatives of eating meat and also the negatives of being vegan – such as soy milk production etc.

Are there any projects, designers or artists I should be looking into?

I’d try research into documentaries about veganism - look at both positive and negative aspects. Maybe try find the student at Leeds Beckett who created the poster saying Eat Less Meat at InFLUX (colours may vary/munro house).