December 2019
Society of the Spectacle
Subverted Magazine Design
In my design work until now, I have found out that what excites me about the commercial practice is reaching a wider audience with attractive and hip design aesthetics, then surprisingly involving them in an urgent topic that needs a broader audience. This inclination started with a project about the Society of the Spectacle in my second year in the art academy. For our final research process documents, we had to gather all our findings and present them engagingly and conceptually. I then dived deeper into the topics of culture jamming and subvertising and came up with an appropriated version of the famous “People” magazine. The goal was that, at first glance, it looks like a regular mass media magazine, telling you about the million-dollar car or the new fragrance of your favorite celebrity. But, when looking closer, it touches upon current urgent topics related to animal testing, climate change, and modern slavery.
I was hugely influenced by an approach I found in the work of a movement by the artist Martijn Engelbregt. Circus EGBG’s approach is provocative and tries to change people’s perspectives of the seemingly obvious. I found this method very powerful, seeing it as quite innovative and having potential for actual breakthroughs. That’s a massive power of design I’ve come to appropriate, adopt and use as my own.
While working on these subvertisements and collages, I felt engaged in this way of approaching audiences. I realized that for this kind of method, it’s essential to focus on aesthetics and current trends for the design work to be attractive for the audience – and the audience to be broader in that sense. But the layer inside gives it meaning and power, making it worthwhile. I then felt I had discovered something I want to develop in future projects.