First Things First 1964 Manifesto
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First Things First 1964 Manifesto
The First Things First manifesto was written 29 November 1963 and published in 1964 by Ken Garland. It was backed by over 400 graphic designers and artists and also received the backing of Tony Benn, radical left-wing MP and activist, who published it in its entirety in ''The Guardian'' newspaper. Reacting against a rich and affluent Britain of the 1960s, it tried to re-radicalize a design industry which the signatories felt had become lazy and uncritical. Drawing on ideas shared by critical theory, the Frankfurt School, and the counter-culture of the time, it explicitly reaffirmed the belief that design is not a neutral, value-free process. It rallied against the consumerist culture that was purely concerned with buying and selling things and tried to highlight a Humanist dimension to graphic design theory. It was later updated and republished with a new group of signatories as the First Things First 2000 manifesto The First Things First 2000 manifesto, launched by ''Adbusters'' m ...
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Ken Garland
Ken Garland (19 February 1929 – 20 May 2021) was a British graphic designer, photographer, writer and educator. Garland is known for his writing on design and the prolific work of his studio Ken Garland & Associates. Early life and education Garland was born in Southampton, and he grew up in Barnstaple, north Devon. In 1945, he enrolled at the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol and served in the Parachute Regiment after graduation where he was sent to Lübeck, Germany in 1948. He later studied design at London's Central School of Arts and Crafts, graduating in 1954. His classmates included Derek Birdsall, Alan Fletcher, Colin Forbes, Peter Wildbur and Philip Thompson. That same year, he married Wanda Wistrich. Career After graduation, Garland became the art editor of ''Furnishings'' magazine. In 1956, he became art editor of ''Design'' magazine, the trade journal of the Society of Industrial Arts, until 1962. This period was a foundational for Garland’s futur ...
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Tony Benn
Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn (3 April 1925 – 14 March 2014), known between 1960 and 1963 as Viscount Stansgate, was a British politician, writer and diarist who served as a Cabinet of the United Kingdom, Cabinet minister in the 1960s and 1970s. A member of the Labour Party (UK), Labour Party, he was Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), Member of Parliament for Bristol South East (UK Parliament constituency), Bristol South East and Chesterfield (UK Parliament constituency), Chesterfield for 47 of the 51 years between 1950 Bristol South East by-election, 1950 and 2001 United Kingdom general election, 2001. He later served as President of the Stop the War Coalition from 2001 to 2014. The son of a Liberal Party (UK), Liberal and later Labour Party politician, Benn was born in Westminster and privately educated at Westminster School. He was elected for Bristol South East at the 1950 United Kingdom general election, 1950 general election but inherited Viscount Stansgate, his father's ...
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The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of ''The Guardian'' in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of ''The Guardian'' free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for ''The Guardian'' the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK. The editor-in-chief Katharine Viner succeeded Alan Rusbridger in 2015. Since 2018, the paper's main news ...
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Critical Theory
A critical theory is any approach to social philosophy that focuses on society and culture to reveal, critique and challenge power structures. With roots in sociology and literary criticism, it argues that social problems stem more from social structures and cultural assumptions than from individuals. It argues that ideology is the principal obstacle to human liberation. Critical theory finds applications in various fields of study, including psychoanalysis, sociology, history, communication theory, philosophy and feminist theory. Specifically, Critical Theory (capitalized) is a school of thought practiced by the Frankfurt School theoreticians Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Erich Fromm, and Max Horkheimer. Horkheimer described a theory as critical insofar as it seeks "to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them." Although a product of modernism, and although many of the progenitors of Critical Theory were skeptical of postmoderni ...
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Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School (german: Frankfurter Schule) is a school of social theory and critical philosophy associated with the Institute for Social Research, at Goethe University Frankfurt in 1929. Founded in the Weimar Republic (1918–1933), during the European interwar period (1918–1939), the Frankfurt School initially comprised intellectuals, academics, and political dissidents dissatisfied with the contemporary socio-economic systems (capitalist, fascist, communist) of the 1930s. The Frankfurt theorists proposed that social theory was inadequate for explaining the turbulent political factionalism and reactionary politics occurring in 20th century liberal capitalist societies. Critical of both capitalism and of Marxism–Leninism as philosophically inflexible systems of social organization, the School's critical theory research indicated alternative paths to realizing the social development of a society and a nation. The Frankfurt School perspective of critical investigat ...
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Humanism
Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and agency of human beings. It considers human beings the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry. The meaning of the term "humanism" has changed according to the successive intellectual movements that have identified with it. During the Italian Renaissance, ancient works inspired scholars in various Italian cities, giving rise to a movement now called Renaissance humanism. With Enlightenment, humanistic values were re-enforced by the advances in science and technology, giving confidence to humans in their exploration of the world. By the early 20th century, organizations solely dedicated to humanism flourished in Europe and the United States, and have since expanded all over the globe. In the current day, the term generally refers to a focus on human well-being and advocates for human freedom, autonomy, and progress. It views humanity as responsible for the promotio ...
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First Things First 2000 Manifesto
The First Things First 2000 manifesto, launched by ''Adbusters'' magazine in 1999, was an updated version of the earlier First Things First manifesto written and published in 1964 by Ken Garland, a British designer. The 2000 manifesto was signed by a group of 33 figures from the international graphic design community, many of them well known, and simultaneously published in ''Adbusters'' (Canada), ''Emigre'' ( Issue 51) and ''AIGA Journal of Graphic Design'' (United States), ''Eye'' magazine no. 33 vol. 8, Autumn 1999, ''Blueprint'' (Britain) and ''Items'' (Netherlands). The manifesto was subsequently published in many other magazines and books around the world, sometimes in translation. Its aim was to generate discussion about the graphic design profession's priorities in the design press and at design schools. Some designers welcomed this attempt to reopen the debate, while others rejected the manifesto. The question of value-free design has been continually contested in the ...
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Art Manifestos
Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of what constitutes art, and its interpretation has varied greatly throughout history and across cultures. In the Western tradition, the three classical branches of visual art are painting, sculpture, and architecture. Theatre, dance, and other performing arts, as well as literature, music, film and other media such as interactive media, are included in a broader definition of the arts. Until the 17th century, ''art'' referred to any skill or mastery and was not differentiated from crafts or sciences. In modern usage after the 17th century, where aesthetic considerations are paramount, the fine arts are separated and distinguished from acquired skills in general, such as the decorative or applied arts. The nature of art and related concepts, such ...
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Design History
Design history is the study of objects of design in their historical and stylistic contexts. With a broad definition, the contexts of design history include the social, the cultural, the economic, the political, the technical and the aesthetic. Design history has as its objects of study all designed objects including those of architecture, fashion, crafts, Interior design, interiors, textiles, graphic design, industrial design and product design. Design theorists revamp historical techniques and they use these aspects to create more sophisticated techniques of design. It acts as a tool to better future aspects of design. Design history has had to incorporate criticism of the 'heroic' structure of its discipline in response to the establishment of material culture, much as art history has had to respond to visual culture (although visual culture has been able to broaden the subject area of art history through the incorporation of the televisual, film and new media). Design history ...
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Graphic Design
Graphic design is a profession, academic discipline and applied art whose activity consists in projecting visual communications intended to transmit specific messages to social groups, with specific objectives. Graphic design is an interdisciplinary branch of design and of the fine arts. Its practice involves creativity, innovation and lateral thinking using manual or digital tools, where it is usual to use text and graphics to communicate visually. The role of the graphic designer in the communication process is that of encoder or interpreter of the message. They work on the interpretation, ordering, and presentation of visual messages. Usually, graphic design uses the aesthetics of typography and the compositional arrangement of the text, ornamentation, and imagery to convey ideas, feelings, and attitudes beyond what language alone expresses. The design work can be based on a customer's demand, a demand that ends up being established linguistically, either orally or in writin ...
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