As part of the Cross Year Studio on Pamphlets, I recreated our Jubilee for Climate Manifesto as a pamphlet.
I am interested in the design of manifestos, and exploring issues of authority, legitimacy, amplification in activist visual communications. I have been working for a while now in this style of “maybe my voice is not the one that needs to be heard” – of presenting my work quietly, unfinished, platforming others, creating open forums for conversation.
I sometimes feel self-conscious that this is at odds with much of the graphic design I do as an activist, which is usually campaigning, creating flyers and posters, trying to widely distribute a message, creating actions & banners that seek to get press attention. I write manifestos, press releases and speeches. It’s all about confidence, amplification & distribution.
For a change, I wanted to explore this side of the visuals: rhetoric & confidence. The manifesto has always fascinated me for this reason. How does the visual and physical form of the manifesto shape the audience’s interactions with it?
I also wanted to explore what it did to my chosen material – a manifesto I had co-written for Jubilee For Climate, a new campaign we’ve launched to address the root causes of the climate crisis. As with so much in activism, we’re a small team, with little time, so I’d made a banner version of this manifesto in the space of 30 mins. I utilised elements I associate with contemporary political design: bold sans serif italic font, All Caps, white lines & borders.
I did this for several reasons:
- The solutions to climate change will be political
- We are trying to counter the treatment of the climate crisis as a single issue
- We are not simply ringing the alarm on climate, but are taking a step forwards to actually suggest solutions (which XR has avoided in the past).
In my pamphlet version, I utilised many of the design features of early modern pamphlets, including many of the oldest fonts – Blackletters for the titles, and Jenson for the body copy. I centred the text, created huge numerals, and staggered their spacing, mostly so you knew to read down the page, rather than across.
I used woodcut prints of the trumpets (which have a civil, ceremonial, historical vibe to them, whilst also having a thematic and etymological connection to ‘jubilee’: mid 17th century (originally in the sense ‘making a joyful noise’): from Latin jubilant- ‘calling, hallooing’.
I made them pocket size, so you wouldn’t be tempted to roll or fold them, and you’d be more likely to keep them. I gave them several paper types, for material interest, and for a high quality, luxury feel. The out sheet was a thick (expensive!) tracing paper, so I used the translucency to create an engaging aesthetic. My fellow activists said they induced pride in this thing we’d created, in contrast to the mass proliferation, cheap & quick as possible aesthetics we’re often stuck with.
I printed 100 and distributed them at the Lord Mayor’s Show, when the newly elected Lord Mayor (the global ambassador for the City of London) parades through London, from the Bank of England to Westminster to swear loyalty to the Crown. This year Extinction Rebellion hijacked it to call out the huge role that the City of London plays in the climate crisis (if the CoL was a country, it would be the 14th largest emitter of carbon emissions in the world).
This is another form of subtervising – hacking into the aesthetics of luxury of the LMS, and possibly tricking people into thinking it’s part of the event. At the very least, it explored how to appeal to a different audience. I think people were much more likely to accept them than a flyer.