OUGD401 - Politics, Society, Culture and History

For this session we were looking into what a designer is motivated by. As people do not design 'for fun' in the industry each designer has to have something which motivates them. We were paired up and asked to write a list of 20 words which came into our head when we thought of certain things.

• Politics

1. Prime Minister
2. 10 Downing Street
3. Controversy 
4. Nick Clegg
5. University Fees
6. Cameron
7. Houses of parliament
8. London
9. Money
10. Headlines
11. News
12. Politicians
13. Conservative
14. Downing Street
15. Liberal
16. Law
17. Labour
18. Money
19. Parliament
20. Dispute

These words we a collective view on 2 peoples initial thoughts on politics. From the list above it would seem that we have a very negative view on politics.

• Society

1. People
2. Groups
3. Union
4. Separation
5. Discrimination
6. Equality
7. Inequality
8. Class
9. Social
10. Homes
11. Family
12. People
13. Disagreements
14. Dispute
15. Unfair
16. Youths
17. Children
18. Young
19. Old
20. Housing

This list is more vague as I think Society is publicised more positively than politics. This would therefore suggest that we are driven by opinions of the news publications.

• Culture

1. Music
2. Ethnicity
3. Countries
4. The arts
5. Dances
6. Sayings
7. Langauges
8. Belief
9. Associations
10. Dates
11. Race
12. Art
13. Patterns
14. Language
15. Differences
16. Inequality
17. Countries
18. Belief
19. Religion
20. Symbols
21. Flags

I would say that the words we came up with for Culture were a lot more positive than any of the previous categories.

• History

1. Tudors
2. Dates
3. Architecture
4. Stately Homes
5. Henry VIII
6. Traditions
7. Language
8. Inventions
9. Hanging
10. Jousting
11. Medieval
12. Tudors
13. Victorian
14. Henry VIII
15. Timeline
16. Dates
17. Traditions
18. Armour
19. Weapons
20. Crown Jewels

After doing this we had to separate the words into two categories; Positive and Negative.

Then we had to write 5 positive statements about each topic.

Finally we had to write 5 Negative statements about each topic. 

Collectively, we found that writing the negatives about a topic was somewhat easier than finding positive things to say, especially for Politics. After this session I am not fully aware of what I am driven by but I have raised the question and will investigate this further through a number of different ideas.