Exhibition: Hope to Nope: Graphics and Politics 2008-18

Last week I went to the Hope to Nope: Graphics and Politics 2008-18 exhibition at the Design Museum. The exhibition charts the influence of graphic design and technology (e.g. social media) on political and social movements over the past ten years. The exhibition is divided into three sections: Power, Protest and Personality. The exhibition starts in the Power section, which covered how political powers have used graphic design to communicate their messages, from the Barack Obama ‘Hope’ poster to North Korean stamps, which feature propaganda against the US. The Protest section focuses on people power, including the response to the Grenfell Fire and the Women’s Marches in the US in reaction to Trump’s election. The last section, Personality, shows how the characteristics of different people in power are represented, for example the words associated with five different political leaders, including Putin, Merkel and May, are graphically represented, which is a great way of seeing how data can be made accessible.

I particularly liked the fact that the exhibition started with the Hope poster and ended with ‘All Seeing Trump’ (where a fortune teller machine version of Donald Trump predicts the future). I also liked seeing the sketchbook workings of Michael Bierut for the Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign logo (even though they failed in their objective). It was also good see some of Edel Rodriguez’s designs there, including his version for the cover design of the Fire and Fury book. I found the exhibition to be quite eye-opening; it was interesting to see such a mixture of styles and how graphic design can be used for both progress and propaganda. I was also quite pleased that I recognised some of the names mentioned, which means I must be improving my knowledge of graphic design.