When I was a child during the summer I would play in the garden, giving my nan a heart attack as I zoomed down the slide and performed cartwheels, and would make my face bright red from balancing on my head for far too long. In the evenings I attended dance class and during the weekends I would be at my horse riding lessons, so I was a physically active child (and actually a pretty busy). Now and then, I would play on my PlayStation 1, often with my mum, and play the old skull games like Pandemonium, Abes Odessey and Croc - just to name a few.
From first-hand experience with my 3-year-old brother, I know the convenience and simpleness of handing an infant/child an iPhone with YouTube Kids pre-loaded (who knew that watching play-doh could be so addictive?!). It's an easy way to calm any oncoming tantrums, encourage them to eat their dinner, or to distract them while out in public - just to avoid a scene. Kids love it. This world of having what you want at your fingertips and loaded in an instant is everyone’s dream, and children in 2018 are living that dream - however, some psychological issues can evolve if the technology isn’t consumed like everything should be - in moderation.
This convenience and ease of technology is replacing physical activities including playing over the park, joining a sports team/class and even interacting with physical objects other than a screen. This lack of physical communication, touch and play, changes neurological pathways in children as it creates new ones. This rewiring of the brain affects concentration, self-esteem and the ability to form deep personal relationships. The lack of hands-on activities affects the development of sensorimotor and visual-motor skills while the ‘addiction’ to technology fails to teach children empathy, moderation, impulse control or how to challenge themselves. Necessary communication skills are at risk and social anxiety, diabetes, obesity (resulting in early stroke and heart attack) could potentially form.
As a response to this idea, I have created a dystopian future, where future generations are allowing their children to be consumed by the evolving world of technology and are artificially supplying their children with the skills in which over-consumption of technology causes them to lack - through medication. By designing a tongue-in-cheek medicinal packaging (called Technofen) that spoofs the idea of medicating children, rather than limiting their exposure to technology and encouraging physical play I am exposing the dangers that technology can have on children.
The typeface that I have utilised for the Technofen packaging is Frutiger, a humanist sans-serif typeface. The reason for this font selection is that I wanted to emulate the aesthetics of NHS branding - to some extent, while also having a contemporary feel. Using existing medicine packaging as an inspiration, I included all of the essential information, such as age/dosage, expiry date, batch number and other fine details. By paying attention to crucial but over-looked details I was able to create a clear design that communicates pharmaceuticals. The colour scheme was kept minimal, with black text against white, for a contrasting and contemporary/minimalist feel (as I am designing for the future) with each product having one assigned colour. These colours are pastel shades as I am branding these products for children, but marketing them at adults; thus I wanted to use colours that are associated with babies (such as baby pink, blue, yellow) but giving them a mature twist. The packaging has been displayed in clinical, light up display boxes in order to echo the detached and cold medicinal/technological world. Using human figures 1:25 scale gives the packaging some context of being large objects in an exhibition space (I did try to physically build life-size versions, but ability, budget and deadlines rendered this to be close to impossible).
To accompany the packaging, I have produced large prints of the packaging to be displayed as a series, so that spectators can get a feel of the scale (if they had been produced as full-size versions) and so they read the information easily and not in a smaller pt size, as the copy an important aspect of the design. Additional information documents have been printed that follow the Technofen branding but from the opposite spectrum, where it is more clear that technology is inputting some skills and also subtracting some. I have communicated this through the use of HTML code as the body copy of the design, using <del> </del> and <ins> </ins> to communicate the alteration of basic skills (in addition, 404 error not found). By using computer vernacular, it aims this product at the correct audience - those who are entirely consumed by the computer/technological world and should be aware of the dangers of overuse in children.
The overall message of the project is to make spectators aware of the neurological effects of technology and that children should just go out and physically play, as regularly as they engage with computers in order to ensure that basic skills are developed.
Images to follow.
Images to follow.
