First Things First - Manifesto

To get us thinking about the first things first manifesto in relation to our own practise we were asked to read the renewed edition “First Things First 2000” and consider how this relates to our experiences whether we agreed or disagreed with the opinions stated. The renewed edition of the first things first – design manifesto was a response to the original created in 1964 by Ken Garland, as it was felt by designers that nothing had changed since then and it was of importance that it would be noticed and taken into effect.

Views on the renewed manifesto

I found a lot of the renewed manifesto to be of relevance and resonate with myself. However there were a few keys points in which I disagreed with the points stated.

Next we were asked to create our own manifesto out of the first things first manifesto. The way in which we were instructed to do so was by redacting any areas which we felt weren’t valid to our own way of practise.

My first manifesto created from redaction

After participating in this exercise we then reviewed our peers versions and upon completion of this our tutor Rob showed us his own example, in which he included very little of the text as to be concise and tended to create sentences out of different areas of the text. I had not considered doing this and so was inspired by the idea of creating new sentences using words appearing within different paragraphs and sentences in the text. His next request was that we take a spare copy of the manifesto and create a shorter version of the manifesto if we wished. I took this task up due to the little being redacted out of my first “manifesto” and although I still found it difficult to remove much of the first things first manifesto, I removed at least double of that before.

My second take on redacting the text to suit my own viewpoints. 

Further to this I found myself making an almost Tetris pattern within the text as I redacted that which I disagreed with. I may take this further and create a poster based upon this exercise and include it within my portfolio.