Tag: doomsday clock

Survival Strategies/a call to action: Research & my work (pt 4)

I started by experimenting with an alarm clock visual with the Extinction Rebellion slogan ‘Time’s Up’. I like the naive graphic style employed and have continued on this theme – the use of felt tip on paper also feels child-like and in keeping with the idea of our children’s future being at stake. I was experimenting with the use of yellow as contrast to black/grey but found this hampered legibility

An alarm clock seems a highly relevant object to be depicting here – alarm and a sense of urgency is precisely what is needed to drive action, and you do not allow an alarm clock to keep on ringing once it goes off – you act.

In my first drawing of the clock, I considered what time to show on the face. It immediately occurred that in depicting an analogue clock face, I could show the doomsday clock as it stands in 2019 (at two minutes to midnight https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/ )

  • The first graphic depiction of the doomsday clock by Martyl Langsdorf
  • Later, a physical clock with a globe background was used by the Atomic Scientists Bulletin to demonstrate the changes in time
Here, I experimented with use of different colour and creating a 3D effect with the text to aid standout, and now adopted my own slogan of Wake up. I liked this slogan/text effect but felt more could be done to increase the focus on the doomsday time. I also experimented with blue/red as an alternative but this didn’t have the same sense of alarm for me.
Here I dropped the alarm clock motif and focused on the doomsday clock itself. Using red here for the clock face, but a grey/black for the hands did help highlight the message, but it seemed a little more static now that it wasn’t an alarm clock. Experimenting with green/blue with the text felt a bit confusing for the eye.
Here I experimented with further graphic detail in the icons. I adopted the globa background in my doomsday clock (adding back in the alarm bell element of the alarm clock) and i think this was highly effective. Also using red/yellow for the text reinforced alarm and a sense of heating that could help carry the message. Below I experimented instead with the Extinction Rebellion symbol and a melting ice cap imagery within it, but I think this was less successful (though an interesting idea I think)
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