Initial Idea 1 - Sophia for President

One of the most interesting facts I found in research was that by 2049, Dr David Hanson predicts that robots will have the same civil liberties as humans, and will be able to vote. This made me think, what if one of them ran for president? Because this is so much more extreme, it really highlights the reality of the singularity and how likely it is that robots will develop to this point at some point. 

I researched past visual identities for presidential campaigns. Clearly the stereotypical branding for a campaign uses red and/or blue and has a star, flag or eagle etc. - typical symbols of America and visual aspects that the American people respond to. Thinking about what a robot would actually do for their visual identity if they ran for president, Cleary one of their big policies would be for equal rights for robots, I’m not sure whether they would pick a different branding strategy to point out that they are a robot and they are a different sort of candidate, or maybe they would go for there classic red and blue logo with a star so as to not stick out any more then they already are and try to still appeal to humans. Either way, I think this project would be more effective if it does stick to stereotypical red/blue but has a robot instead of a human, because this would provide familiar human visuals however for a robot which just creates that contrast and emphasises how close this could potentially be in the future. 

These initial ideas visualise a range of ideas - showing more stereotypical presidential logos and also more futuristic stylised ones. The logo designs demonstrate this. The first advertisement/banner is quite comical because of its use of an image of Sophia, this comical approach is quite effective because its engaging and entertaining to people and allows the possibility to sort of over exaggerate points for humour, whilst still bringing them to light. The next advertisement is inspired by the visuals of “They Live” and utilises a simple sans serif font on a black background, suggesting maybe in this near future this will be a robots approach to visual communication - simple and to the point. The last advertisement utilises a contemporary approach towards the type and imagery. Often when movies look at a near future, the aesthetic is quite retro-futuristic because you simply can’t know how the future will look, so it combines contemporary aspects with very obvious stereotypical representations of the future. So to this degree, a contemporary aesthetic might work quite well in representing this and perhaps if more materials were to be produced, these obvious stereotypical representations of the future could be communicated.