Oceania
prop design
poster design
logo design
type design
animation
This is a speculative project to develop the visual language of the superpower of Oceania depicted in the novel “1984” by George Orwell. The novel describes a totalitarian state, exploring themes such as propaganda, control, and political language.
I fleshed out Oceania’s visual system with insignia, product design, and posters. I also developed a monospace typeface, Newtype, for use with Oceania’s computer systems such as speakwrites and novel writing machines. Its condensed form reduces paper usage, and prominent ink traps mitigate low print quality.
I fleshed out Oceania’s visual system with insignia, product design, and posters. I also developed a monospace typeface, Newtype, for use with Oceania’s computer systems such as speakwrites and novel writing machines. Its condensed form reduces paper usage, and prominent ink traps mitigate low print quality.
Style development
The aesthetics of Fascism and Bolshevism would have been the basis for Oceania’s propaganda coming out of the end of the Second World War. Their power lay in bold illustration, and structural typography suggesting modernity and aggression. The novel itself is set nearly forty years after that point in time, so the style might have evolved a reduced colour palette and an impoverished graphic language thanks to the monopoloy of attention it commanded and the bureaucratic functions it served.
