Design aktivism in visual communication design

Visual communication has been one of the most effective forms of communication between people and society from past to present. With the development of the relationship between society and technology, visual communication design has evolved methodically and functionally as a separate discipline. In addition to being a creative process, the design also has the feature of generating solutions and adding meaning. In addition, it not only produces functional and aesthetic solutions to meet the needs but also causes changes in the behaviour and attitudes of the audience and society. The paradigms that changed significantly after the industrial revolution made social inequality and injustice more visible, and paved the way for new problems. Especially since 1970, social and environmental concerns have started to affect designers in the process. Throughout the history of art and design, designers, who have produced solutions for various problems, expressed their reactions and solutions through design, started to search for a new language based on the general concerns. These searches gave birth to the concept of design activism, and designers wanted to encourage transformations or raise awareness of social or cultural issues in their designs. In this thesis, the concepts of design and activism are examined in the visual language in terms of historical development, terminology, content, and context. With an emphasis on the influence of activist design on the masses, the designer's goodwill and environmentalist style were important to the perception of society and, in turn, the world. Violence and exclusionary attitudes towards women, one of the social issues experienced by today's society for a long time, has been revealed as a project study through the proverbs used in our culture in the context of social activism. In this context, it is aimed to create awareness and awareness about the subject among designers who are educated in the field of graphic and visual communication design or designers who are currently continuing this profession and society members who are interested in this subject.