Think you are over-analysing. It’s just the cover isn’t it? Would anyone rather they spends thousands on a professional agency?

The cover is shit and yes it does look like Top Sante magazine and yes, that is a bit daft considering that it should be about moving away from such cliched rubbish.

But as it’s the Lib Dems who cares?

Only kidding, it’s a bit of a gaff that once again shows the lack of connection between policy and communication of that policy.

It would be funny, if it was ironic.

Amazing what irony can cover isn’t it?

heh

No, Sunny, the interior is just as bad, if not worse.

They didn’t need to spent thousands on a professional agency – there’s no great shortage of websites offering advice and information on good print design, and good web design for that matter, and for the most part the secret of good design is no more than a matter of keeping things simple and clean.

Other may feel differently, but I find that whole look of the paper detracts from its content to the extent that if was shoved through the door then it would rapidly find its way into the bin.

Very pink, isn’t it?

I could do the content for them if they’d like.

Here it is:

What Women Want, by Kate:

- equal pay
- cheap and cheerful state-subsidised childcare where the childcarers are paid as much as bankers and get bonuses
- free abortion at any stage without needing one GP’s signature, let alone two
- tampons on the NHS
- adequately funded rape crises centres
- legalised prostitution, with workers’ rights and the full protection of the law for women who work in the sex industry
- a law against airbrushing photos
- a national holiday celebrating wrinkles, menopause, the drooping behind, the racing bikini line and the older/fleshy woman generally (it can be national Kate day if you like)
- compulsory arsenic for any TV executive who chucks women over the age of 30 off telly shows for being over 30
- compulsory penisectomy (sp?) for any banker/city wanker who debates maternity leave & cover

and…

that’s it for now.

They can keep the pink cover if they like. I’m a content girl, myself

Up until now, I only read the text only version.

Oh. My. God.

Sunny: it isn’t just the cover and good basic typesetting is inexpensive.

I remember reading some Lib Dem campaign literature for students, going on about their welfare plans being Well Fair. Pretty much the same level eh?

Nice one on the men’s version, very amusing.

I personally think everything (men, women) should be included in one place. Not keen on a seperate Woman’s issue. But that’s the way that advertising is going, and politicians love to follow advertising trends

There’s a post on Alix Mortimers blog about how political campaigns shouldn’t be as slick as they could be. I think it makes sense (would link but I’m typing on iPhone).

If we’re going to attack others on the liberal left I’d rather we did it in substantive points about policy, strategy, messages etc – not really te colour or design of leaflets. Hence, can’t get worked up about it. The paper should be praised for raising some important issues. Would have liked to see a discussion about airbrushing instead, infact.

‘It would be funny, if it was ironic.’

Maybe it is, and they’re being to clever for us.

‘Real Women’ sounds like a marketing campaign for Dove soap.

I disagree with that a bit, Sunny – I think Unity is making a substantial point in that this is a bit revealing about the way that some people think about women… it’s pink, and it looks like a bad women’s weekly cover. Do the Lib Dems think that’s what we want, or that you have to make a mag look like a gossip rag to catch the female eye? Surely, people can make that point without being guilty of attacking the Lib Dems. I do think there is a serious point in there somewhere about the sort of magazine that women find interesting.

I don’t like special stuff for women, anyway. Salon does its Broadsheet thing and the Observer does that dreadful Observer woman thing – like we’re some sort of group that can’t take normal, proper reading or something.

‘Would have liked to see a discussion about airbrushing instead, infact.’

Now that WOULD be patronising.

I thought the airbrushing thing was just soundbite politics? No idea how it could possibly be enforced. If I’m wrong and there is some way to enforce it, it’s an interesting idea, though.

In defence of the Lib Dems (not something I’ll say often!) I don’t think they are trying to appeal to all women here, they’re trying to appeal to a group of women that fall outside their normal vote demographic. I doubt this means they will excise all reference to women from other campaign materials.

Agree about the retina-burning and the ridiculous number of fonts, but all parties produce poorly designed campaign materials from time to time. My Party is no exception.

… I mean to say – why are women’s issues consider ‘special’? Why can’t sensible and mature discussion about stuff like childcare, maternity, female hormones and their various manifestations, abortion, equal pay, etc, just form part of normal political and social intercourse? We’ve got friggin footy on every page of every newspaper – why can’t our stuff just go in there?

Let me answer that for myself – because women and their issues are considered a sort of sideshow. We’re not equal. We’re pink, and kind of on the side.

Sunny,

Avoiding ‘slick’ political marketing doesn’t mean compromising on production values.

It’s perfectly possible to generate an ‘honest’ and down to earth design aesthetic for a policy paper like this without looking either overly corporate or like a facsimile of Vogue.

If I was approaching this a commission then I’d stick to:

- a good basic 2 column asymmetric layout (i.e. a wide body column and a narrower column for callouts),

- a clean, consistent and restrained colour scheme – pastels and tints work well for adding colour accents without detracting from readability.

- clean typography, i.e. two high quality body/title fonts (one serif, one sans) and no more than a couple of additional fonts for adding accents to text, something like a good specialist italic or oblique and a clean looking script.

Everything else would then come down to working with photographs to convey a sense of honest and reality and as the target audience is primarily women then what I’d be looking for is a selection of good quality images of real women whose faces and general appearance provide a strong sense of character and personality.

The cover image on the actual paper is not one I’m keen on because its all a bit bland and anodyne – it actually looks like an advert for vitamin supplements.

i am talking to myself.

but that is ok. i am a middle aged bint and will be talking to myself more and more.

and my cat of course.

soon, i will be invisible.

perhaps i am invisible already…

i should start shoplifting. nobody can see me…

anyway.

only point is, unity – WHY HAVE A SEPARATE GIRLS’ MAG AT ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

… so, kate – why do men keep talking about what women need, and keep coming up with the idea that they need something that separates them out more from normal human discourse?

…well, gee, kate, i don’t know. i guess they see us as separate from normal human discourse. what do you think, kate?

…well, i guess they see us as separate, and pink.

… here’s a teaser for you, kate…

if you had just one vote left in all the elections in all the world for all the rest of eternity, would you vote for:

a) the politician who said women should get a year’s maternity cover on full pay so that their biological function didn’t eliminate them from economic independence, because that politician felt that women’s issues were simply normal human issues and should be considered as central to political dialogue as any topic, or

b) the politician who did a pink website for girls in drupal and gave a £10 off your first boob job voucher to the first 20 subscribers?

…i’m having to think about that one, kate…

Kate – don’t think they’re touting a separate girl’s mag. What they’ve done is packaged their policies aimed at women into a separate paper. I don’t think that’s patronising. It’s just targetting specifically really.

Unity:
Avoiding ’slick’ political marketing doesn’t mean compromising on production values.

Actually, it does. Bad production values can also be intentional. Though I’m not defending the design here.

It’s perfectly possible to generate an ‘honest’ and down to earth design aesthetic for a policy paper like this without looking either overly corporate or like a facsimile of Vogue.

Wel, let’s put it this way. Vogue sells a shitloads more than say Red Pepper magazine (though I prefer the latter).

Now you can either call this patronising or you can say it’s a cover that tries to copy what most women buy.

I don’t actually have a problem with political parties trying all sorts of marketing techniques to try and reach a wider demographic. If there’s a magazine featuring Dizzee Rascal that’s aimed at black kids, or something with…erm, say MIA aimed at Asian kids (though I doubt many Asian kids would know who she is anyway) then I say go for it.

hehe @ kate!

… okay, well, let’s help you out a bit. which one do you think is more likely in this sophisticated and classy political day and age…?

Not the main issue, but if anyone did decided to flick through on the basis that it looks a bit like Inside Soap magazine, aren’t they going to be very disappointed very quickly?

I mean, why not put it in a tin labelled Beanz ‘n’ Bangers? It might appeal to both sexes that way.

thing is, sunny – why not just have women’s issues at the top of the normal political agenda? why package them at all?

if the lib dems – and the tories and labour for that matter – just said right, here are our manifestos and as far as we’re concerned, this year’s spending priorities are full maternity leave and pay for a year, more jobs, trident, free childcare, and war in iraq, then there’d be no need to separate women’s things out as something special. we’d be on the same footing as everything else.

as things stand, they see us and our issues as separate from the main agenda – things you just clip on to the main narrative.

hey, i’m liking this edit thing btw

I agree with Ms Belgrave, they should be together, not seperate

thing is, sunny – why not just have women’s issues at the top of the normal political agenda? why package them at all?

They are part of the mainstream Libdem agenda too. Who says they’re not? But if someone asks what the Libdems are doing for women, then the party can point to the paper. I don’t see how that’s patronising – stuff like this has been going on for ages.

This is why there is a Libdem Women’s group… Libdem ethnic minority group, Labour friends of Israel, Convservatives Friends of Fox Killers (I may have made the last one up)…. etc etc.

God that really is awful. The party often produces this kind of thing for intense election campaigns, and while I don’t especially like them all of them that I have seen have been far, far better than the above. It really is ugly, more than anything else.

However, on producing something that looks like a womens magazine, I don’t really have a problem with the concept. They are some of the best selling magazines in the UK because people like the way they are designed- thats a fact. Whats wrong with trying to appeal to a demographic by using design styles they appreciate? LDFM would be bad because of political objections inherenet in the design, but copying say, top gear magazine? I think you could do one that parroted the design without taking any political cues from what they are copying.

I think criticism of using the design, therefore, is reaching. What does occur to me is why now? If we want to appeal to this demographic, why has this been done only for this package of policies? Well, I think it makes sense that if you are going to produce a package aimed at women it would recieve this treatment, but why wouldn’t they be interested in other policies as well? That seems to be problematic…

…if you take it at face value. But of course how would those magazines get into the hands of their target audience? They wouldn’t and won’t, theres no distribution to the demographic. Its just a quick stunt to get a few people talking about the fact they have done it around this policy paper, and in that context I don’t see any point in reading into it about relationships with ordinary voters who it isn’t *actually* aimed at, but is just pretending to be…

And Kate- every package of policies around any issue gets sold separately in all parties. Green issues, health issues, defence issues, agriculture, LGBT ect, every possible package is marketed… You are commenting as if people are producing one big manifesto and then a womens bit. Parties produce a big manifesto largely consisting of combining all the many, many little bits. Everything can be framed in that way if you want to- but little in the paper is new, so clearly its not that these ideas were ignored until now.

nobody understands me

the point i’m making is that nobody should have to ask what political parties are doing for women. it should be perfectly obvious. they shouldn’t have to scratch round in the rag bag looking for stuff to stick in a pamphlet. if a politician – clegg, whoever – said something like:

“we’re making free childcare for all a priority and subsidising childcarers’ wages so that they get a minimum of £70 an hour”

they wouldn’t need to package that up in a pink pamphlet. it’d be on the normal news, just like spending on helicopters and stuff, and everybody would get the point right away.

nobody understands me

Perhaps if you stopped talking to yourself, others might take an interest?

tinter…

in these manifestos of a million packages, is there ever a little men’s package…?

I’d interject, but I didn’t want to interrupt anything.

don’t make me talk to you, jim…

quiet, jimbo.

i’m talking to myself

and about myself

bit of shush please

No, I do understand you. But guess what? “Spending on helicopters and stuff” gets wrapped up in its own little package as well!

You are envisioning some kind of barrier between “ordinary” and “packaged” policy announcements that simply doesn’t exist. Everything is packaged to make it easier to communicate to people. Its easier to absorb information presented that way, and easier to explain why and what you are doing when looking within the context of a specific issue. This is something done for all policies, not just this policy package.

Kate- so you think men are a group widely facing social barriers and disadvantages that warrents government action? Oh, no you don’t, you are just spamming away.

In fact I’d go further, and break down policies by social conservatives, people interested in how much tax they’re paying, people interested in immigration policy, rich people – and more. Micro-targeting is the way to go!

we could do a conservatives fox killers killers package!!!

cool

i think i’m talking about priorities, and package size. things that are at the top of the list and get all the funding – ie war and banks and shit – get really big packages and are so big that they seem like the only packages going. our little packages are like little accessory packages. if – for argument’s sake – childcare got the same glorious funding package as, say, the killing arabs package, it wouldn’t be seen as a girl’s accessory package.

etc

Childcare costs, tax credits, sure start education spending and those issues do recieve headlines and substantial funding. And if you think the public should value them more, then you know who to make the case to- the public. So I think you are creating a debate mostly because you like using the word package.

But beyond that you are now arguing over policies, rather than the presentation issue we started with, so the debate is not the same and my interest rather diminished.

b4 you abandon us, tinter…

childcare costs receive big headlines, but not childcare spending – the same money on childcare as iraq, for instance, would get a really good headline. and if it was considered as worthy and as relevant, then women wouldn’t need a….

PACKAGE

har har har

i said package again

and again

PACKAGE
A
C
K
A
G
EGAKCAP

kate, I think I get it:

If the LibDems had a five-point pledge card, x number of points would be for/about women*

What you are suggesting is that the LibDems shouldn’t produce a separate pink pledge card for the ladies (as it were)

*(Of course, this still leaves the debate about whether ‘women’s issues’ are a distinct category within those key pledges…would any men use affordable childcare?)

rp – yep, that’s about right, although i’d go even further and say that i imagine a world where people don’t think about so called women’s issues even as women’s issues, really – it would be taken as written that things like childcare, etc, were just core to society and central to all agendas.

Mmm, pink & peppermint. My fave. So much better than my usual gore red and death black.

The cover confirms my suspicion that ‘real women’ is a euphemism for wholesome not overly sexualised women.

Shush, guys, I think Kate’s got somethig she wants to say

Actually, she’s right. Child tax credit isn’t a woman’s issue, it’s an issue full stop, even for those of us without kids ourselves.

This looks like a ‘Viz’ piss-take.

It’s hideous. Puts me right off buying it, I mean reading it.

The message I get from looking at that cover is that the Lib Dems think:

“Real women: they’re really really thick”

Err, type size on the page that lists the authors of this document. Authors’ names should be clearly displayed in type of the same size as the document content — that is an absolute requirement for accessibility and clarity.

The statement that “Plain text and large print versions of Real Women are available for blind and visually impaired users” is buried under blurb. This isn’t my field but I know that there are advisories about how to provide accessibility advice: Put it at the top of the document.

I understand why the creators of this document made it. But it is just so awful in further ways that require a Unity essay to describe.

And how reassuringly Arian.

Hmm, 40 great ideas for women. I wonder what they might be.

I was a bit surprised to hear that the Lib Dems had 40 ideas full stop – but perhaps that is a little harsh.

Might need to look at the fine print of this one. I will, when I stop seeing all these pink stars floating around in my retinas. Think I looked at that cover a bit long.

“Well, let’s put it this way. Vogue sells a shitloads more than say Red Pepper magazine (though I prefer the latter). Now you can either call this patronizing or you can say it’s a cover that tries to copy what most women buy.”

Me: I buy Vogue and even those trashy magazines we are all slating sometimes! But I hope I speak for most women when I say that I buy them as a form of recreation or to relax and read something unimportant (mostly). The fact that the Libdems are trying to appeal to women by copying these ‘designs’ is insulting as I would hardly take seriously an advert in these magazines guiding me politically; I even ignore their advice on diets. Lets say they are appealing to a certain type of women (who maybe wouldn’t normally be interested in politics for example) I find it insulting that they have only seemed to target less educated or politically disinterested women rather than targeting everyone. If there was a shinny leaflet with their policies being given out to all I would almost be happier.

As an impressionable young adult who is making her mind up about politics and policies, they have lost my interest as a possible vote /follower due to this Cheap Shot! I think it looks desperate, and like they are willing to do anything to win votes (even more so that all parties normally would)

I think that anyone who refuses to vote for a party on the basis of some lame typography of a single document deserves all the patronising they can get.

Nonetheless, it is a predictable reaction and a serious miscalculation by the party. The irony is the accompanying website (assuming it looks the same when it goes live) isn’t anything like as offensive: http://www.realwomen.org.uk/

#22

“I mean, why not put it in a tin labelled Beanz ‘n’ Bangers? It might appeal to both sexes that way.”

That’s genius. I’m not being sarcastic. Seriously, it’s amazing. Roll up a leaflet, put it in a tin and seal it. It’d have to be well-targeted, because it’d be really expensive to do. But I reckon a good proportion of people would open it, and would be intrigued enough to actually read the leaflet. If the content of the leaflet could be made relevant to the presentational tactic, and very carefully targeted, it could really work.

edit – there’d need to be something else in the tin too, to make sure it weighed roughly the same as a tin of beans and sausages.

Well I think the cover is rather good in its way – but a severe mismatch with the contents. Anyone remember the socialist daily newspaper which reached its wee peak just before the election Kinnock lost – they would have a pic of Madonna on the front, but you would open the paper and find a tedious article on objectification.

I suppose the same kind of disconnect is going on here.

@48 James Graham: I visited the website http://www.realwomen.org.uk/ and it is dreadful. I clicked all over the place, across text that was highlighted and across stuff in funny colours.

I spotted three functional clicks. “Register” to send your ID to Google (no thanks), “Email Jo Swinson” (why, given that I don’t yet have information that provokes correspondence) and “In the Media” (old fashioned links to old fashioned media).

The page states: “In this paper we will set out what the Liberal Democrats would do differently to help real women.” And there is no functional link to a page that discusses policy.

Dreadful.

Holy cow! http://www.realwomen.org.uk/

Such a debilitating shade of lilac. (Ref Vivienne Merchant in the movie of Jean Genet’s The Maids, in which she plays a privileged bourgeois)

If you’d read my comment you’d see that it isn’t live yet, and indeed the site itself makes that clear.

I’ve got to admit, I don’t understand why they’ve started semi-promoting the site before launching but the clickability is irrelevant to my point. The point I was making is that it isn’t as hideously designed as the policy paper itself.

“The point I was making is that it isn’t as hideously designed as the policy paper itself.”

Chorus: Oh yes it is!!

@53 James Graham: “I’ve got to admit, I don’t understand why they’ve started semi-promoting the site before launching…”

That’s good news. Encourage the creators to kill it now rather than inflicting it on the world.

Going back to an earlier point, I agree that it’s harmful to brand policies to do with children and childcare as “women’s”. It seems to me that gender equality can only ever be possible if childcare is seen as equally men’s and women’s. That would make it equally likely that a parent staying at home to look after a child (and therefore being held back in their career) was male or female. I’m aware that there are certain biological elements that can’t be evened out but that’s only a tiny part of childcare.

Helen @56
I totally agree, issues should not be segmented like that as they affect all. Childcare should be an issue for both parents, as should many of the other issues raised

40 uses for a Harriet Harman……………..

1. No Sorry cannot event come up with 1!

The train wreck at http://www.realwomen.org.uk/ has gone live. The “In Progress” disclaimer has been removed and there is some content. Alas, that content is the Real Women pdf policy paper and a few links to random public policy and welfare organisations.

Good points: the Privacy Statement is the standard Lib Dem one. “Any personal information you provide, including your email address, will not be passed on to any third party (other than any contractors or firms working on our behalf), except where you have signed a petition or similar, where the petition will be presented to a third party.”

Bad points: The “Sign up for news alerts” stores your personal information on a Google spreadsheet. That information is effectively transferred by the Lib Dems (as collection agent) to a company that is outside EU jurisdiction. Data Protection Act?

lolololololol…real policies for real men……..very very funny

Dear Unity,

A great post. I’m pretty much with Kate Belgrave on all of this. It seems to me that the defined public space, including most media, is normalised according to a middle class, male, corporatists, white, consumerist agenda. Consequently it is seen as legitimate to ‘appeal’ to those who fall outside the inside. The normalised agenda can be adopted by anyone and thus (for example) black, working-class women might be just as prone to attempting to appeal to the otherness of those considered not to be insiders as much as white, middle-class men.

Implicit in the design of the policy document/magazine/trash is the idea that women occupy a non-normalised space in which permission is granted, by way of tempting titbits (as if trying to catch a mouse who happens to have the vote), to participate in the normalised space. What the document does not do is to imply that the normalised space already includes and accepts women (it mostly doesn’t) but, furthermore, it implies that it never will. This last point, I think, is important because, regardless of the content of the document, the design is both an invitation and a fence; vote for us but don’t expect to be treated as a fully paid-up member of society.

There’s a huge amount of material that does the same for BME inclusion; numerous typefaces and design elements that attempt to look ‘exotic’ or ‘street-wise’ or ‘hip-hop’ etc etc. And while such marketing ploys often work in terms of increasing sales or votes, they do little to alter the balance of power. And it’s hard not to fall into such traps; on my own website I have a personal logo in a typeface called Spacetoaster and though it was largely chosen because my daughter’s favourite cartoon years ago was ‘The Brave Little Toaster, it also has a slightly ‘junglely’ look to it that reminds me of some of the UK tourist brochures for Thailand. So the appeal of the fiction of otherness even appeals to people, like me, who know better.

There is also the Radio4 Woman’s Hour (and why isn’t it Women’s Hour?) issue; namely that defining selected subjects as women’s subjects gives the impression that other issues are not of interest to women. The same applies to black culture etc. etc.
So I don’t think for a moment that these issues are over-analysed – if anything, they don’t usually get the cultural analysis they deserve.

Best wishes

Nick