8. Chief Seattle, Frederick Douglass, Dolores Huerta

Overview of Assignment: First read all three of the texts (found  below) that are from speeches by either Fredrick Douglass, Chief Seattle or Dolores Huerta. (The word “text” refers to either a story, article or some other excerpt form of original written content). It is important for you to understand what each individual text is referring to, when it was said, why and how it was said—the original context. This initial thorough understanding of any project is the single most important thing which will help you to design appropriately. This assignment requires you to successfully integrate three main areas of design;

  1. thematic development/interpretation within an overall context
  2. sensitive and careful treatment of text with emphasis on readability and clarity
  3. effective use of the original text as a comparison/contrast example of, or analogy with, a contemporary issue, cause or problem.

Make use of the same concepts of type treatment that affect the feeling and ultimate understanding of the written word that we explored on earlier assignments. You are always making choices about type that will affect not only readability of those words but also how the reader “feels” about that reading, about how it is to be understood.

Refer also to these additional Resource Links:

What To Make

  • The prototype for An Interactive APP
  • The prototype for A Website

Software

  • Figma (or other if you have previous experience using a different prototyping software)
  • Figma Download
    • download the figma.dmg file to your laptop
      (it will be in your downloads folder)
    • open the dmg file and drag Figma to your applications folder
  • Figma Tutorial

Design

Typography

Do Good Design For Good

Where to Find and Buy Stuff

UX/UI Interaction

Each of the supplied texts will be used to supplement or give additional contextual meaning to some other text which you need to supply. In other words, you will need to find and add this additional content. Each text which you choose, should relate to each of the main 3 texts. Your choice should be from a contemporary issue or person and be the main focus and paired with the historical speeches that I have supplied. The messages from Douglass, Huerta and Seattle should compliment your message by giving it additional meaning. This might mean that the text you supply tells the reader something that is happening today in a general way and the words of either Chief Seattle, Fredrick Douglass or Dolores Huerta serve as more specific examples—as precedents. The two paired together help explain a deeper meaning. For example, your chosen text might be about a contemporary environmental issue and pairing it with Seattle’s message would compliment or add additional meaning. It is all about enhancing the underlying meaning by creating a dialogue of some sort between both texts.

The coal company came with the world’s largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man

—John Prine, “Paradise”

As an example of, the words of John Prine (above) could be paired with those of Seattle’s to give a more impactful statement about environmental issues.

Process:

  1. First decide what your overall main topics are going to be. (you will need 3). Remember these main topics need to be contemporary ones, what is going on now.(environmental conservation, land management, activism, workers rights, equality, or a specific issue such as global warming, water rights, freedom of speech, etc.)
  2. Then decide what you are going to make to deliver this message. (website or app.)
  3. Finally decide how the words of each historic speech will relate to the additional text that you have chosen—the layout. (interspersed with the main content as quotations, a separate “sidebar” of information, physically in the way your sequence or pages are designed, etc.)

Edit both texts in WS Word correcting basic spelling and grammatical errors, make ligature substitutions, correct dashes, typographic quotation marks, etc. (Refer to the Typographic Variables link and the Minimum Typographic Treatment link as  checklists to remind you of the many choices/options in which you may alter text variables (line length, typeface, leading, type size, etc.) for reasons of grouping, hierarchy, readability and clarity, .

Pay special attention to the following:

  • Remember you are creating a prototype for a design deliverable that will be interactive or UX/UI for the end user. Plan for how this interactivity will happen and how you will demonstrate it within the app or website design.
  • First design intuitively according to the following considerations. Then tweak or finalize your decisions about typeface, size, leading and line length by applying methods such as lines of continuity, grouping and hierarchy, typographic rules of thumb, or  grid.
  • Treat all the text as a formal, important, and special message. Not as something informal, fun, or entertaining.
  • Emphasize readability over creating an “optical event”
  • Create visual connections between design elements such as heading and sub heads with the various forms of text type. Do this by using a baseline grid, forms of continuation, repetition with variation, alignment, nesting.
  • Check spelling and grammar. 
  • Consider where lines break, line length, and how
    these effect readability.
  • Avoid typographic “widows”.
  • Use correct dashes, apostrophes, and quotation marks.
  • Kern all display type. Kern all numerals and dates. Kern all dashes.
  • Avoid the default settings for leading, tracking, & typesize.
  • Make use of margin space, diminuendo as a function of Grouping and Hierarchy, ruled lines, pull quotes, proper punctuation marks, kerning, leading, dingbats, ligatures, font styles and sizes where appropriate to your design for emphasis and improved readability.
  • Create a special document not a “government report”.

The goal here is classic typography—tasteful, graceful, elegant. Presenting the material in an extremely readable fashion devoid of purely decorative elements distracting from this purpose will be among the most important typographic variables for you to consider. Think of this piece as a very special document on the order of the Magna Carta, Declaration of Independence, or Constitution but presented in a very contemporary “vehicle” (app or website). With that in mind, you are not trying to visually reproduce an old-looking document. Instead, these are simply references to the magnitude of importance of the words that these documents contain.

Effective use of an underlying grid is critical in making this happen. For this reason, it may be to your advantage to befin your design in inDesign and then move it to Figma to add interactivity (app or website). It  makes more sense to most designers to work intuitively first—what looks good to you, balanced, in harmony. Secondly, create and apply a baseline grid and document grid where the grid increments are based upon the leading of your text type. Then use the grid to fine tune your intuitively created layout. Basic steps to do this are:

  • Intuitively create your layout
  • Open up the leading on your text type to at least the next largest whole, even number (it must be a whole even number)
  • Create the grid settings based on this leading number by going to inDesign Preferences>>Grids
  • Adjust the sizing and spacing of all elements to fit the grid

You may add an image, dingbat or other graphic elements to compliment your layout, but first and foremost the message must be communicated typographically. Your design may be in black and white or color, your choice. The size, paper, and choice of binding of the piece is also up to you. Design it!

  • Chief Seattle or Sealth (Lushootseed: siʔaɬ) (c. 1786 – June 7, 1866)
  • (use the text from Brother Eagle Sister Sky speech)

Chief_seattle

  • Chief Seattle was a leader of the Suquamish and Duwamish Native American tribes in what is now Washington state. A prominent figure among his people, he pursued a path of accommodation to white settlers, forming a personal relationship with David Swinson “Doc” Maynard. Maynard was an advocate of Native American rights whose friendship with Chief Seattle was important in the formation of the city of Seattle. When the first plats for the village were filed on May 23, 1853, due to Maynard’s prompting, it was for the “Town of Seattle.”

    While known as “Chief Seattle,” there were in fact no hereditary chiefs among the Puget Sound tribes. From time to time leaders arose who distinguished themselves by their actions or particular skills, and were respected and followed. There were fishing leaders, peacetime leaders, and leaders in times of crisis.

    Beyond leadership skills and the gift of oratory, Chief Seattle had the desire for the two vastly different cultures to coexist in peace. He both observed and played a part in the birth of a small village named after him, that has since grown into a large metropolis known for its innovation, openness, diversity and love for creation. It is a remarkable legacy for a remarkable man.

Brother Eagle, Sister Sky a message from Chief Seattle How can you buy the sky how can you own the rain and the wind? My mother told me, every part of this earth is sacred to our people. Every pine needle. Every sandy shore. Every mist in the dark woods. Every meadow and humming insect. All are holy in the memory of our people. My father said to me, I know the sap that courses through the trees as I know the blood that flows in my veins. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the meadows, the ponies–all belong to the same family. The voice of my ancestors said to me, The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not simply water, but the blood of your grandfather‘s grandfather. Each ghostly reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells of memories in the life of our people. The water’s murmur is the voice of your great-great-grandmother. The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. You must give to the rivers the kindness you would give to any brother. The voice of my grandfather said to me, The air is precious. It shares its spirit with all the life it supports. The wind that gave me my first breath also received my last sigh. You must keep the land and air apart and sacred, as a place where one can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow flowers. When the last Red Man and Woman have vanished with their wilderness, and their memory is only a shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will the shores and forest still be here? Will there be any of the spirit of my people left? My ancestors said to me, This we know: The earth does not belong to us. We belong to the earth. The voice of my grandmother said to me, Teach your children what you have been taught. The earth is our mother. What befalls the earth befalls all the sons and daughters of the earth. Hear my voice and the voice of my ancestors, The destiny of your people is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men? When the view of the ripe hills is blotted by talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone. Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what will happen when we say good-bye to the swift pony and the hunt? It will be the end of living, and the beginning of survival. This we know: All things are connected like the blood that unites us. We did not weave the web of life; we are merely a strand in it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother‘s heartbeat. If we sell you our land, care for it as we have cared for it. Hold in your memory of the land, as it is when you receive it. Preserve the land and the air and the rivers for your children’s children and love it as we have loved it.

  • Frederick Douglass February 1817 or 1818– February 20, 1895
  • (use the text from Corinthian Hall speech)

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  • In 1893, Frederick Douglass invited Ida B. Wells to lunch. She noted a place across the street, but indicated they would not receive service there. “Mr. Douglass, in his vigorous way, grasped my arm and said, ‘Come, let’s go there.’” Together, they “sauntered in…as if it were an everyday occurrence, cocked and primed for the fight if necessary.” Douglass grabbed a table and chair for him and Wells, as “paralyzed” staff looked on. A stand-off ensued with wait staff until the proprietor realized it was Frederick Douglass, and warmly welcomed him while sharing stories of a time past when Douglass visited his hometown. “When [the proprietor] finally went to another part of the room, Mr. Douglass turned to me with a roguish look and said, ‘Ida, I thought you said that they didn’t serve us here. It seems we are getting more attention than we want.’”
  • Frederick Douglass spent his life fighting for justice and equality. He never knew the date of his birth. This is something he struggled with throughout his lifetime. Douglass believed that he was born in the month of February in 1817. In fact, records show that Douglass was born in February of 1818. He chose the 14th of February for his birthday because his mother would call him her “little Valentine.” Unfortunately, Douglass never knew much about his parentage. His mother, Harriet, was sold off when Douglass was but a child, and he only met her a few times before she passed away. Though born enslaved in Maryland, he escaped as a young man and became a leading voice in the abolitionist movement.

excerpt from ORATION, DELIVERED IN CORINTHIAN HALL, ROCHESTER, BY FREDERICK DOUGLASS, JULY 5TH, 1852, otherwise known as “What to the Slave Is the 4th of July?”

God speed the year of jubilee
The wide world o’er!
When from their galling chains set free, Th’ oppress’d shall vilely bend the knee, And wear the yoke of tyranny
Like brutes no more.
That year will come, and freedom’s reign, To man his plundered rights again Restore.
God speed the day when human blood
Shall cease to flow!
In every clime be understood,
The claims of human brotherhood,
And each return for evil, good, Not blow for _blow;
That day will come all feuds to end,
And change into a faithful friend
Each foe.
God speed the hour, the glorious hour, When none on earth
Shall exercise a lordly power,
Nor in a tyrant’s presence cower; But all to manhood’s stature tower, By equal birth!
THAT HOUR WILL COME, to each, to all,
And from his prison-house, the thrall Go forth.
Until that year, day, hour, arrive,
With head, and heart, and hand I’ll strive, To break the rod, and rend the gyve, The spoiler of his prey deprive
So witness Heaven!
And never from my chosen post,
Whate’er the peril or the cost,
Be driven.

  • Dolores Huerta (April 10, 1930)
  • Dolores Huerta is an American labor leader and civil rights activist who, with Cesar Chavez, is a co-founder of the United Farmworkers Association, which later merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to become the United Farm Workers (UFW).[1] Huerta helped organize the Delano grape strike in 1965 in California and was the lead negotiator in the workers’ contract that was created after the strike.

(use the text from Proclamation of the Delano Grape Workers speech)

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Proclamation of the Delano Grape Workers for
International Boycott Day
May 10, 1969

We, the striking grape workers of California, join on this International Boycott Day with the consumers across the continent in planning the steps that lie ahead on the road to our liberation. As we plan, we recall the footsteps that brought us to this day and the events of this day. The historic road of our pilgrimage to Sacramento later branched out, spreading like the unpruned vines in struck fields, until it led us to willing exile in cities across this land. There, far from the earth we tilled for generations, we have cultivated the strange soil of public understanding, sowing the seed of our truth and our cause in the minds and hearts of men.

We have been farmworkers for hundreds of years and pioneers for seven [when the first farmworkers union was formed]. Mexicans, Filipinos, Africans and others, our ancestors were among those who founded this land and tamed its natural wilderness. But we are still pilgrims on this land, and we are pioneers who blaze a trail out of the wilderness of hunger and deprivation that we have suffered even as our ancestors did. We are conscious today of the significance of our present quest. If this road we chart leads to the rights and reforms we demand, if it leads to just wages, humane working conditions, protection from the misuse of pesticides, and to the fundamental right of collective bargaining, if it changes the social order that relegates us to the bottom reaches of society, then in our wake will follow thousands of American farmworkers. Our example will make them free. But if our road does not bring us to victory and social change, it will not be because our direction is mistaken or our resolve too weak, but only because our bodies are mortal and our journey hard. For we are in the midst of a great social movement, and we will not stop struggling ’til we die, or win!

We have been farmworkers for hundreds of years and strikers for four. It was four years ago that we threw down our plowshares and pruning hooks. These Biblical symbols of peace and tranquility to us represent too many lifetimes of unprotesting submission to a degrading social system that allows us no dignity, no comfort, no peace. We mean to have our peace, and to win it without violence, for it is violence we would overcome the subtle spiritual and mental violence of oppression, the violence subhuman toil does to the human body. So we went and stood tall outside the vineyards where we had stooped for years. But the tailors of national labor legislation had left us naked. Thus exposed, our picket lines were crippled by injunctions and harassed by growers; our strike was broken by imported scabs; our overtures to our employers were ignored. Yet we knew the day must come when they would talk to us, as equals.

We have been farmworkers for hundreds of years and boycotters for two. We did not choose the grape boycott, but we had chosen to leave our peonage, poverty and despair behind. Though our first bid for freedom, the strike, was weakened, we would not turn back. The boycott was the only way forward the growers left to us. We called upon our fellow men and were answered by consumers who said – as all men of conscience must – that they would no longer allow their tables to be subsidized by our sweat and our sorrow: They shunned the grapes, fruit of our affliction.
We marched alone at the beginning, but today we count men of all creeds, nationalities, and occupations in our number. Between us and the justice we seek now stand the large and powerful grocers who, in continuing to buy table grapes, betray the boycott their own customers have built. These stores treat their patrons’ demands to remove the grapes the same way the growers treat our demands for union recognition – by ignoring them. The consumers who rally behind our cause are responding as we do to such treatment – with a boycott! They pledge to withhold their patronage from stores that handle grapes during the boycott, just as we withhold our labor from the growers until our dispute is resolved.

Grapes must remain an unenjoyed luxury for all as long as the barest human needs and basic human rights are still luxuries for farmworkers. The grapes grow sweet and heavy on the vines, but they will have to wait while we reach out first for our freedom. The time is ripe for our liberation.

To share your Figma File:

https://youtu.be/hPXKreCVlfo?si=7QS4PK9bk2Lvbfji

Publish your file to the Figma Community and also upload the link to Canvas Assignment page by copying the link placing it in a text file and uploading the text file to Canvas.

The following are student examples of a previous version of this assignment using similar content but in producing  booklet of some kind, not an app or website.

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