The Social in the Visual

To further explore the potential of locative information graphics I looked at Australian suburbia, which has undergone a massive change since its beginnings. A new model for suburbia is The Estate. These environments encourage a style of architecture, paint colours, town plan, and so on. All of these physical aspects can be seen in The Brochure. A certain lifestyle is for sale, often reserved for a particular person with a certain class, occupation, social qualities and family values. What if these ideal living standards were made public and transparent? What if Figures obtained this role. As an example, our service would be this mailer, targeted to particular suburbs and using the local area statistics from the ABS we can talk about the citizens this particular area attracts.

For this example I have used the Leeming suburb, not an estate structure, but hopefully the mailer will still raise awareness of the suburb’s social qualities. The mailer acts as a how-to manual to living the ideal lifestyle in Leeming. It shows the average occupation, family structure and time management. For example, if you are a male in Leeming you are expected to perform 5-14 hours of housework, while females should perform 15-29. For your occupation, the majority of residents are professionals; your choice of work would be education, technical service or healthcare. This manual includes a survey, which requires the Leeming residents to participate with the mailer; asking them to record their average spending, time, family, etc. With this information the mailer informs the citizen if they fit the mould for Leeming or whether they should be reassigned to a better-suited suburb.

Could this tongue-in-cheek mailer be taken seriously? Is it an informative way to introduce readers to designing a lifestyle? What else could be placed in the mailer or other how-to services for the uninformed suburbians?

If you live or have lived in Leeming please respond.