Studio Brief - Caricature Primary Research

As I've now decided on the idea i will be taking forward, i wanted to research about caricatures before going to deeply into this idea and finding out that the concept behind it didn't communicate the intended message.

Why Caricatures?
The reason why I'm going for a caricatures is because it was a popular style against the so called 'enemys of the state' propaganda and guidelines used by Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels. The most famous example is the Eternal Jew. They used a caricature style to form a false image of what Jews look like. Emphasising their nose, ears, hands and other body features to make them sub-human and to make them look ugly and un-attractive.

What i hoped to get out of this experiment
What i hope to gain from this research, is to whether or not creating caricatures of people make them less trustworthy and perceived as someone who you wouldn't want to be close to. Will emphasising their features make them more sinister, therefore making them less popular with people. The overall result i hope to gain is to whether using digital caricatures instead of Cartoon caricature can still have the same effect today compared to Nazi Germany.

The research
First of i showed a single picture of David Cameron (below) and asked the following questions:

1. Does this person look trust worthy?
2. Does this person look inviting or approachable?
3. How does this person make you feel?
4. On a scale to 1-10 would you want this person as a leader?

Once they answered these question, I then showed them a picture of the same image of David Cameron but this time David Cameron was now a caricature. And once again asked the same set of question to see if there thoughts or feelings had changed.

Normal Version

Caricature version

I asked 15 people and the results are as followed:

Normal version of David Cameron

• 13/15 people said David Cameron was trust worthy
• 11/15 people said David Cameron was inviting or approachable
• The most common word for how they felt was 'stern'
• The average number on a scale to 1 - 10 on if they wanted this Person as a leader was '7'

Caricature Version of David Cameron

• 1/15 people said David Cameron was trust worthy
• 0/15 people said David Cameron was inviting or approachable
• The most common word for how they felt was 'disgusting'
• The average number on a scale to 1 - 10 on if they wanted this Person as a leader was '2'

Conclusion

My overall research was a success, what i wanted to prove was if a caricature of a person can change peoples perception of them in a negative way. Everyone had a negative reaction towards the caricature whether it was making a joke at his appearance or making a comment about his emphasised features. This made me think about if i could reproduce this image over and over again would people start visioning David Cameron as someone with a big nose and see the caricature image as truth. This is also one of Hitler guidelines, to replicate an idea over and over to manipulate and change peoples perception.