Oceania (1984)
In the world of 1984 as imagined by George Orwell, most of the world is under the control of an immensely powerful totalitarian state called Oceania, ruled by an entity called the Party. Its ideology is Ingsoc (English Socialism), whose doctrines include devotion to the leader, Big Brother, and destruction of individualism and independence. This is my interpretation of how this world would have looked.
VISUAL REFERENCES
Orwell wrote his book in 1948. Nazi Germany was a fresh memory, and the brutal reality of Stalinist Russia was becoming clearer. The symbolism of these regimes (swastikas, red, hammers and sickles) were a starting point for designing the symbols of Oceania and Ingsoc. I expanded on the national symbolism of Oceania by imagining an aesthetic that could have developed from early modernist and constructivist styles into an alternate future in which resources are scarce. Orwell also makes mention of writing machines, so I imagined the typesetting to be mechanised, using a monospaced font which I named ‘Newtype’ (after the impoverished form of English that Orwell called ‘Newspeak’).