Bernadette Devlin McAliskey
Editorial Design
The Brief
The brief requested to choose an event, invention or person associated with the year 1969, and to produce an editorial piece of work based around the chosen subject.
The Concept
For this project I decided to create an editorial piece that would celebrate the accomplishments of Bernadette Devlin and her road to politics and her fight for equality in Northern Ireland in 1969.
Bernadette Devlin was born in Cookstown, Tyrone, she studied psychology at Queen’s University, Belfast. A member of the People’s Democracy, she participated in the Northern Ireland civil rights marches of 1968-69. In 1969, she was elected to Westminster as an Independent Unity member for Mid-Ulster. At 21, she was the youngest woman ever elected to parliament.
Devlin was part of the August 1969 “Battle of the Bogside,” which attempted to exclude police from the Catholic section of Bogside. Devlin then traveled to the United States and met with the Secretary General of the United Nations. She was given the keys to the city of New York and soon after drove to Harlem and handed them over to the Black Panther Party. When she returned, she was sentenced to six months for her role in the Bogside battle, for incitement to riot and obstruction. She served her term after being reelected to Parliament.
I first learnt about Bernadette Devlin in Leaving Cert History and was surprised to find out that the majority of the class were oblivious to her work or even the extent of ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland. Being a history nerd and having half of my family from Donegal, I feel I was more in tune with the history of Northern Ireland. I was surprised still to this day that some people still don’t know about the injustice many people in Northern Ireland faced on a daily basis only a few years ago. With the every looming possibility of Brexit, there is fears of a more visible divide on the Irish border.
I choose to create a contemporary style newspaper editorial that highlighted the issues Bernadette fought against. I gathered inspiration from print designs from the 1960’s and created a risograph style effect on the images and quoted text of Bernadette. The typography is bold and prominent just like Devlin’s speeches and personality. The inside cover is filled with M’s, at the end of the editorial you see a pink W in between all the M’s, this was to communicate Devlin’s place in parliament among all the male politicians, the pink colour is not just to indicate her gender but to show how she was not afraid to stand out amongst the crowd. The final design was printed on Munken Lynx 130 G/M2 paper and finished at 432 x 279 mm left unbounded.
