Final posters, rationale and poster wall.

rationale:

My two posters explore the issue of child poverty in New Zealand with a more specific focus on the material deprivation side of child poverty. I explored this issue through the concept of “Poverty is no child’s game” as my poster headline and visual metaphors by representing the problem through children games (pick up sticks and play dough).

I explored this concept through a more graphic approach with bold primary colours, as a shocking factor, a pick stick game, representing the number of New Zealand children living in hardship, I played around with pathos and logos in order to provoke and contradict people and the issue at the same time.

As my second resolution of this concept I used a more photographic approach, playing around with the idea of sculpting my own play dough doll in order to really use pathos in my poster. More childish, hand written fonts have been used in this poster as if a child had written it, in order to provoke the audience, it is also meant to be contradicting. For this poster i intended my audience to first see the poster and think it was just an innocent photo of a play dough doll but once they realise the real topic of the poster, be surprised and feel sad, even some empathy with the doll.

poster wall: 

Week 6 session 1, session before hand in

Monday was the final critique before the final hand in. We first started with a lecture on Tip mounting and printing for the following class on thursday.

Final Feedback given by Jackie:

- Playdough doll is working more than the lunch boxes, it gets the message accross more
- use bolder, bigger font for Pick up stick poster.
- Having the stats as headline works well with the hands demonstrating it but gets away a little bit from the child's game idea.
- "poverty is no child's game as headline" works well too, nice use of white space, possibly better than stats because less confusing for the audience. it is a more traditional approach than the stats as head line.
- play dough poster: is the tear necessary ? does it get a bit too sentimental ? ( personal preference).
- like the font used ( I however wanted to use a rounder font, more hand written to match the imagery more, Futura looked a bit out of place to me.)

over the next few days I will try and find the adequate font for my play dough poster
- try the have the doll without the tear to see the comparison
- increase the point size of the font for my other poster
- i think I will use "poverty is no child's game" as my head line for the first poster in order for it to flow better and get the message across, otherwise it might be too subtle.

Week 5 feedback refinement

second play dough photo shoot, by including the face of the play dough doll to increase emotional attachment, plus lunch boxes fraction as another way of representing stats, more related to material deprivation. 

pick up stick poster, resolving of font, colour of hands changed to bring them out more, chnage of colour of sticks to just primary colours, different represenation of stats, use of more negative space.

use of grids: 

Week 5 interim presentation, August 15th.

over the week end I worked on the feed back given by Jackie and Matt on Thursday. And also explored my second idea by doing a couple of photoshoots.

second poster idea photoshoot:

with the play dough I want use shapes that are a lot softer than the ones used in the other poster, also more emotional shapes in order to get an emotional response out of the audience, empathy, sadness, guilt when they look at the play dough shoes of the doll. Without getting too sentimental I want the audience to feel emotional engaged when they see my play dough poster ( use of Pathos)

Poster 1 refinement: 

Incorporation of the hands in the background more to make the sticks stand out more, use of cutout filter on photoshop. ( use of 3 different fonts, that are quite slim to match the thinness of the sticks. 

(use of yellow background to attract the eye of the audience ), use of primary colours again to emphasis the lack of material goods for kiwi kids. 

- the colours are bright, primary and brutal, the shapes sharp and neat. The use of the Cut out effect on photoshop and pushing the saturation up for the colour of the hand allowed me to get that brutality, shaprness accross, the colours with the shapes can seem quite aggressive and bold. 

poster 2: play-doh

I based this poster on play doh ads I found while looking for some inspiration: 

I liked the use of the plain white background to avoid distraction, and the clever visual pun used. 

In my play-doh poster I intended to make the little shoes broken and explore a child's point of view   (doing role play with a playdough "doll") and again have my tag line about poverty being a problem that should not affect children.  

Today's class. 

today we had the second interim presentation: 

in comparison to the first interim presentation my topic seems to come through in my posters, with people understanding it is about child poverty and hardship. 

- the visual puns with kids games and text next to it seems to get my message accross well, ( people found it very clear and clever) 

- really liked the idea of the playdough to relate it to center it on the kids again. 

- good use of colour and negative space. 

Lecturer feedback: 

- the child writting could be even more childish. ( hand written maybe? ) 

- the image of the playdough could be more reflective of the condition of deprivation. 

- maybe 4 lunch boxes and 1 empty one 

- move image down and bigger, make head line bigger and closeer to play dough, 

- play around with the stats and facts so they relate 1/4 or 1 In 4 what is more power full, 

- make the hands darker so they can be seen more 

-3 sticks in one hand and 1 stick in the other to be representative of the stats not 4 and 1 

-make a face to the playdough figure 

over the next few days :

more play dough photoshoot 

work on stat representation 

tweak hands

play around with fonts 

play around with body copy of playdough poster. ( and structure of it, using fundamental deisgn principals.) 

Week 4 session 2

poster iterations done over tuesday and wednesday:

In today's studio we all had to pin up our posters ( at least  of the two) to get a one on one critique on it before and after we had done more work on it. 

poster 1: 

feed Back: 

- hands stand out too much, make them more blend in with the background. 

- maybe have more neutral colours for the background and hands

- make the sticks bigger, to give them more emphasis,

- play around with the tag live as head line and vice versa

- Type doesn't have to be that thin, look into another type, not readable enough from far away. 

poster after refinment: 

- stop using drop shadow, looks a lot better

- background a lot better but yellow looked good, look into incorporating yellow background with the hands blending in. ( maybe half tone? ) 

- maybe have the sticks representative of the stats ( 4 sticks in one hand and 1 stick in the other),

- sticks are too big. 

- fill the space well, elements do not fit well together yet. 

Week 4 session 1

In today's class, we discussed the idea of a concept for our posters. One concept but 2 ideas using the same concept.

my concept: the idea of using children games or games in general ( not gambling) as a simile with child poverty. ( material depravation). 

Feed back on Pick up stick poster: 

- Try and change the point of view of my poster. ( in the current one, i am speaking as a designer). 

what about a child's point of view ? 

a mother?

the governement?

- think about hierachy of things. ( we read from left to right) + sizing to enhance visual flow

( too much writting at the moment,  be succinct, a little redundency is acceptable if used well with imagery) ( the text has to be readable from a distance)

- try out different ways of representing the pick up stick game. 

- think about other ways to represents stats, charts, pie graphs,... 

- using same concept find a different style to approach the matter with : 

- all typographic?

- illustrated

- photographic?

-other? ( brainstorm and find visual precedents)

- different types ? ( flat types, different typefaces, what other differents types of types are there ? look into it ) 

- consider visual cues. ( tangibles and untangibles)

For my Pick up stick poster I want to use bright colours ( the primary colours) to symbolise the lack of basics but also to shock my viewers, the colours are going to be so bright that you have to look at them, you can't look away, in the street your eyes would be drawn to it. i also want to use contrasting coloours and a very graphic style, with quite neat harsh lines to add to that shock factor, quite brutal and out there. 

tonight i will investigates a few variations of my pick up sticks posters and identify the second visual style i will be using for my second poster.

Week 3 session 2.

I was unable to come to class, due to personal reasons, I however worked on more thumbnails to develop my theme and looked into some visual examples of visual stylistics I thought could help communicate my issue.

-the simple look
- clever ( the relation between words and imagery)
-visual metaphor.

I played around with the idea of "poverty isn't a child's game". ( using kids games played at school or board games played at home during childhood as a visual metaphor to say that children should not have to through adult problems and be deprived.)

- use of juxtaposition.
- use of the primary colours because kids in poverty are lacking the basics, the use of primary colours as another metaphor/symbolic of the necessities those children are lacking.
-use of headline, sub heading and body copy.

week 3 session 1

4 final concepts for interim presentation.

After discussing my concepts with my group, we came to the decision that the school zone sign one was the most representative of my theme and the most effective visually. 

After getting my feedback, i realised that my theme might not be as clear as I thought to other people. 

Only 2 people out of 5 got my theme right, a lot of people thought my theme had to do with homelessness. 

I have been having trouble combining the education side of my theme with the material depreavation side of child poverty, it also seems that it has been throwing people off a little bit when looking at my poster, 

A decision concerning my topic needs to be made : to focus of education or material depravation. I am thinking on trying to focus merely on the lack of material goods aspect in order to get my message across more. Also to eliminate any possible confusion between homelessness and child poverty, i will try and focus more on the child aspect of my project ( maybe a childish style ? or childhood related objects in my posters? )  

week 2 session 2

During last thursday's class we were shown how to use Noun Project and for the couple of hours after that we had to use noun project to transform one of our thumbnails from last class and independent study time into a poster concept.

over the week end I prepared for the interim presentation and brainstromed once more about my societal issue and came up with a some potential poster concepts for Monday.

Concepts: