Monday week 6/Thursday week 6

Hand In:

Poster Wall

Poster 1

Poster 2

VCD 222.258 

Bogdan Jovanovic 15022132 

Matt Clapham/Jacquie Naismith 

Rationale: 

The two final posters use rhetorical approaches to communicate the societal issue of casual racism with in in New Zealand. With the use of satire, irony pathos and ethos I have taken Winston Peters and his infamous quote “two Wongs don’t make a White” to create two different posters that highlight the grey area of casual racism. Communicating the message to teen youths and young adults that are up to play with politics and racist jokes, that casual racism is not okay, not matter the form and you look like a fool for saying such phrases. Essentially making a joke of a joke, I have used bright bold colours in both, the idea of poster 1 is to make Winston Peters look like the Joker from Batman through the use of green hair, red lips, yellow teeth and a purple tie as if to suggest his words are evil/cenacle. The use of magenta pink adds the idea of the words being a joke as well as acting as complementary colours. Cropped in to his face to emphasis the smirk at his own joke and thresholded the image to emphasis the colours and add a graphic style. Poster two has the idea of a poster being defaced as a joke, similar to tagging, taking the piss of Winston Peters portrait done in a rough sketchy vivid style to appeal to youths. Yellow was used as a stand out colour and to contrast the text and portrait. 

Thursday Week 5 Plus Weekend

Work during Thursday class and development work over the weekend:

Changed/worked on the body typed text, making it standout out, easier to read and not look so awkward. Instead of just having white text, I've made the text black with a yellow block behind the text to make it stand out. This is then complimented/contrasted with smaller white body text underneath.

Big changes on this poster, have dropped the skin colour and edited photographic look, and gone for a a very graphic, stylised thresholded look. I found this made the colours of the hair, lips and tie pop and stand out more. Have played with the text a lot on this poster, by mistake i came across this high saturated shocking pink colour that actually worked well with my image. Reminds me of a suicide squad picture with the colour scheme, creates a sort of rebellious punk feel about it. Ive made the main text merge behind the head of Winston, then overlapped with the secondary title "Racism is no joke?. Then balanced the composition with a block of pink merged behind Winston's chin. I think it is looking much better, maybe not refined but definitely stepped up a notch or two in design style.

Hopefully now just a little more fine tuning, finalising and final touch ups to be done during Mondays class so I am ready to print on Tuesday!

Monday Week 5

Formative Critique:

Feedback from peers:

Overall, both clearly communicate my central issue of casual racism the Yellow one more clearly than the one below mainly due to the text being hard to read and perhaps obscuring the identity too much, my argument would be the further back you go the clearer you can make out/see the face and there is a caption with the persons name and status so even if the face is obscured the text is a secondary source to confirm who the person is. Also there was a suggestion that with the poster below I could make some text smaller for better text hierarchy. The last comment is irrelevant as it asks where one of my very first poster ideas as a exercise in class went to, not helpful at all.

Printed out poster, referred to as no.2 or below in the feedback form.

Printed out poster referred to as no.1 or top in the feedback form.

Changes based on feed back form:

Made heading text white and removed the shadow to improve readability, made the purple lighter so it is more noticeable to enforce the joker imagery and made the smallest body copy smaller to enforce text hierarchy.

No changes made due to feedback being so positive, no negatives or suggestions.

Prep for Monday Week 5 Formative

Two Developed Posters:

 

Thursday Week 4 and Homework

Visualising two poster concepts:

Before class we had to of printed two A2 poster's ideas and pin them up for a critique. By the end of the class, had to have edited and reprinted them based of the critique's we got.

Poster 1 at the start of the lesson:

Based on the critique/feedback from my peers, I went away and edited my text, changed some alignments, colours and ended up with the poster below. Also blacked out the pocket hankie as it was too distracting.

Poster 1 at the end of the lesson:

This was the result at the end of the lesson, Text is now red to convey hurtful words, and relates to Winston's mouth now, to show it came from his mouth/lips. Also stands out more/easier to read from a distance due to more contrast. The tag quote is underneath the quote to show the relationship between the two texts. Then the real issue text is bigger and in the right hand corner. When critiqued by Matt and Jacquie it was said that I need to crop into the face as there is too much negative/un-active space at the bottom of the poster. Get ride of the stroke around the main copy as it looks tacky. Play with the thresholding to show more detail on Winston's face and play with the positioning of the text so it isn't as close to the mouth as it begins to look like a weird letter. There was also a point said about my posters possibly being too similar, it was agreed after some discussion that as long as when i am developing these ideas i make them more distinguished and push them apart in differences.

Poster 1 for formative assessment on Monday:

Based on the feedback during the end of last class I have developed and refined my ideas to produce this poster. I have cropped and zoomed into the face to focus the attention on the facial features, played with the thresholding detail and colours. Also re-did all the text in illustrator and repositioned the text based on the new composition. Will see what feedback I get during Mondays assessment class.

Poster 2 at the start of the lesson:

This was the first iteration printed and pinned up before the start of the lesson, after some peer feedback I went away and made a few changes which led to the poster below.


Poster 2 at the end of the lesson:

With this development I moved Winston Peter down as there was too much negative space down the bottom, got ride of the Winston Peters info text and just hand drew it with an arrow pointing at him. I emphasised the stitches on the lips so they stand out more, and i blew up the "Racism is no joke" as it was the important message I want to convey. After some feedback from Matt and Jackie it was discussed that I need to digitalise the text and a good way of doing that would be with tracing paper, have a less busy text background by getting ride of some of the "hahahahahaha" and possibly even move Winston Peters down a bit more.

Poster 2 for formative assessment on Monday:

This is the product produced based on the feedback gave on the previous version above. The main difference is I have digitalise the text and made the background a lot less busy so it is easier to follow/read, starting to look a lot more refined. re-did the bottom right copy in illustrator and below is the process and some photos of digitalising the scribbly text. 

Digitalising text process:

Had to print out the new poster layout in A2 format, then do the scribbles I wanted on top of the poster.

Then using two sheets of A3 paper, joined together, I traced over the scribbles, modifying them slightly to make them more suitable to fit. I then scanned them in, onto a USB using the printers as a jpeg file. Opened them in illustrator and converted them to outlines. I then added them on top of my illustrator file and adjusted to fit.

Week 4 Homework

Two poster ideas:

This poster takes the Micky out of a racist joke Winston Peter said, in the background is a stylised, thresholded image of him smiling/smirking as if at the joke he just told. I have the coloured his hair green, lips red and tie purple so that he resembles the joker, rather than a politician as his words spoke louder than his actions that day. Making him look like a clown. Getting the point across that racism is no joke, shouldn't be turned into a joke.

This poster is the same concept but done in a different way, this is not how the poster will look like, I will hand write the text and drawing in sketchy vivid lines. This is just a rough idea of how it could look. Looks rubbish because its done on the computer with a track pad. The idea is trashing someone else, making it as a joke, drawing on someones face. Almost vandalism joking but about racism, will have the quote "two wongs don't make a white" in the background as well as "ha ha ha ha" around the saying, taking the piss that its funny, fake laughing, done over the top so its over emphasised

Tuesday Week 4

Style + Mood Exercise During Class:

Looking at these posters that all use a head in them, as groups we had to come up with one word that described them, here are some of the words that came up during the group discussion. Helped me realise that for my poster to be effective in communicating my inequality, if someone was to do the same exercise on my poster the first words should be funny, joke, racism

Shocking, Confused

Consumerism, Feeding the beast

Violent

Surreal, Dreamy, Warm

Oppression

Brutal, Harsh, Fragmented

Lost, Confused, Identity

Festive, Celebration

Busy, Exciting, Important, Deceiving

Homework Developing

 Developing Ideas and Concepts:

Thursday Week 3

During Class Work: Studio

Working on iterations of this particular poster during class, seeing if it is worth pursuing/where it could go. Text is too hard to read still, even with smaller and more dots to play with, so have to move on and produce more developments. 

During class I had a discussion with Jackie, talked about this poster and the balloon animal poster. The one above works very well and conveys the exact point i want to make. Only problem is, this poster just relies on type alone, would be nice to have imagery with it. Discussed a few changes/iterations on this poster and agreed to just put it aside and work on some different developments. The balloon animal poster also had positive feedback, saying it showed clever use of imagery and that the balloon exploding was the most effective/responsive. Need to keep playing around with the idea of racist jokes. Had a discussion about how it seems okay that black comedians joke about being black and its deemed okay but a white person cant do that. But at the end it is all still racism. This session helped to give me direction and what I need to focus on.

Tuesday - Thursday Homework

Developments/Iterations based on critique:

Original

Tried to add tension by the balloon animals holding the needles and point them at each other. Reinforcing the fact the balloon animals represent two different races, fighting each other.

Trying to keep the symmetrical composition going in a different way/composition. This time just using one big needle and making the balloon animals look away from each other yet touch each other, placed the same way perhaps to emphasise how they are the same thing/creature just different colours. Just like humans are the same but different colour.

This idea was through a consideration made by a class peer during the critique. This is showing the result of racism, the joke becoming an issue.

Tuesday Class Week 3

Critique during class:

Poster selected with group to present to the class/classes.

Critique sheet filled out by peers.

Class feedback summarised:

The central issue was clear and easily identified as racism.

Colours of black and white were a key factor in communicating racism.

Some feedback to improve my poster was to point the needles at each other more literally/physically. Have the balloon animal holding a needle at each other.

A comment was that my poster implies that racism affects white people equally which is not true.

My reasoning would be white people get discriminated against too and I want to show how racism is not a joke and causes inequality not that racism happens more to black people.

Another comment was my poster shows how explosively dangerous racism is and how a little thing can be a big deal.

Not really what I was going for but is relatable. I wanted to show more how not to joke about racism o use a joke as an excuse for racism because racism is a serious topic no matter how it is expressed.

Week 2 Homework

Design 4 concept poster for an in-term formative assessment.

Interms of irony and taking the Micky, I think this is the best example I have come up with. A racist joke/quote from Winston Peters that came under scrutiny by New Zealand media. The saying also fits what I am trying to say about racism, fire against fire or two wrong wont resolve the issue, especially joking about it. I have used quotation marks to make it obvious it was a quote and actually said as it relates more to the viewer. Yellow as it strands out and relates to the quote. Big bold text laid out so that it is easy to read. Text in the bottom right corner making it clear what this poster is about/trying to say. Use of hierarchy and placement of text creates importance of text and suggests what the reader should read first. 

This poster was all about experimenting with cropping, abstraction and composition with an image/shape. I don't think it is obvious subject matter for what i am trying to communicate in this poster hence the text in the bottom right is crucial. I tried to target the audience and challenge them, saying that their voice can make a difference.

This poster uses imagery to create text in which I hoped emphasis's segregation/inequality of race in New Zealand. The black fist can be seen to relate to the black panther movement and spell out "stop racism". My idea was that people would have to actually stop and examine this poster, maybe look in the bottom right hand corner first to figure out what it was about and then suddenly click that the black fists spelt something.... stop racism. I perhaps need to again develop this and make the hands a lot smaller so I have more dots to play with in turn making the text easier to read.

This poster was selected as my best, a close call with the Winston Peters poster, this only won because it used imagery. The idea was to try visually represent racism and how it is commonly referred to in jokes and that is not okay. Like the Winston Peters poster but in a visual form. I used ballon animals/dogs, one back, one white to enforce difference of race/colour and placed them in what I see as a tense position or on edge position as if something is about to happen. In the corners there is the opposing colours (black against white, white against black) pointing at the animals. The idea was these are racist words about to pop the animals as racist words, even if a joke still hurt and is a form of racism. I thought this also created a nice diagonal eye-path across the page, spreading from the centre out and/or from top left to bottom right. The text then supports this image.