Saturday, November 20, 2010

Studio Journal - PSA Poster Series

In Design III-A our latest task was to create a Public Service Announcement Series.
"A public service announcement is a non-commercial advertisement for the public interest. PSAs are intended to modify attitudes and/or raise awareness about specific issues. Design a PSA series related to your thesis focus. Create a set of three posters OR three video/motion pieces that express a point of view about an aspect of your thesis focus. What do you want to advocate? How will it provoke viewers to see the subject in a new way? You may invent an organization or choose an existing one to frame the subject. Your goal is to persuade the audience about an issue that relates to your thesis focus, and to create a series connection among the three pieces."
Tying this project into the Construction of Self came pretty easily. I went in the direction of how outsides influence contributes to the growth of Self. My PSA was a series of 3 posters with the message supporting Positive Peer Pressure. I wanted to try and tear down all the negative connotations associated with peer pressure because it can be such a positive influence in developing Self. "Friends for Positive Pressure" is to try and remind people that humanity is capable of good. Seeing peer pressure with a more optimistic outlook on life can raise confidence and hope in society, and when the whole strives for the better, so does the individual.

I chose to use full bleed images of friends and siblings: these images were tightly cropped and zoomed in on the ears, hands, and mouths of the supposed gossipers. To bring more attention to these body parts arranged in such a way as to usually suggest the exchange of negative comments I desaturated every other area except the hand, ear, and lips. For the text I had the supposed "gossip" in large, italic Rockwell, the smaller text is bold Rockwell in a colored background that signifies the positive conclusion to the large gossip-esque question. The bracketed logo shares the same weight, size and backing as the positive comment. Both logo and positive comment appear in the same place in all three posters, whereas the large text moves relatively along the right hand to where it fits best.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Studio Journal - A New Cliché

For Design III-A we had a new objective: create a new cliche.
"Create a new visual cliché related to your thesis focus, and distribute it to a relevant audience.
This project is about the possibilities that lie in referencing shared knowledge; in altering meaning through repetition; and in knowing and involving your audience."
In light of my thesis focus, The Construction of Self, I wanted to play upon memories as time markers for growth and construction of Self. My plan was to have full-bleed image on one side of card stock, the other held the text alerting the viewer: "You Left This Here." subtext "Can you remember?" and link to a site I hoped to use to gather responses from my audience ( to which none have replied D= ).

The images are of "cliche" time markers that everyone experiences or witnesses: Birth, Birthday, Holiday ( Christmas ), Graduation, Wedding, and Death. My hope was that the image combined with the text would provoke my audience into recalling their personally experience or knowledge of such memories. I wanted the people that happened upon my new cliche to do some soul searching and bring them back to a time marker so they could understand it's significance in their growth and development, even if the time markers seemed cliche and unimportant at the time.