Week 1.1

In Class Exercises

Exercise 1

What is the ihi component?

What is the wehi component?

Do you all respond in the same way?

What elements contribute to these components?

The people in this photo are drinking what looks like beer and they seem happy. The clothes they are wearing such as the helmet and the jackets allude to gangs.

My first reaction to this photo is that they seem intimidating, if I was walking by myself and saw them I would cross the road. Once I looked at the picture for longer, they seem less scary and more like they are just having a good time. 

Our group all seemed to respond in the same way, with immediate intimidation then relaxing.

The clothes, drink, location (the fact that they are next to a car) and age all contribute to these components.

Straight away I can see that this is a photo of a woman, but it takes me a little while to understand the meaning behind the poster. I had to read the words to realise the meaning.

The wehi component is withdrawal. I want to look away from this and not think about it too much.

The others in my group found it alarming and gross.

The body looks dead, and the head is removed so it has no personality. It makes me feel like the aforementioned government owns this body, it is theirs and they can do what they want with it. It makes me think that the body might be behind glass somewhere, in some scientific lab. The body has no human-ness left.

The first thing that strikes me about this is the colour, then the picture of the axe. The words are quite hard to read, and they are in a contrasting colour which does not help their legibility.

It makes me feel sad and angry because the red reminds me of blood and an axe is a weapon. After reading the words though, it made me feel positive because I noticed what looks like a twig growing out of the axe which is upside down. It makes me think that axes have been replaced by trees.

The others in my group feel like it's saddening.

This is a very simple poster which lends to the immediate impact it has upon the viewer. The axe is black, and the background is solid red and the colours really lend themselves to the feeling of violence.

This poster doesn't stand out that much to me because the colours are muted and boring, and they don't contrast much.

After looking at this I find it humorous because of the image and the top quote, but I also don't care that much because it hasn't hooked me in any way.

My group felt the same on this one; they said there were a few small things that needed to be changed to make it more interesting and eye-catching.

Pictionary

Photo's of pictionary drawings by other people

Daily Exercise

For this poster, I decided to use a photo of someone else's manual labour drawing. After reading the first few pages of Max Rashbrooke's book, I wanted to focus on the fact that careers are unequal for genders. The quote I liked is "Often the skills needed in these kinds of occupations, such as nursing and childcare, are not given the same weight as 'male-type skills'."

I played around with the photo of the manual labourer and made it so the background was a block colour. I was going for a bright orange that would emulate hi-vis vests.

I also played around with this slogan but felt 'not just men's work' summarised what I'm trying to say much better. I picked a heavy typeface and a bright colour so that it would stand out and contrast against the solid orange background.

Independent Study

Select three works and repeat Ihi Wehi process

What is the ihi component?

What is the wehi component?

What elements contribute to these components?

Jason Munn. Leon Bridges - San Diego + San Francisco. 2015.

This poster reminds me of intestines because of the colour and shape of the word 'Leon'. It took me a while to realise it actually was a word not just shapes.

I don't have a strong reaction to this piece apart from at first being confused which made me stop and look at it to figure out what was actually going on. I still am not sure about the whole story but I think this is a poster advertising a musician called Leon Bridges who is playing a few gigs. From the poster, I think the music will not be rock and roll or anything too loud, I'm thinking it will be more indie, maybe even acoustic due to the stability of the poster, and how it is centred in the page.

The record player is what alerted me that it had something to do with music, and then the small text at the top gave me more information about date and venue. I still don't know what shape 'Leon' is supposed to be. Stacked records? Or just a fun font?

Paula Scher, Janet Perr, Arnold Rosenburg. Cover for Mi-Sex 12" single "Computer Games". 1979.

There are two humans that look like barbie dolls without arms, one male, one female. They both have the same bar code across their torso and neither of them are looking directly at the camera. The female doll seems to be more lit up than the male doll.
This makes me feel weird, it seems like the designer has taken a toy that lots of us knew as kids but ripped the arms off and set the lighting to make it seem dangerous and scary.
The bar code is definitely saying something about society, something to do with us just being part of the corporate machine, just another cog, replaceable.

Weston Frizzell. Aroha poster. 2020.

We see the face of current Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern smiling, in red, white and blue with the word Aroha written below it. It is a riff off the Hope poster used in Barack Obama's campaign for US President.
This makes me feel proud to live in New Zealand and be apart of this country because I personally like Ardern and think that in the past 3 years she has dealt with some really tough situations with grace and compassion.
The colours are the same as on our national flag so this definitely adds to the feeling of nationalism, and the word aroha, meaning love, contributes to making the poster seem positive.

Research

Looking into New Zealand political posters and finding the one of Jacinda Ardern with the word Aroha beneath it. Artist is Weston Frizzell.

Buy prints https://www.prints.co.nz/page/fine-art/CTGY/Artists_Weston_Frizzell
Article claiming posters are political ads not art
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2020/07/election-2020-electoral-commission-finds-jacinda-ardern-aroha-posters-are-political-ads-not-art.html
Article claiming posters are free speech and should not be illegal
https://waikanaewatch.org/2020/06/22/the-jacinda-aroha-poster-should-be-legal-says-the-free-speech-coalition/

Researching from links put on stream

I found this helpful because it had actual facts and statistics and it had more information about why this is a problem https://www.girlboss.nz/
I didn't find this site helpful as it was just talking up New Zealand https://www.newzealandnow.govt.nz/why-choose-nz/balanced-lifestyle
The stats site I'm sure will be more useful when I know what topic I'm doing https://www.stats.govt.nz/topics/biodiversity
The living wage site is a great resource, I will be revisiting if I decide to do financial inequality https://www.livingwage.org.nz/