Week 3.1

In Class

Over the weekend I completed another poster as I wanted to get ahead for the interim and not leave it to the last minute. Donald had said that the tampon sandwich idea was a good one, but I needed to make it simpler. 

I began by searching unsplash for an image I could use. In my mind I was hoping to have a couple of slices of bread and put the tampons in the middle, but the best image I could find was a few pieces of toast. 

Photo by Leti Kugler on Unsplash

In Photoshop I cut out one of the pieces of toast (if I continue with this idea, I will of course take my own photograph of toast but seeing as I wasn't at home to do this, unsplash it was), and gave it a gradient map of red and white.

From here I took it into Indesign and added the text. I kept the text from the sandwich poster mainly the same, seeing as it is still in the same vein. 

The secondary text and the call to action were simple to write, but it took me a while to come up with a title that I felt worked for the piece.

I actually ended up searching famous proverbs online because I liked the idea of using it as a metaphor and not spelling it out obviously. Some of the proverbs I liked were: Ignorance is bliss, silence is half consent, life is just a bowl of cherries and hunger is the best spice.

This is the proverb I felt worked the best as it talks about hunger which is what my fact relates to.

Here I was playing around with layout.

This is the poster I had settled on after the weekend, then on Monday Donald took a look at it and offered some changes. He said that it needs more colour, and that the title doesn't relate to periods so the topic is not easily distinguished.

I changed the title to Periods are not a choice, as this still relates to my fact, which is that more than 33% of kiwi women have had to choose between food and sanitary items.

Deciding on a background colour. Black is okay but not perfect.

Pink doesn't hold enough constrast.

Yellow really jumps out at you. This was now one of the concepts that was ready for the interim.

In class I also started working on an idea that I was inspired with last week when I found illustrations of a whole bunch of everyday items with blood on them. There were things like socks, rags, toilet paper and nappies, which I discovered in my research were all things that people who couldn't afford period products would revert to in times of need. I decided to build on this idea with newspaper.

Again Unsplash was my friend since I was in class and didn't have a newspaper handy. 

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash.

I masked out the top newspaper, and drew a crude red shape that was supposed to be blood dripping off the paper. I also used some of the blending modes, and adjustment layers to distort the image a bit so it wasn't just flat and clean cut. If I was to do this for real I would make the newspaper say things to do with periods, and probably get a real newspaper and dip it in red ink and photograph it.

In InDesign now, and figuring out the placement of the image, as well as writing the smaller text.

Using scale more dynamically here.

Playing with diagonal lines to create movement.

This is the concept I decided on, but looking back, I kind of wish I had picked the previous one as I think I made the newspaper too big in the end. 

At this point I have two posters ready for the interim. Donald said it would be good if I could come up with a way to make the tampon sandwich again but more simple, as the toast really ended up quite different to the original idea. He also said I could go forward with the typographic poster that says ABSENT and put an image in it to represent school. This was my homework between Monday and the interim.

Four Concepts for Interim Presentation

I wasn't really sure how to go forward with the tampon sandwich poster, especially since the feedback was to simplify it. I decided to try two things, 1. making everything but the tampons black and white, and 2. cutting out everything else in the sandwich and leaving just the bread.

To achieve this effect made the sandwich black and white, and also put a halftone on it too just for another level of depth. I added a gradient map to my drawings of the tampons to change the colour so that they stood out against the black more. I decided on pink because this is a common colour of tampons that lots of people would recognise.

This is the poster with the much smaller sandwich. I think it looks pretty weird and out of balance somehow so I didn't further this idea.

This is the effect of the black and white sandwich which I actually really like. It could do with some more contrast, but for the interim it is fine and I will make it better if this is the concept that I carry on with. One more poster to make and then my 4 concepts will be done and ready for Thursday.

The next poster was making the typographic poster more about school. My first ideas consisted of brainstorming everything to do with school to figure out what I should do to the poster.

What is school?

- uniform

- classes/periods

- school bell

- school bus

- teachers

- friends

- books

- whiteboard/chalkboard

- lunchtime

- 9am - 3:30pm

- maths

- english

- sciences

- p.e

When I wrote down the word 'maths' it gave me an idea for a title which would be cool for the poster. The title is 'The math doesn't add up' which I thought will go well with the poster seeing as my fact is that 1 out of 5 kiwi women have missed school or work due to not having access to period products.

This gave me an idea. I could write 1/5 and use background as a chalk board. It would be even better if I had a girl writing the 1/5. It was time to search unsplash again.

Photo by Nikhita S on Unsplash

It took me a while to find a photo that was going to work for this idea. I needed a girl, but in the right age gap. They couldn't be too young that it would be unlikely that they had their period, but they also had to be school age as to work for the idea of writing on the blackboard. It was amazing that I found this photo, it is pretty much exactly what I wanted. The girl is even in uniform, and the bow in her hair adds a nice touch.

The first step was to cut the image of the girl out, and I also put a gradient filter on her to make the image more interesting. I went through a whole range of colours but settled on red and blue as it highlighted everything nicely, and the colour red has connotations to blood.

Using pastels I wrote 1/5 on paper and then scanned it, cut it out and changed the colours in photoshop so that it looks like chalk.

Trying a concept where the chalkboard is full up of 1/5 so that it looks like the girl is writing lines. Also trying to figure out what I want to do with the title.

Decided to write the title in pastel as well, and all of a sudden I was finished and really happy with my concept. 

Now I had 4 concepts ready for the interim.