Campaign poster
(SAMARITANS)
I chose one of my posters to be for The Samaritans and it was to be aimed towards people with suicidal thoughts, particularly teenagers. I started off by writing a few ideas down and scenarios that teenagers may find themselves in. The issue I wanted to silently touch upon was teen pregnancy and falling school grades. It is hard to place in one photo all the issues and would become one big jumble. I thought about locations and was aware that most of their time can be spend in the bedroom. As a kind of haven, I wanted to use soft light and make it look like it was taken in their bedroom at the work desk. I was torn between a tidy desk and a cluttered one and over time tried different both. At first I really liked the idea of having the desk lamp in it but on many photos it became too dark and too distracting.
The suicide note was also brought in, it was meant to show that it was unfinished by the individual. This was to enhance feeling that they were not able to fully communicate with anyone, even their mother. I began to realise that most of my focus was aimed towards females which was a touch gender biased. Males also have suicidal tendencies, so I had to re-think how a male desk may look. I wanted to explore different methods of suicide hence the photos with a knife, gun and razor blade.
Due to the amount of items on the desk I had to be aware that I didn’t want anything in particular to be drawn to the eye and become distracting.
Mixed images that I liked
Chosen 2 images to convert
I was aware that the above two photos, that I eventually chose, were female orientated. I decided to also minimise the clutter and focus on the subject matter. The idea of the teddy bear was to give the image a more subtle approach. The school tie - I didn’t want it to become a large part of the photo just a hint. As the good saying goes “less is more”
I liked the light on the chosen two as it wasn’t too dark and cast a nice shadow on the teddy bear. The focus on the photos slowly draws you in like the tide coming to shore - more so with the school report.
I made a collage to show ideas of using mixed colour of writing and positioning of the message. The borders are in white to enhance viewing of each photo without them becoming blended in to the green background. When taking the photo I was fully aware that the logo and writing was to become a part of the image. With this in mind I also knew that I didn’t want the image obscured by the tag line. There are not many examples with experimental colour and this was a conscious decision I made. With the logo being only two colours I wanted to try and incorporate them, and this, as I discovered, didn’t quite work. So I made the choice to stick with the white as being the main one.
Images with logo and tag I tried out
The chosen final image
The final choice for the campaign poster was made in the same way as I have adopted for the previous projects. Analysing, scrutinizing and gut feeling! I became more drawn to the white writing with the black outline because it became isolated from the other whites that appear on the image such as the tablets, suicide note, school report and the pregnancy test.
Although some of the letter is obscured by the edge of the tablets it can still be read. I also liked the aspect of the build-up to the act, which are the failing grades. Overall I am pleased with the outcome of the poster and I think it takes you into the mind of the teenager and you can feel a sense of despair.
Campaign poster
(Environment Agency)
I had written down a few ideas as to what I could photograph and conducted visual research to coincide with the topic. I chose this to develop as a campaign poster because, it was a large problem I saw when growing up. The nearby fields became a dumping ground by the locals. There would be such things as carpets, grass clippings and wooden furniture amongst other things. This was also the case on an old abandoned railway line - children’s old or broken toys were another familiar sight in this area.
There is one question I always ask when I see carelessness like this - WHY?
Sometimes I can fill in the gaps and in other times I don’t understand the wasted effort people go through to do this - they may as well go that extra mile to the skip! Strangely you can tell a lot about their life style from what people have dumped. I went to a location that has disgusted me from the time I first saw it.
I took many shots of the vast array of dumped waste, from many angles. The collage shows the images that I considered for the poster. Some are shown with and without a border just for a visual satisfaction of display purposes. I tried to produce a mixture of long shots to show the vast amount that had been dumped, and close up shots to show others the mixture of items that are dumped. These images were produced very early in the project so at the time I hadn’t considered the logo or the tag line. I did however take a few shots of children’s items, but quickly dismissed these as they became too much of a focal point.
Image taken that I liked
Images with logo and tag that I tried out
The selection shows various typographic ideas and positioning of the tag line. I only tried three variations of coloured writing due to the green becoming lost in the image. The red however, which I used to accentuate the danger, became too overwhelming and disjointed from the image. It wasn’t until I re-looked at the images that I noticed that most of them were overpowering the poster.
I then took what I had learnt and applied it to more trial images.
Four I liked but wasn't satisfied with
The chosen 4 images were better visually due to the fact that I had tried a different enhancing program which gave me more options to experiment with the positioning and manipulation of fonts. The images still seemed to be lacking something; some parts of the composition of the logo and tag still appears to be domineering the posters outcome. A re-think and advice was the next step for me, to gain that satisfaction with what I was producing.
The final chosen image
The chosen image came after a discussion on how I could re- think and about taking another approach to positioning the logo and writing. This helped a lot and gave me a new direction to getting the poster to look and feel right. Where I eventually placed the logo and tag, it didn’t spoil the view or message wanting to be put across to the public.
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