Final Posters

Here are my three final designs that I am very pleased with. At first I really struggled with this brief and couldn't come up with a concept that would help promote HeForShe. I really wanted to do a poster that involved influential female celebrities because I believe that the media do not promote these females as much as they do with men. Throughout my posters I wanted to show that women deserve equal rights as well as showing that women do have a powerful voice.

Throughout my text I enlarged the words that are most iconic and create a separate message within the quote towards feminism. I wanted the text to support the image and help understand the viewer what the message behind the poster is.

I decided to use three female celebrities that I believe are the right people to look up to. These celebrities are all very accomplished people and have stood up for what they believe in. I didn’t know much about Emma Watson, Michelle Obama and Amy Poehler but I know now that they are very inspirational people and have helped woman have a say for better. 

Although I did struggle at the start I really enjoyed developing my ideas and making a set of 3 posters that work together for a good campaign. I really enjoyed this brief and hope to carry on with Context of Practice next year. I also hope to improve with my initial ideas as this is something that slowed me down throughout the year.  

Idea development

Here are two ideas that I have decided to take forward. However, I will be designing it for Emma Watson, Amy Poehler and Michelle Obama who are 3 very powerful motivational speakers who have spoken out for feminists. I believe these three women are people that people have not heard enough about. I myself did not know a lot about these three speakers until I did my research and found out how inspiring these people are. 

Throughout my posters I wanted to bring a message. I wanted the lines to represent objectification and how the media uses women. I also wanted the lines to show that it is not important how you look but what you say. Here we have a motivational woman who has spoken towards feminism. I wanted my posters to show that its about the words not the looks.  I wanted my text to be positioned in the top right so that the person involved would be the center of attention. 

Initial Ideas

This was a very hard starting point for me. I really struggled with coming up with a concept that wasn’t digital. I really struggle drawing sketches of people and this is a brief that I wanted to focus on people and equality. I really wanted to use photographs of existing celebrities in order to maintain the same concept as HeForShe using celebrities to endorse gender equality. 

Throughout my initial ideas I wanted to use people in various ways to try send a message. My first initial idea was to create a cartoon caricature however, I decided to go against that idea because it could be seen silly and could be seen as a joke rather than something serious. 

I wanted to create something that used iconic celebrities that are not seen as role models for young teenagers. I want my posters to be inspiration quotes that people can read and follow. 

In general this was the hardest stage for me because I struggled with ideas and my sketches were hard to understand without going on the computer. 

Further Research

This campaign was started by Emma Watson who believes in gender equality and believes its time to stand up. It is a campaign to encourage men to stand up for women's rights. She believes that if you think men and women should be equal than that makes you a feminist. It is a campaign that has spread worldwide and has used subtle advertisement to help it spread. It involves using high profile celebrities holding up a piece of paper saying #HeForShe. This makes people want to get involved because their celebrities have promoted it. 

Poster research

This is a poster that uses illustrations to mark the soul that is coming from the brain. Although this poster isn’t about gender representation this is the sort of style that I have come across and would like to expand on. I think the illustrations draw your attention to the female and this is an idea that i’m trying to get across. 

Here is a poster that uses the idea of a woman holding her breasts. They are very female hands and show how a woman is being objectified as food. The womans breasts are transformed into two massive burgers and the hands are positioned as if a woman is covering them up. 

This is an approach that I would like to go down. Showing how men can be seen in any size, shape or colour. Whereas we see how a woman is ‘suppose’ to look like before she can enter the door. This shows how the media uses gender and how you must look like something to be accepted. This is also backed up in cartoons where the men are normally tall whilst the women are skinny. 

This is a birthday cake that is shaped in the figure of a woman.  women are considered consumable objects that can be violated. They are rewards. Violence here is seen as something funny and acceptable. Out of all of the pieces to take out they use the bum which again shows the womans body being used as an object. In this case a piece of cake with a candle ontop of it. 

This advert uses real trousers whilst changing the man into a typographic layout. This is an advert to sell the mans trousers and avoids using an male stereotypes. I like this poster because it doesn’t use a male model to help influence you to buy their trousers. The advert is very clever because it makes you focus on the trousers and therefore your getting what you see. 

After speaking to a few people in general around my class I found out that a lot of the female people in my class have been told to smile whilst none of the men in my class have ever been told to. This is again something that uses gender stereotype as people believe women need to smile whilst men can get away with things like this. It is also very illustrative and makes it personal with the reader. 

This poster is the one that caught my eye the most. It uses a female woman who is naked and has illustrative work around her cover her up. This is the main approach I would like to take forward because it draws you to the women and this is the center of attention. I also like how the text is there in the bottom left covering her bum with text whether or not it was intended. What I like about this poster is how it fuses a photograph of a naked woman with illustrations going all over the page filling up the necessary parts of the woman.  

OUGD401 - Module Evaluation

For my end of module evaluation I think I struggled a lot at the start. I struggled to come up with a concept at the start of the brief. I really find it difficult to write essays as I find myself panicing throughout and start to get my tenses wrong. Although I found it difficult I enjoyed the practical side of context of practice. I enjoyed creating my final posters and think that they work well as a set. I also enjoyed learning about feminism as it something that I have not touched on before. I have learnt what is feminism and what campaigns people run to get it international noticed. 

If I could improve my work for next year I would look more into poster designs and create something that would be iconic and unique. Although I am satisfied with my final posters I found it difficult and believe I could do a better job in improving it. I hope to learn from my mistakes and hope to experiment more in the future with different media.

In general, I found the whole side of context and practice very difficult because I struggle to write and this had an influence on my practical side. Throughout the year I would say my practical side would be my strong point. However, I believe my influences were very limited because I focused more on my essay rather than splitting the essay and the practical side equally. If I could improve I would seek some more help from the learning support in Leeds College of Art because they are very helpful and help with english writing which is something that I am not confident in. 

To conclude, I believe I could have blogged a little bit more as well as blogging my seminars which I did attend to and did find interesting. Although some of the seminars I think were not relevant to my course and didn't help me further my knowledge. I was satisfied with my final concept although I struggled at the start. I created a set of 3 posters to promote the cause HeForShe which is ran by Emma Watson. This is something that I very much enjoyed because I learnt more about something I didn't have much knowledge about. This has also made me to believe that more people need to see these campaigns because they are very informative and can change your opinion about gender equality. 

I was very satisfied to have finished my context of practice because it is something that I was worried about from the start. I also believe my essay is very informative and relevant to my practical work.