1st Crit Sesh + More thumbs.

My direction of argument progressed further down the path of the flag change being a waste of time / money that could easily be better spent on more important things. Below are some further visual developments I came up with regarding my direction of argument, including the ideas I had at the point of the first interim critique.

In these sketches I used strong imagery and color to evoke a strong wehi. The texture of medium and sparce use of color draw attention, the red of the union jack has become blood for the rather serious topics of domestic abuse and suicide.

This one was even more graphic, which some might find a bit distasteful or serious. If some people found the idea of a noose disturbing... I can only imagine what they would think of this idea haha!

I used watercolor pencils in this, the watercolor really adds an emotive quality and nice texture for things like blood.. I have to say, lol

In the above concept, the bruises from abuse form a new zealand flag. But the message from this ia bit mixed - one could interpret this as saying the current flag has a chokehold over us, rather than the intended meaning of a violent society -- regardless of our flag.

I drew up a page of very quick thumbs to further explore ideas of 'problems' in our society, and other issues the flag change is distracting us from. Some were metaphorical, others used juxtaposition, pastiche of particular poster styles I had in mind, etc.

For some of the thumbs, I looked at homage / pastiche of exiting images, and subverting them by adding in elements of 'issues' within our society.

Extra Photos for 2nd concept.

Below are all the photos I took for my second poster, alot of them ended up being too blurry, or not having an interesting composition, but I thought I would throw them in here just to show what sort of setup I was working with for these photos, and the different compositional ideas I tried on the spot.

Artist Research - Cindy Sherman

After seeing some of my concepts, Caroline suggested I look into a conceptual portrait artist named Cindy Sherman.

She is known for doing homage photo self-portraits of well known figures like Marilyn Monroe and Madonna and recreating stills from movies, by inserting her self into these scenes/pictures as the actress and using clothes and make-up to help her accomplish these "roles". Her photos are often suppose to look deliberately staged, and she relied on facial expression to convey the mood rather than background or atmosphere. She enacts female cliches and "re-examines women’s roles in history and contemporary society".

In the above examples of her work, she has made the stars / characters she is imitating look unimpressed, used and also vulnerable, rather than like an object of affection or lust like you'd expect in a Madonna or Monroe picture. They ask the viewer to reconsider their ideas about the concept of the female celebrity.


This research really helped me think about the mood I want to convey in my Vermeer based homage poster, I want to make sure I evoke strong wehi with the visuals and mood of the image, even though it will be rather simple. I ultimately am trying to draw it well enough that you can feel pain, sympathy/empathy and even feelings of anger for this intimate moment with this girl being corrupted. A loving portrait spoiled by violence.

Poster research & inspiration.

I searched for a variety of captivating poster / ad / designs that used a mix of different rhetorical devices to portray their message. Some I found visually stimulating, others employed very clever strategy in bringing light upon certain issues.

This clever image brings light to racial issues and the concept of skin color, they do this by pointing out how wrong it is that there is only one color considered a "flesh tone". These crayons are recognizable as crayola brand, but they have subverted the imagery in order to get their point across in a very effective manner.

I find this image immediately confronting and bold, and that is entirely their intention. The blatant use of red, the symbolism of the noose which doubles as a stop sign -- their message is very clear and there is no confusion. They want to stop the death penalty and I think this is a very effective poster.

The above poster was created as part of the 'free the nipple' movement that has been around on social media lately. They convey a defiant and angry mood quite effectively through facial expression, the bold type draws your attention right where they want it to go. :)

The above design was created in memorial for people who died during a marathon in the US, they created a giant heart out of running shoes which are an obvious symbol. The little details of every shoe make the image have such an interesting texture overall. The empty shoes make the image a bit bittersweet though - as if they could be the shoes left in the closet of the many people who died. :(

This poster is about gender inequality, and quite effectively points out the difference in pay between men and women using only text. It's what the text says that matter though, they picked a very succinct and specific phrase to summarize the issue. The bold pink is blatantly associated with the feminine and a great use of Metonymy.

I think this image is rather amazing, it is a pastiche of a well known Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock print by Hokusai titled Great Wave Off Kanagawa, however the imagery has been very subverted. The waves are now made out of garbage - representing the negative effect mankind has on our environment, and urging for change before we get overwhelmed by this tidal wave of pollution. It is quite worrying and troublesome to look at. More specifically we can read relate these dirty trash filled waves to the fact that our oceans are now filled with plastic and garbage.

This simple poster uses the visual of a duck shooting game with cute little duck cutouts, to point out the issue of the overabundance of guns in some locations. the tagline "loose gun laws makes us all sitting ducks" really ties everything together well.

I love the use of symmetry in the above movie poster, and also the use of scale. The tiny main characters are perched atop a giant creature and the soft colors create a natural and harmonious unity which is pulled together cohesively by the organic shapes. It's quite fun yet calming to look at.

In this poster they point out that 'liking' a post about a cause or issue on facebook isn't the same as helping - the likes do nothing. This is shown very dramatically with a sick child and woman being surrounded by futile 'thumbs up' people -- they are calling for volunteers, and with such a strong use of imagery it really gets the point across quite vividly.

The above image was a poster created for the series True Blood -- they effectively used design to convey what the series is about -- red being a blatant reference for blood, and the simple use of silhouettes one of which has vampire teeth.  Very clear visuals here, what could otherwise be seen as a passionate / sex scene turned into something more sinister and the phrase "ready for seconds" is a fun play on words which can either be referring to vampires craving blood, or the passionate scene that seems to be ironically parodied in the image.

I thought the above image was rather ironic, the artist has inserted Batman, a common pop culture figure into a historical war photograph. The mixture of pop culture meets serious war theme really makes you consider your idea of what a 'hero' is.

Fonts and Type

I looked into various fonts for both of my posters header and body copy. For my poster on domestic abuse I wanted a 'violent' looking font to match the wehi, so I looked into various brush script fonts. Scratchy, cut up and fonts with wild strokes were the goal here. I tried various fonts on the images to find the ones I felt best fit the posters vibes. Despite it's name, I felt 'Surfing Capital' actually fit very nicely as the font looks like amateur reckless brush stroked or pieces of torn up paper. It really gives a tactile, crude and visceral feeling, as though it was a hastily written help note.

For my second poster, I was going for a more scientific, weird and creepy or sickening feeling, adding to a feeling of nausea that you might want to take the pills to cure. For this reason I tried to pick a clean sans serif font, reminiscent of the sterile font you might see on a prescription, or medication bottle. While the differences in alot of sans serif fonts are minute, I decided Univers was ultimately the best font family because of the clean look, it did look similar to the rounded sans serif fonts used on medication labels. The font family is also very large allowing me to cohesively use it for body copy as well as heading, pushing that sterile and clean feeling even further.

I chose sans serif on both posters for the body type because this would make these important captions/stats easy to read for the viewer, and they would go well with whichever font I decided on for the main heading.

I used grids to align the type in the most sensible and effective manner on my posters. One is a bold and scrawling question, as in-your-face as the violence depicted, where as the other is in small 'pill' sized chunks, aligned with the spilled pills on the imagery as if it just fell out of the container.

Idea Generation 1

My initial sketches, I tried to combine a mixture of ideas and themes from my mindmap in quickly drawn thumbs, using simple symbolism to convey meaning and rhetoric. My initial thoughts were, what would it take to make people realize that it's more than "just a flag/piece of cloth"? how can I evoke sentimentality out of people? e.g. If I made the flag into toilet paper, would this make people angry and pissed off?

 I drew a few slightly larger concepts and added potential tag lines to them, these show historical, social and political reasons why we shouldn't change the flag. The first relating to honor, second a rather bold caricature of john key being compared to a certain dictator (way too controversial for this assignment methinks lol) and a homeless person in poverty not benefitting from this 'flag change' in any way whatsoever. Each a different stance and way on conveying the point of view.

The cool part of the little sketches it they are a quick way of helping you visualize a composition, and also to jot down rhetoric and visual devices you might be interested in exploring later along the line.

Initial Research / Stats

I collected research and statistics about some of the most urgent issues going on in our society, to formulate an educated stance on topics such as domestic violence, alcoholism, suicide, poverty etc. I put the most interesting points in bold.

Any money put toward reducing these issues, or offering more support for them would positively affect or save New Zealand lives and be money well spent, so it makes you really wonder how a government could so nonchalantly pour millions down the drain on an unnecessary flag change.

Statistics on domestic violence in NZ:

• One in three women experience psychological or physical abuse from their partners in their lifetime.
• On average, 14 women, six men and 10 children are killed by a member of their family ever year.
• Police are called to around 200 domestic violence situations a day - that's one every seven minutes on average.
• Police estimate only 18% of domestic violence incidents are reported.
• At least 74,785 children and young people aged under 17 were present at domestic violence situations attended by police.
• 84% of those arrested for domestic violence are men; 16% are women.
• The economic cost of domestic violence was estimated at $1.2 to $5.8 billion per year by economist Suzanne Snively in 1996. In today's figures, that would be up to $8 billion.
• In 2009/10 year there were 3,867 domestic violence cases in the Family Court which each involved at least one child.

(mostly taken from womansrefuge.org.nz)

Stats on alcohol abuse/alcohol related incidents in nz:

• At least a third of all police recorded offences are committed by an offender who has consumed alcohol prior to committing the offence.

On an average day:

• 52 individuals or groups of people are either driven home or detained in police custody due to their state of intoxication

• 340 offences occur where police note alcohol is involved in the offending, including:

• 30 breach of liquor ban offences

• 100 drink drive offences

• 8,764 breath tests are undertaken

• 40 licensed premises are visited by police to monitor compliance with the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012.

Stats on Poverty in NZ:

• There is poverty amidst prosperity: There are around 622,000 people in poverty in this country or one in seven households, including around 230,000 children.
  
• Some groups are more likely than others to be in poverty: Beneficiaries, children, Māori and Pacific peoples, and sole parents are more likely to experience poverty than other groups.
• What poverty means for people: Being in poverty means experiencing hunger and food insecurity, poor health outcomes, reduced life expectancy, debt, and unaffordable or bad housing.
  
• In 2013, 260,000 dependent children aged 0–17 years were living in relative poverty after housing costs (AHC). This represents 24% of dependent children in New Zealand.
  
• During 2010 to 2013, around 34% of Māori and 28% of Pacific children lived in poor households, compared with 16% of European children (using an after housing cost (AHC) <60% fixed-line measure).

(retrieved from nzccss.org.nz & nzchildren.co.nz)