Final posters

The societal issue I chose to respond rhetorically to was the housing crisis. I wanted to communicate how unattainable owning a home currently is for many people in New Zealand. I was influenced by manual printmaking because I felt like the imperfect qualities of this process would be a relevant visual style to communicate an imperfect side of New Zealand that is often denied or overlooked. I have introduced the rhetoric strategy of Pathos by placing the homeless figures in the foreground. This puts the viewer in their shoes as they look out with the figures. The Wehi of the work can be seen here as the feeling of understanding and sorrow is evoked. The Ihi of the work can been seen in my choice to use just the one accent of bright yellow against varying shades of blue grey communicating the importance and desirability of the houses. My strap line “100% Pure impossible” is a parody of the New Zealand tourism advertisements “100 % pure New Zealand”. This helps the viewer make the comparison between the reality of living in New Zealand for many people and the idyllic life the New Zealand portrays to outsiders    

The societal issue I chose to respond rhetorically was the housing crisis. I wanted to communicate how unattainable owning a home currently is for many people in New Zealand. In this poster I have glorified a simple house in order to communicate how much of a luxury owning a home now is. The Ihi of the work can be seen in my choice to use an illustrative visual style. This style helped me make parallels with stories, picture books and childhood fantasies, supporting my strap line that talks about a long lost dream. The cover of the Edmonds cookbook influenced the sunrays I used in the background. By using this imagery I was referencing the ”good old days” and simple kiwi dream of owning a home. The Wehi of the work can be seen in these visual references as they evoke a feeling of nostalgia for “the good old days” and childhood. My choice of copy employs the rhetoric device of logos as it helps the viewer understand the dark underlying themes within a bright, cheerful visual representation.   

Typography

I have played around with both traced and scanned in type and computer generated type. 
I think it is working better as clean computer generated type because it conrasts strongly with the dark background. It also adds a modern element to the poster. Because I am talking about a current issue it is important to add som contemporary elements to make that connection. 

With this concept I like the type sitting in the top third of the page. This is because I have left a large empty area to create the illusion of space. Using this space for my type guides the eye down the page making use of this space without filling it. 

Week 6

Over the week I have been working on developing my second concept. In my last version I felt like there was too much going on and there was too much explicit detail with the figure hanging off the edge of the house. I wanted to distill this design down to the key elements, which is all about glorifying an average home. I found it helpful to crop in, as there isn't a need to depict the whole house. 

Today in class and for homework I continued to work on this concept. By changing the house to an illustration I feel like it fits in with poster as a whole better and supports my idea of creating a fantasy scene, that could be out of a picture book.
More clouds have also helped create the illusion of more space.  

Week 5 development

Taking Donalds advice further I have reworked my first concept in a different style inspired by manual printing, I wanted to create a strong graphic look while still having small hand done imperfections. I have simplified my concept in this version as well. In my last poster I was trying to depict someone sitting in a tent looking at all the state houses that the government is selling, but this time I have just focused on depicting people in a tent separated from the houses. I think this is a lot clearer and easier to understand. 

Week 5 interim assessment

These are the two concepts I presented for the week 5 interim assessment. The feedback I got from my class mates was that they both have a clear message. However in the first concept, it is hard to tell that the person is sitting in a tent because I have got the proportions wrong. In the second concept I was given the feedback that the I could re-think my choice of colour, maybe experiment with some brighter colours and even use an image of a more run down house to make the message clearer. 

After speaking to Donald, he suggested I try and resolve one of the concepts in a different style, because at the moment they are both the same visual style which doesn't fit with the brief. I agree with all this feedback and feel like I need to simplify the message that I am trying to communicte to make a sucessful poster, at the moment I am trying to add in too many layers of information which doesn't for a clear simple message. 

More VCD Precedence

This week I looked at some books of old New Zealand tourism posters. I think I can incoproate the way type is used in these images into my own work, and this could work to help link my posters back to New Zealand. 

Development week 4

Here I have tried to exagerate the distance between the house and person climbing the ladder.
I think I still need to glorify the house more to enhance this exageration.  

Over the past week I have been looking and old New Zealand posters from the 50's and 60's, in this concept I was pushing the edmonds cookbook idea a little furthur and trying to recreate the style of a car advert that I found, which glorifies the car. I feel like these colours are a bit harsh, but the style could work with some more tweaking. 

Working with the idea of depicting a sold house in a more serious tone I have created this concept which I think I am going to work into being my second depiction of unattainable housing. I need to consider my copy, as at the moment it isn't communicating my idea as clearly as I would like.  

Here I have reworked this concept with a more 'glorifying' illustration of a house in attempt to make it seem more like a fairytale, or a picture book. I spoke to Phoebe in class today about this concept and she suggested having a more humble, average looking house communicates the message more powerfully, I agree with this and am going to try this with a state house like I have been using. 

Week 3 development over the weekend

Over the weekend I continued to play around with different ways representing an unatainable house. I attempted to bring in lines and imagery of a business man to connect my concepts to the idea of business, news and real estate. In class today I got the feed back that I need to play up the dreamy, idealistic imagery of the house and think about how I can communicate the heirarcy of the house and the journey to get there more clearly. 

Week 3 development

Moving away from the graph imagery from my previous iterations, I have focused on representing the difficult journey of getting to a house. I thought it was approriate to use a ladder in this image to represent the property ladder. I feel like this dirrection is representing my idea more clearly, however I still need to consider a visual style that will be approriate. 

I am still playing with the same idea in this iteration, here I am trying to make the house at the top look more idealistic and desirable. 

Development of Mountain concept

Since last session I have started to refine my idea chosen from the class critique. 

I have attempted to use the graph idea in a more visually pleasing way, however I am feeling like it is looking too much like an infographic rather than evoking an emotive response from the viewer. Because of this moving forward I am going focus more on the idea of housing being unattainable for many New Zealanders and focus on the idea of a house being far off and out of reach, and perhap a difficult journey to get there. 

Interim Presentation Week 3

I presented these four concepts for my interim presentation. 

This concept was chosen by my group as my strongest concept and was the one I showed when we gave feedback between classes. In my feedback my class mates said it was clear I was communicating housing Inequality because of the graph and the position of the house high up as if it was at the top pf a mountain. However becuase I have included the rise and fall of state housing sales I got the feedback that It shows that we have been there before and it could get better, and because of this it might be more effective to use a narrower time frame of betwee 2000 and 2016 to show the current state of housing inequality. I hadn't thought of this, but definitley agree, by narrowing this down I think it will help me communicate my point more strongly. My next challenge with this concept is aethetic, at the moment it is purely concept, so need to consider ways to make a visual impact as well and conceptual. 








When sharing this concept in class, my class mate agreed that it isn't very clear what I am trying to communicate. I agree with this, although I think I could work with this idea to make it more clear and explicit, conceptually I don't have as much to work with as the graph design. 

This concept aethetically is my favourite, but my class mates agree, it isn't very clear what I am trying to communicate. I agree with this, although I am qutie draw to the idea of using old imagery nostelgic of the kiwi dream to communciate how things have changed in the housing market, because of this I might brainstorm ways I could combine the previous design and this one to create a richer concept. 

This last concept was my class mates second favourtie because they felt it had a clear visual impact. I like this concept, because I feel like the can use strong gaphics and colour to make a simple clear message, however I feel like I need to think about how to make it specifically about New Zealand, rather than just replying on the caption at the bottom to make this connetion. 

Week 2 idea development

Week 2 ideation

Now that I have decided to go with inequlity in housing for my poster I have started brainstorming some of my ideas using quick thumbnail sketches. 

I have narrowed my subject down to looking at the sale of state housing and who that is really benifitting. In the last three concepts here I played around with incorporating cliche quote about sucess in attempt to use irony. As such a previlaged country New Zealanders tend to have the mind set that every individual can do anything if they set their mind to it, and try hard enought, but in reality the government is building "affordable" housing which is selling between $500,000 and $600,000, which is unachieveable for a lot of people, no matter how hard they save or believe they can do it. 

I am also interested in emphasising how out of reach owning a house has become for so many New Zealanders. 
In the first concept here I have used a graph showing the rate of state housing sales in New Zealand since 1980 as mountains that are too tall to climb. 























In class today we did random input excersies. I got dog as my word and don't put the cart before the horse for my metaphor. 

This was a helpful exercise because it made me think of other ways I could communicate my issue. 
The metaphor "don't put the cart before the horse" was quite relevent to my subject and helped me narrow it down a little more. The goverment has sold off a lot of state houses, but by doing this the put the cart before the horse, because they didn't consider that a large majority of the country can't afford to buy a house, therefore this didn't work and exalerated the homeless population in New Zealand, the goverment is now having to back track and build more affordable housing, and state housing to try and fix their problem. 

VCD Styles

VCD Presedents

"The african woman is the pillar of her community" 
Designer Melaine Joly shows the contribution women (in this case African women) make to their families and communities through typography. Joly's use of scale is very effective in emphasising the importance of a womans role, and at the same time shows how much of a weight this is, representing the strength of this woman. 

 "Brand Child" 
Designer Luca Coppola uses parody and subversion in this work, by replacing where a clothing brand name would usually go with the words "Child Labour". This brings the viewer attension to the origin of the cheap fast fashion most of the wester world buy into with out a second thought. This evokes the feeling of guilt. 

I think the way the designer U.G Sato has substituted the branches of the tree for fists communcates a feeling of strength, anger and rebelion. The designer has used the colour red where the branches are cut off, this firstly creates contrast and draws the eye toward the colour, and secondly it represents blood adding to the feeling of anger, or once the text is read "give green back" in the bottom right hand corner death, or destruction of nature. 
















                                                                        

Although the designer isn't communicating rhetoric here, I really liked her use of typography. The way she has changed font size and orientation gives the work a very dynamic feel, full of movement which is very appropriate next to the image of the man who looks like he is dancing. 

Again this designer isn't using rhetoric, however I like the use of pattern and colour here, the designer has taken out just enough detail, so that the forms of the man are still clear, but it is very abstract at the same time. The use of repetion gives the design a sense of movement. 























                                                                                  
The use of scale and proportion is very effective in this image