Information Design: The Cradock Four
INTRODUCTION:
Fort Calata, Sicelo Mhlauli, Sparrow Mkonto and Matthew Goniwe. These four men are known as the Cradock Four. They were murdered by police under an Apartheid government. The exact circumstances surrounding their murder in 1985 are still blurry to this day. All the key suspects of the case have died, but it is believed the murder was ordered from higher up as the men were anti-Apartheid activists.
The funerals of the four men were a massive deal - attended by thousands, and one of the key events that brought to light the terrible cruelty of Apartheid. The riots and protesting surrounding the funerals are regarded by some as the beginning of the end of Apartheid.
The drawings I did during the first week of this project were influenced by my feelings surrounding the case, and the feelings of those directly affected by the murders.
My poster + T-shirt design deal with voting in a democratic country, and how many people may take their right to vote for granted. The goal of my design is to inspire people to vote and use the voice given to them so that our country's dark past will not be repeated.
POSTER PROCESS:
I started my process by jotting down anything that interested me from the case, and drawing links between different ideas. I then took elements from my drawings that I liked and played around with different compositions.
I had many drafts of my poster, but these were the two main drafts that influenced my final poster the most:
Draft version 1: Draft version 2:
The final poster (mocked up):
I had intended to cut up and sew back together my final poster, but once I had it printed out I realised that that would not really add anything to my message, and was unnecessary.
T-SHIRT PROCESS:
It took me a while to conceptualise a design for the T-shirt. I tried a variety of designs extracted from my poster, but none seemed to translate very well onto a shirt. I then decided to use the same approach I ended up using for my poster - more is more. The many darker figures represent the masses of people who don't vote, while the three lighter figures outlined in red are the 3 out of 10 people aged 20-29 that did vote in 2019.
