My poster solutions for our recent Ihi Wehi assignment. I was proud of these so figured why not post them. We had to produce two posters either for or against the current flag change referendum going on in our country. I'll save time by pasting my Rationale for them.
The argument I was portraying with my posters is that the flag change is a superficial and unnecessary distraction which is directing attention and money away from more important issues at the core of our society.
Poster 1: We have some of the highest rates of domestic abuse in the western world. In my first poster, I used subversion and homage for my version of Vermeer's well known "Girl with a Pearl Earring", shedding light on the issue of domestic violence in our country. I chose this painting as Vermeer was famously known for painting intimate scenes of beautiful girls, and to contrast the beauty associated with this image with the wehi I was trying to evoke, makes it have that much more impact. The imagery is confronting, violent... and sadly probably hits home for many of those whom may look at it, or will at some point in their life. A pained, and "reckless" brush font was used for the tagline, and bold blood red is used to lead the eye around the composition where the pearl earring has been replaced with a modern piercing and focus has shifted -- The abuse takes center focus, and puts priority of her safety even over the design of the flag. This reinforces the rhetoric: what should our real concerns be?
Poster 2: With so many pressing issues in our society such as poverty, suicide, drug and alcohol abuse etc. We have far more important things to focus our time and attention on than changing our flag, which is more a distraction than a remedy. For my second poster, I used metaphor and juxtaposition, and an ironic tone: combining icons of identity fighting for attention, with medication to point out that the flag change has basically become a cure-all panacea, a drug of distraction. I also tried an element of pastiche in this; I wanted the image to look like a weird “scientific” shot, and used sterile sans serif fonts that mimic the type on prescription bottles to further convey this. Our flag change panacea is nothing but a hollow placebo, which will not fix the greater issues in our society whatsoever. The use of scale makes these pills hard to swallow. They look almost alien and surreal. The color saturation was made intentionally vivid and ‘sickening’ to make the viewer question whether this ‘cure’ is actually good for them or nausea inducing. This flag change is an unhealthy distraction from more important issues.
- I'm not posting these for debate, merely as 'food for thought' of different points of view on this hot topic. -
