My posters’ focus on the financial hardship that modern day New Zealand graduates face and the inequality when compared to graduates in the past i.e. 1970’s, where tertiary education was practically free because of government funding/bursaries. My posters specifically visualise the idea of a growing student debt. My main target audience would be students as my first poster has a question directed at them “how big is your burden?”. This rhetorical question is made to make people stop and think, therefore engaging them in the issue.
In my first poster I used juxtaposition as a visual technique by putting a happy graduate contrasted with a looming, sinister shadow overhead to embody the student’s debt.
The second poster uses irony as a form of satire as a higher education is theoretically supposed to enable you to do more, but because of the financial implications the opposite often occurs. This is represented through the tassel of the mortar cap literally trapping and binding the student. New Zealand is loosely referenced through the colours of this poster as they are our flag colours.
Through the use of bold colours, bold san serif font and simple imagery, my posters allow the viewer to quickly decode the message making the posters simple but effective. The colour, scale and hierarchy make the posters visually interesting and engaging.
