For the current project, I have chosen Rethinking Greenwashing: Corporate Discourse, Unethical Practice, and the Unmet Potential of Ethical Consumerism by Ellis Jones. 

There is potential for many visual tropes to be chosen from this brief, branching from the ideas of metonymy and metaphor through corporate greed, consumerism, advertising and greenwashing. 

The idea I found to encompasses this project completely is, 'How much time is a corporation putting towards their advertisement versus actively creating ethical change?' 

My thought process revolved around the key topics of greenwashing as a general idea. This is how I thought of simple vectors such as power plants, business men and stacks of money (consumerism) being overcome by green (literal take on greenwashing). I also sketched some gas masks as a vector idea, however thought it could drive the project away from the idea of greenwashing. The results however did not create an emotional reaction as I wanted, so I realised I needed to streamline the focus onto something more of a story, to create an empathetic image.

I thought of brands of today who practice greenwashing, such as petrol and plastic bottle companies. I then narrowed it down further and thought of products that could be harmful to society, but can be advertised to be an ethical choice instead. Key words I found were baby products, alcohol, cars and cigarettes. I mixed these ideas together in a brainstorming exercise and combined the idea of children and parenting with organic cigarettes (which, apparently, are healthy!). An adult giving a child a cigarette elicits negative emotions from viewers. However, telling the audience it is safe through advertising and the use of greenery creates an emotionally powerful and safe image. Creating metonymy in an image, similar to the style of Banksy, was something I wished to achieve in this project. I found this photo taken in the past (unknown photographer, date unknown) and felt it would reflect the key messages in the project.

By feathering a duplicate layer of the stencil I knew it would look more genuine that way. I also used the divide tool and pen to create that stencil look in the text. Even though the project does no longer specify to create a stencil piece, I still wanted the final outcome to look this way. The stencil lost its genuine feel when I added the smoke with the pen tool and created a green hood (representing how society is to blame for greenwashing) so I decided to alter a few more things along the way.

I chose an image sourced from Unsplash, by Kevin Lessy, because of the smoke-cloud shape the plant already has. By creating a block colour using the same green from the cigarette I can create a smoke cloud for the image.

Here is the final drafted outcome for the project.

In the near future, I would like to create a 'cut-out' in the smoke cloud itself to allow real foliage and greenery to poke through and merge the environment with the vector. I want the final outcome to have the environment and the image morph together so it is more emotionally powerful to viewers.

This is a draft for a student project only.