Zerofee - Finessing and Finishing...

Luckily our Zerofee friends seemed quite enthusiastic about the snake concept and so I spent the following (final) week experimenting with typefaces for the pubic triangle and finessing the form of the snake/woman.

Prompted by Paul and Ela I went to visit the Homework exhibition at the Kemistry Gallery in Shoreditch and it really helped to clarify the essence of visual economy and playfulness at the heart of great poster design. I found the whole exhibition really inspiring and will definitely keep an eye on their work in the future...

Ultimately, I opted to use my original choice of typeface ('BigBlokeBB') as it had a roughness to it which captured, in part, the sense of destruction for the woman, yet its considerable 'solidness' and weight gave the poster a bold, striking look.

While I experimented with the slogan as the only text on the poster, it became apparent that without a ‘call to arms’ the design lacked purpose and momentum, and so I opted to include a section of explanatory text, a clarification of the message and the intent of the piece. As such I kept this text relatively clean, employing a guardian-style slab serif typeface that would subconsciously interest and engage my liberal target audience…

I also refined the curves of the snake to reference the bodytype of the women in the developing world more clearly, eg, wider hips, and also tried to make the sense of the snake being a continuous form more obvious.

Overall I'm pretty happy with the design, although in hindsight the explanatory copy seems a little clunky and pedestrian and almost needs a hint more elegance and refinement...

All in all though, a really challenging project, which has definitely made me scrutinise my design choices more consciously and carefully. I've also realised that part of the key to good poster design is visual economy - the poster needs to read in a matter of seconds, even before any text has been read and processed, and as such any superfluous, unnecessary (visual) information serves only to slow and confuse this communication...

In addition, the project has rekindled one of my first passions; that is, print design, and more specifically poster design and so has been invaluable in helping to point me towards the areas I may want to specialise in...

Zerofee poster - developing the concept

After a really informative session where we all had to present our shortlisted potential issues I finally decided I would take on the behemoth of World Poverty after all. Paul and Ela pointed out that the skill would be in selecting a particular aspect of World Poverty and finding a visual hook or shocking fact to make the design stand out amongst the glut of charity posters and graphics.

To set about finding a focus and drew up another shortlist:

1. Microfinance Vs. "Bad" Aid:

I began by looking into the problems associated with foreign aid and possible alternatives.

Problem: Because aid from rich countries is inconstant it is difficult for developing countries to invest it effectively and so does not provide a long-term, sustainable solution. In addition, aid is often used to pay for Western consultants who not only charge more than local workers, but who often have no knowledge of local culture and so are not able to offer realistic solutions to ending poverty. As such, the foreign aid often does little to change the lives of the poorest people long-term.

Solution: One concept which seems to make a lot of sense is that of microfinance, that is, a small loan of around £50 given to an individual or group of individuals in the developing world, which is used to develop a small business. To me this is a much more realistic and long-term solution to world poverty as it gives the world's poorest a chance to develop their own self-sustainability and in addition the system empowers women, who are almost always refused loans by local banks/finance institutions. Ultimately, the major benefit with microfinance seems to be that it breaks the cycle of exploitation and dependence for the world's poorest.

Action: I guess a poster raising awareness of the current problems with foreign aid would either need to promote the benefits of microfinance or highlight the unsustainability of the foreign aid structure as it currently stands, or both. It could be aimed at businesses to support microfinance initiatives, at people who already give money to charity, to persuade them to support these initiatives instead, or at the population as a whole, to pressurise the government to provide better aid to the world's poorest.

2. Women & AIDS:

Although neither of these issues are new in themselves, what interested me was the links between the two, that is, the extent to which the infringement of women's rights in the developing world is exacerbating the AIDS pandemic. I was shocked to learn for example, that the fact that women have low status in society and relationships means they are likely to be victims of rape (which in itself increases the risk of HIV infection), they have no say whether their partner uses a condom, and their partners are often unfaithful. Furthermore, women have no property or inheritance rights, so if their partner dies or leaves them they are left economically unstable and are often forced to take abusive partners who may subject them to (sexual) violence, or to take jobs as sex-workers, where, again, they have no say over whether their partner uses a condom.

Once a woman has been infected with HIV, they are often isolated ostracised from society and again, put at further risk of (sexual) violence, hence violence against women is both a cause and effect of HIV infection.

Action:

The most obvious target audience for a poster about violence against women would probably be liberals who already recognise the problems associated with the issue, and who are most likely to be moved to take action. Again, as neither violence against women or the AIDS crisis are new issues, the crux of the poster would need to be about highlighting the links between the two, whilst also encouraging some sort of action or change...

3. Millennium Development Goal - Aid Shortfall:

Finally, in researching some of the issues around World Poverty I discovered that the UN member states (including Britain) pledged to increase aid to the developing world to 0.7% of their GDP in an effort to alleviate world poverty. Only a handful of the member states are honouring this pledge, and thus perhaps my poster design could raise awareness of this pledge to the British public and urge them to put pressure on the UK government to honour their promise.

On reflection, I decided not take this route, partly because I concluded that, at a time when Britain is only just recovering from the recession, perhaps it would by unrealistic to expect the British public to support an increase in the amount of money being donated as foreign aid, in the face of large scale unemployment and financial hardship at home. Secondly, having realised the shortfalls associated with foreign aid, I decided pressuring the government to increase foreign aid was perhaps not the most effective way of 'making a difference'

Ultimately I decided to tackle the interrelated issues of violence against women and the AIDS pandemic, as I believe, at present these are two crucial hindrances to the alleviation of world poverty. In addition, although I support the notion of microfinance, it may be a challenge too far to convey a relatively complicated and involved concept in a short amount of time and space...

Visualising my concept

Once I had chosen the subject for my poster, I set about coming up with 3 initial concepts for our next session with Paul & Ela. Unfortunately, because I had spent so long researching World Poverty issues, I didn't leave myself enough time to fully develop these concepts and so wasn't particularly happy with any of my initial concepts, eg, the 'Iceberg' concept below:

What became apparent talking to my peers and Paul and Ela was that the concept needed to concentrate more intently on the female body, ie, the site of difference, and take a more visually economic route...I also realised I wanted the design to implicate men more obviously in the destruction of women in the developing world...

I explored two concepts following the workshop, one of which conflated the form of an hourglass with the female form and one of which was more graphic and showed a large (male) hand hanging a naked woman:

Although these concepts were nearer to communicating my message, I still didn't feel I had quite hit upon the right concept. The hourglass concept seemed inappropriately "Western" in feel and seemed to be more of a comment on size zero and the fashion industry, rather than the oppression of women in the developing world. The hanging concept though perhaps a step closer seemed too explicit, showing all its cards at once.

I decided I needed to do further research into existing socio-political work to inform my ideas...

In researching the project I noted that the most arresting and engaging posters were those that played with negative space to conflate two (often disparate) ideas or visuals into one visual message. It struck me that as the poster is a medium that requires economy of information, conflating and distilling the message into one central visual or idea was prudent; imply much, but employ little.

I started looking at ways of implicating men in the infection of women, taking as my cue a few posters which played on the idea of conveying dangerous sex through dangerous objects or things, such as razorblades or spiders, scorpions, etc.

The snake seemed the perfect visual solution as not only does it already carry a host of existing connotations relating to predation, masculinity and infection, but the simplicity of its form can also be used to imply a female silhouette defined and confined by the form of the male.

I did a quick collage mock-up and sent to a few friends to test the readability of the concept on people who had no prior knowledge of my subject matter. Overall, the concept seemed to work, so I've set about digitising and cleaning up the image. However, figuring the pubic triangle with the form of a mouse seemed to complicate the message and the image somewhat, so, in the interests of visual economy I've opted instead to bring together the poster’s ‘slogan’ and the form of the pubic triangle typographically, intensifying the focus on the site of sexual difference, sexual violence and HIV infection. To concentrate attention on the slogan/pubic triangle further I've experimented using the only instance of colour on the poster – red, with attendant implications of danger and urgency.

I feel like this concept is on the right track...hopefully Paul and Ela will agree!

Let's get socio-political...

So the next project is a poster design to raise awareness of a current socio-political issue, with ethical graphic design agency Zerofee. I've shortlisted 3 potential issues:

1. Abortion Rights for Women in Northern Ireland

I was interested and surprised to learn that, despite being UK citizens and taxpayers, it is essentially impossible for women in Northern Ireland to get an abortion - they are forced to spend their own money travelling to England or further afield to get access to treatment. This campaign seems to have gained momentum in recent months and so could be an interesting issue to tackle. I guess it would be an awareness-raising poster, most likely aimed at liberals who already support a woman's right to abortion.

2. Pro Test

A pro-animal testing organisation who seek to promote the benefits of testing on animals for medical testing, Pro-Test also aim to dispel many of the myths surrounding the issue. This group intrigued me, partly because I have always taken as read that I am against testing on animals, and did find some of the justifications on the Pro-Test website arresting and actually quite reasonable... Secondly, it would definitely be a design challenge to try and persuade fence-sitters or animal lovers that animal testing is necessary and justified...However, I can't say I was completely convinced by Pro-Test's arguments (I did email them for clarification on some of their more ambiguous 'facts', but as yet have had no reply...) and wonder whether, for a project such a this, you should really be passionate about and believe in the issue you are bringing to public attention...

3. World Poverty

This is obviously a well-trodden path in terms of poster-design, and it is such a massive issue, ultimately I'm not sure I will decide to tackle it for the final design, but in researching current socio-political issues I kept coming back to the fact that, in the world today there is such a massive disparity between the privileged and the deprived, surely we as graphic communicators on the privileged side of the fence have a responsibility to use our craft to bring attention to this issue...? However, as I say I'm aware that this is not a particularly original issue, aside from being pretty huge, and in addition, perhaps there is a sense that telling people that world poverty is bad is a given and thus less of a design challenge? But then I guess the challenge would be cutting through all that background noise to make an impact...

Will see what Paul and Ela have to say tomorrow anyway!

"You, Me & the Naked Men" - Book Project continued...

Right - Having settled on a topic for my book, that is, how men and women respond to the nude male, I started experimenting with laying out the images and copy. I realised that as I had such a wide variety of images in terms of contrast, brightness, colour, etc, I needed to bring a degree of cohesion and consistency to the book, and so converted all the to greyscale, which was quite successful at drawing all the photos together visually.

Originally I started taking random extracts from the essay and laying them over images, but found without the driving force of the rest of essay, the book lacked progression and intention.

As a result I decided the book should actually be more like an illustrated form of the essay itself. This helped with the initial population of the InDesign template and the laying out of images and text, but after showing the work in progress to my group in the fourth session realised the layout of the book lacked imagination, dynamism and, most importantly, creativity.


After looking at the work of some of my peers I deduced that the more successful book designs were the ones which were visually varied and included spreads interspersed into the document which included quotes, facts, etc, ie, small accessible nuggets of info which gave the reader a route into the subject matter.

I used the session to start planning some more creative, unusual layouts to use in the book design, which would add variety and interest to the design:


I agreed with Steve that the design as it was, was very text-heavy, not particularly approachable, and that the design itself needed to be more fun, and so left the session wanting to explore/develop the following:

• Quotes about the naked male and the penis


• Visual euphemisms for the penis, such as bananas, cucumbers, etc.

• A distillation of the copy so the book as a whole continued to flow and progress, but more concisely, so it would be more accessible.


• More creative layouts – formatting type on angles, experimenting with colour, etc.


• Separation of provocative images from the analyses of various reactions, so readers are not distracted from the copy by the shocking content of the images, and so they are able to scrutinise their reaction to the naked male more clearly.

The more I worked on the design of the book, the more I realised the design needed to capture and express more completely what the book was all about, that is, primarily:

1. How we “read” images of the nude

Whilst experimenting with formatting text at angles to create interest, I realised that one simple way to capture the subject of how we “read” nudes was to set copy directly over images of the naked body, thus literally forcing the viewer to “read” the naked body:

2. How men and women construct their gender identities through viewing.
I experimented with typography and colour to convey the social constructs at play in reactions to nude images, playing with heavy, solid, “superhero” typefaces in blue for male voices and elegant calligraphic typefaces in pink for the female voices. Further, I decided to set the analyses of each comment at right angles to the quotes themselves, such that they could be read or skimmed over by the reader as desired:


While more visually interesting and intriguing, the range of typefaces compromised the consistency and cohesiveness of the book as a whole, and so ultimately I opted to convey the gendered voices solely through colour and male and female ‘toilet door’ symbols…

3. The lack of vocabulary/script to discuss the male nude.
One of the things that struck me as ironic whilst developing the book was that as a culture we have so many euphemisms for the penis and yet, as the essay illustrates, we have such difficulty discussing and the naked male form. As such, I made the decision to include an ‘A-Z’ of penis euphemisms running along the bottom margin of each spread throughout the whole book. Whilst this primarily served as a means of lightening the tone of the book, and adding a sense consistency throughout the design, it also partly served to highlight this contradiction between the plethora of words we have for ‘penis’ and our inability to vocalise our reaction to it…

Overall, I am really pleased with the final book, although in hindsight perhaps should have set aside more time to designing the book cover as I feel at present it is the least successful aspect of the design. Having said that, I think the visual puns (banana, cucumber, etc) and quotes used within the book are particularly successful at making the content approachable and engaging.


Having seen the book in printed form I've realised there are some elements which aren't quite in their optimum position on the page, for example some copy disappears into the gutter a little, and a couple of full-spread, full bleed images which lost their impact as again, some of the visual information disappeared into the gutter. As such, time permitting, I'm planning to tweak these aspects and have the book reprinted in time for the summative assessment, and also for use in my portfolio...

All in all, a really interesting and useful assignment.

[The whole book can be viewed online at http://issuu.com/maxwolf/docs/finalbookmw]

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Ok, so after the formative assessment for the GDF project I decided I wanted to do a little more work on the logo as I wasn't sure it quite worked aesthetically, and also wanted to carry out a little more experimentation with, or at least consideration of, colour, and try applying the final identity to some formats, eg, Tshirts, posters, etc.

In order to refocus, I watched the 1996 film 'Brassed Off' which very much explores how 'working class' and 'culture' come together. It occurred to me that the euphonium, as such a loud, large and solid instrument, is the perfect emblem to incorporate into a logo for blokes.


I rearranged the collage element of the design, such that the electric guitar provided a unifying visual 'peak' to the design, and the euphonium and pint glass perfect receptacles for the film-reel 'scrolls' to emerge from.


In terms of consideration of colour, I set about trying to anticipate how my target audience would respond to certain colour combinations, consciously or otherwise.


I ultimately opted to keep the yellow and black colour scheme I had originally chosen, as I felt the allusions to visual symbols such as hazard tape and danger signs lent the design more of an exciting edge, which would be more likely to inspire my working class audience to get involved with 'culture' albeit on a subtle, more subconscious level.



All in all I'm satisfied with the final outcome for the GDF project and have definitely achieved one of my initial aims of improving my skills in illustrator. In hindsight though, I should maybe have devoted some time to 'market research', testing the logo design with target audience and making any changes where necessary. Not a bad start to the year though...

Book Project; passing on passions...

A little overview of the GDA project so far...

I've signed up for the ‘Pass on your Passions’ project, which involves designing a book about something you are passionate about or that interests you, in a way that will interests others, using content taken entirely from the internet.

I thought about it a little over the Christmas break and decided it would be interesting to use the project to interrogate (gay) pornography, or at least, erotica, and the politics of viewing, perhaps exploring the problematic association between pornography/erotica, and art.

My first stop was to check out the some of the works of the publisher Taschen, which includes erotica in its titles, and to gather some images which could arguably be said to tread the line between erotica and art, for example the artist Tom of Finland...


As the target audience is creatives I also decided to stop by design-oriented bookstore Magma. One thing that intrigued me was a calendar for ‘Butt’ magazine, a publication which is almost entirely compiled from readers’ own articles, pictures, etc.

I checked out their website and blog and gathered a few more images, throwing around some ideas about perhaps exploring self-published erotica, or the desire to present oneself as erotic.

A link on the Butt blog diverted me to ‘Brief magazine’, a site which features all things brief, from pictures of people in various states of undress, to snapshots of moments in time and bygone trends and fashions. Both Butt and Brief struck me as ‘indie’ in their style of erotica – with the focus on real people and their bodies and the erotic impetus behind this dynamic.


This impetus intensified in the next site I stumbled across via Brief: a flickr site for ‘Quinnford and Scout’ a gay couple who are documenting their entire relationship online, from the day-to-day mundane to the sexual and intimate. Again, it was the notion of erotica being a part of everyday life, and the real people behind the images which interested me.


I am aware that a book on erotica needs to have some sort of theoretical foundation, in order to avoid becoming a book about porn, for porn’s sake, and so I checked out ‘jstor’ an online journal site, and procured a few essays on the politics of looking, the male body and photography and more specifically gendered viewing of pornography, ie, the different ways (straight) men and women respond to pictures of nude females and nude males. One essay found that, whereas the sexualised female is familiar and commonplace, as a culture we have no cultural script to deal with the sexualised male – men avoid discussing it for fear of their heterosexuality being into question, and females are uncomfortable in the role as sexual agent as it compromises their role of passive female.

This might be a way of approaching the book, anticipating and presenting readers’ reactions to the sexualised male and then presenting them with the nude/sexualised male in such a way that will encourage them to consider their own reactions and the reasons for them.

That said, I am still keen to consider the ways in which the politics of viewing an image change if you know the subject is a real person, rather than an anonymous nude model...


The first tutorial with Steve has confirmed to me that I need to focus in as soon as possible and, again, that I need to find a way to make the book interesting, or at least intriguing to an audience of both heterosexuals and homosexuals, and both men and women.

***

So, I went away and did a little more image collection, continuing to keep some ideas about what the focus of the book will be floating around my head, but not consolidating anything just yet. I gathered more images from ‘Brief’ (which is updated frequently) and read more essays about pornography and art, hegemonic masculinity and the homoerotic and the politics of the male body.


To further my exploration into the idea of the ‘real’ nude male image vs. the ‘staged’ nude male image I looked at the websites and blogs for more independent gay magazines such as Pinups, Pisszine, Kaiserin, Kink and Spank.


Although I've found some interesting images, I've been struggling to find any essays or journals on this topic which would give the book the focus and depth I want, and so after the second tutorial with Steve, in which we had to settle on a title (or at least, a subject matter), I've decided that there is probably not time to sufficiently research the politics of the ‘real’ v ‘staged’ nude, and so I've opted instead to focus on the gendered reactions to the sexualised male, as I think this also has more mileage as something that will interest a wider audience.

The next step is to start populating the InDesign templates will copy and images...

MISFITS, Edition #1

Not sure if anyone caught the recent series of Misfits on E4 (worth a viewing anyway) but I meant to blog about a really original bit of marketing/communication which was used to publicise the show; Basically a street team dressed in orange jumpsuits (the programme centres around a group of youths on community service) distributed copies of what was supposedly Edition #1 of the ‘Misfits’ comic, which actually turned out to be a summarised version of the first episode of the series in comicbook form. I thought this was a really original way of reaching a particular demographic on their own terms, simultaneously publicising and previewing the show.