Concept: Money

After a wee bit of thought, I have chosen to roll with MONEY as my argument/ concept to portray and play on with my posters. Here are some first concepts solely revolving around this aspect of the public/ private school debate, working from both positive and negative aspects. Some of the ideas I'm working with in the argument of money are; why should children have different educations depending on their parents' paycheck, how successful nzers from public schools have turned out good or unsuccessful nzers from private have turned out bad, what are other things you could spend 20,000 dollars on a year (experiences), the money symbol as pathways, diversity from all walks of life, socialite clubs of the rich youth (YaYa club, the Fulltimer's society), how the other half lives, expectations of private school vs reality, values/what's on the child's mind, drugs and alcohol.

From here I need to think about the wehi that I wish to draw from viewers of the poster and how to best portray my idea in a combination of pictorial and written techniques.

Ideas after interim

In class I presented my "What will be on their mind" idea and got some great feedback not to be restrained by the silhouette of the child. The voices I read the headline in were a concerned parent, an authoritative figure and the voice of the child. However I am concerned that it is not my strongest idea or the best argument for the public vs private debate. After class I then started experimenting with diversity options. By the end of class today I will need to stick with an issue and continue that for the rest of the project. I need to experiment with both positives and negatives of the argument eg pressure of money will be bad for your child vs look at all these successful public school kids! 

First interim presentation

These are my 5 concepts for the interim presentation on Monday. Although not as rendered as I would have hoped, they all clearly show my stance, along with header and tagline detail and an indication of style.

Finalising concepts

I grouped some of my most effective/ successful concepts from all stages of ideation under the four/five arguments required for Mondays interim presentation. I have struggled to pick the one which I believe is most successful in each category, the one that will most clearly represent my idea, however I think this will become easier once I have created more headers and taglines (which I have also struggled with). The rough ideas for headers are underneath most of the concepts, although I am very keen to develop them more. Now I need to make these images into an A3 size and experiment more with placement of text and evocative written content.

Rapid ideation

My words and phrases were (in order of appearance); pig, black, "a needle in a haystack", "a chip off the old block", "born with a silver spoon in the mouth". Varied number of each of these depending on the connection to my stance of pro-public schools, however in class 30 thumbnails were generated for the 5 concepts.

Precedents and image research

The first page spread of images are ones the I believe to be powerful campaigns from combining ethos, pathos and logos, further details on why in the images. These print ads are great examples of what to aspire to in terms of impact of the audience, and combination of written and visual argument.

 

The second page spread is more the visual aesthetic and appeal that I will take reference from in my design, although some of these are also powerful print ads in the mix. I need to showcase my argument in a way that is visually appealing, therefore I need to play to my strengths of illustration and gather examples that successfully show that.

Ideation using rhetoric devices

Initial concepts

A few quick concepts and starting points to develop and explore which will be good for using rhetorical devices.

Mind mapping

 

After some thought and reflection on the debate which was held in class, I think the option for me to explore and produce a poster about is public vs private schools. The debate in class went well (me being a speaker for public schools), and even though we 'won', it was interesting to note that most people would have been pro state schools anyway. Speaking to a friend in another stream, the results for both the flag and schools were the other way round! This got me thinking about the different types of audiences that I will need to take into consideration, and how to chose an area of the debate that is the most thought provoking to encourage viewers to challenge their own ideas.

 This is a personal and quick pro/con list of each sides of both debates,  which helped me chose which side of the topic would be easier to portray successfully and give me ideas about what key themes should be explored. From here I decided that I would prefer to discuss for public schools.

 A very thorough mind map exploring the positives of public and the negatives of private. To get my point across, I might have to paint private in a bad light, as this will be more powerful than simply promoting public schools, and cause more discussion.

Week 1 Research

Searching for examples of successful ihi wehi, I came across many powerful posters/ads.

Some that I found particularly powerful were:

The ihi in this poster is created by the sense of loneliness for the child, the dismal colours and providing a visual explanation for an issue, all contributing to the wehi I experienced from it. A very 3 dimensional and hyper realistic scene is created, enforced by the writing (the header) following the table and exaggerating the amount of physical space between the lonely child and the rest of the family.

The wehi created by this poster would be further enforced if I was an American, as this poster uses the patriotic colours of blue, red and white of the American flag, and the well-known and powerful image of the "we need you" man. The pop-art/comic style and colours, the use of subversion (we need you + skull) and appealing silhouette would make this poster stand out on the street.

 

James Victore has an established style throughout his work that I believe is very effective. The similarities between his "The death penalty mocks justice" and the previously discussed Amnesty "stop the death penalty in the USA" are abundant, suggesting that the amnesty ad may have paid homage to his. Combining patriotism and well known symbols provides a strong starting point for debate and draws wehi from the viewer. The gestural handwriting on the left shows emotion and in particualr, anger. James Victore is definitely some helpful inspiration.

Week #1 Session #1

In the first session for this assignment, we were introduced some of the new language and concepts that relates to Ihi Wehi.

Ihi: charisma through creative process

Wehi: emotional response from viewer

Rhetoric: art of persuasion

Visual Rhetoric: graphic strategies of the art of persuasion

Juxtaposition: contrasting ideas

Subversion: add, subtract, manipulate an existing element to bring in new idea

Parody: imitation of a style (mock)

Homage: style clearly acknowledges original

Satire: irony 

Pastiche: imitation of a style (celebrate)

Metonymy: the language of colour and what it communicates symbolically

Dynamism: inferring movement from techniques such as diagonal lines, texture, pattern etc

We then split into groups and discussed examples of ihi wehi from the stream site, noting down what made them powerful images, the ihi and the wehi components and why. To me, the work of James Victore draws strong emotional responses, which I will discuss further in the next post.

Preparing for the debate, I realised I have no attachments/strong feelings for either of the topics that we have been given, however the public vs private schools debate has some interesting sides.