Write Up

The goal for these design’s is to express areas of inequality in New Zealand. My aim was to portray the inequality caged hens experience vs. pasture raised hens in the NZ egg industry. In order to communicate this my concepts was to juxtapose text and image in a striking way that helped paint the full picture and made the viewer, egg consumer’s, question their choices. Through the use of futura my design has bold-clean, geometric sans-serif typeface. This appearance of efficiency and forwardness allowed my message to be clear and easily read. Colour was also important to my design, red is a very hot color often associated with violence which worked well in relation to depicting the suffering of caged eggs. While, yellow is often considered the brightest and most energizing of the warm colors. Yellow is also associated with hope, and allowed me to show the flip side of the egg industry, promoting pasture raised hens.

August 21: Week 6, session 1

The final class before are big critique I spent editing my two poster designs, adjusting any minor details. Making sure image and text were related well and easy enough to understand by the viewer. Also insuring that the text is easily read and eye catching as well.

August 17: Week 5, session 2

After todays session I was able to meet with the instructors to have a one on one to discuss my designs. After doing this I was able to see that my two designs had different concepts although they were portraying the same aim. I was able to tweak them a bit in order to align the concepts between my design. Sticking with the common phrase "how would you like your eggs?" and using images to juxtapose this message in a way that makes viewers rethink their breakfast choices in a deeper way than what would want for breakfast but where is your food coming from.

August 14: Week 5, session 1

This week after printing out our 2 best concepts on A2 paper and having a class critique I was able to get more feedback on my designs to help narrow my decision.

 I decided to focus mainly on the design below. The feedback allowed me to see that my other design was a bit vague and didn't clearly get the point across. This one however was more relatable and incorporates a fact from the New Zealand egg industry.

August 10: Week 4, session 2

Today we focused on progressing our poster by narrowing down our designs and only focusing on our two best concepts in order to have a print out of each, A2 size. Since last class I did more research and decided to focus on the inequalites of free cage chicken suffer vs. free range chickens in the New Zealand egg industry. Doing this is was able to bring a fact into one of my design to depict a chickens living space.

For my next design I depicted the same concept except instead of using facts of the size I used an emotional appeal by visually representing the chickens packed into a barn.

Having printed these out in the actual scale allowed me to get a clear perspective of how they will be read in order to push my design forward and eventually narrow it down to 1 design

August 7: Week 4, session 1

Today we focused on looking more at how image and type can relate in order to bring meaning into a poster. We then looked at various poster designs and various aspects they possessed that gave then various tones and moods. We then discussed how these posters could be transformed in order to demonstrate various inequalities in New Zealand. By doing this exercise I was able to better understand how images or ideas that don't directly relate to an idea and be incorporated with text to paint the full picture in a new and striking way. We then spent the rest of the time focusing on our own posters. Thru this session I was able to see how my designs didn't exactly depict inequality and will work on pushing my design to strictly focus on inequality.

August 3: Week 3, session 2

Today we focused heavily on progressing our posters. We started off by filling out a sheet in order to confirm the aim of our poster, our concept behind it and work out a few possible strategies. Doing this allowed me to better understand the goals of my poster and visually see if my concepts will read the way I intend them too.

After doing this we were then given an hour and a half to create on poster design that we could hang up to show the class. By having this deadline it allowed me to quickly make decisions and hash out multiple ideas.

I finally decided on the design below and chose to add a bit of facts from articles I researched at the bottom in order to make the concept very clear. Using juxtaposition this common phrase "you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs" plays off the image of a baby chick in a grinder. Allowing the message to be clear and forcing the viewer to reconsider things that seem common and ordinary. I chose to overlay an image of a broken egg over top the chick to represent the egg industry and also relate back to the text above.

Poster Project Progress

After reading "Making the familiar unfamiliar" there was on part that talked about visually presenting a familiar object in an unfamiliar way by zooming close into one element of detail. By doing this you can draw the audiences attention to an aspect of the product that they hadn't previously appreciated. After reading this I decided to take an egg in order to represent the egg industry and get some close up shots to help gain a new perspective on this well known and common object. 

July 31: Week 3, session 1

After choosing 4 of our sketches from last week we spent the weekend refining our ideas and working on coming up with some more poster concepts. Then I chose my 4 strongest concepts to blow up and display on A3 paper for class. We then all laid out our work and went around in pairs writing down critiques for each others work. Through doing this I was able to get back lots of various feedback from some classmates. By understanding how my work is perceived from various individuals I will be able to create a clearer depiction of my vision. I was also able to get see the progress everyone else has made and this allowed me to get some more inspiration for my own work.

July 27: Week 2, session 2

Today we focused on narrowing down our broad topic of inequality to a specific aspect. Through my topic of inequality in the animal kingdom I narrowed it down to focus on the male chicks that are grinded alive in the egg industry. After this we then spent the rest of the time starting to come up with sketches of possible poster ideas. Through the various exercises we worked on the past few classes I was able to come up with a good variety of ideas. As well as working along with some peers we were able to communicate, collaborate, and critique each other. This was very helpful in preparing for the 4 large A3 scale mockups we will be presenting next session.

July 24: Week 2, session 1

Today we worked on exercises that allowed us to use quick bursts of creativity in order to depict various ideas of inequality. I based mine off of gender inequality. Then there were 3 different timed rounds, the first two we were given random words, I got a dog and a snail. Then we were allotted a certain amount of time to come up with at least 10 thumbnail sketches using image and text to depict our category of inequality through relating it to our word. For the last round we were given a metaphor, I received "as mad as a meat axe" and with this we had a similar task of coming up with an image that related to our metaphor in a way that depicted our specific type of inequality. Through this exercise I was able to come up with various abstract ideas of how to depict gender inequality that I wouldn't of thought of previously if I hadn't been forced to relate it to those words or phrase. It also help stir up some creativity for poster concepts and gave me a better understanding how how to relate image and text. This exercise will allow me to think more freely when considering a design for my poster project.

Project Research

I am looking at the inequality male chicks suffer do to the egg industry.

Male chicks are seen as useless to the egg and meat industry due to the fact that they don't reproduce. After a chick sexer (someone who's job is to determine the sex of a chick moments after birth which is incredibly difficult) decides weather it's a male or female, the sexes are separated. The males are then either tossed in trash bags to suffocate, gassed to death, or put on a conveyer belt where they will be grounded alive. These are all common practices by the egg industry.

https://www.peta.org/features/egg-industry-cruelty/

http://freefromharm.org/eggfacts/

https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/egg-industry

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-gSoXwFlIE

www.separated.org/us/facts/

http://freefromharm.org/separated/chicken-facts-industry-doesnt-want-know/

Due to genetic manipulation, 90% of broiler chickens (chicken bred specifically for meat production) have trouble walking.
51.4 billion chickens are artificially hatched, fattened up and slaughtered as 42-day-old babies every year globally. A chicken’s normal lifespan is 10–15 years.
Chickens bred for meat are arguably the most genetically manipulated of all animals, forced to grow 65 times faster than their bodies normally would, and the industry continually seeks to increase their growth rate. 
Chickens are housed in giant, overcrowded sheds, where they are packed in by the thousands and forced to stand and sit on filthy, manure-laden flooring, which is typically cleaned out only every 2 to 4 years. “Free range” is a meaningless term in this sense, since almost all chickens raised for meat are uncaged.
At the slaughterhouse, chickens are not stunned, but shackled and dragged upside down, fully conscious, through electrified water that paralyzes their muscles so that their feathers will come off more easily after they are dead.

Key Words

• Grounded Alive
• Gassed to Death
• Suffocated
• Death
• Egg
• Cruel
• New Born
• Male
• Baby

Phrases

• How would you like your eggs?
• Breakfast is served.
• Good morning sunshine!
• I got laid last night!
• You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.
• Green eggs and Ham.

July 20: Week 1, session 2

Today we broke off into groups in order to create mindmaps of various areas of inequality in New Zealand. By doing this we were able to take these broad topics such as race, stereotypes, and beauty and branch them of into multiple categories that were much more refined and specific. For example stereotypes to age to teenagers to untrustworthy. This exercise allowed us to really dig into the broad range of areas that each of these categories pertain to. Through this I now have a better understanding of how to create a poster design relating to such a broad area of inequality by using a more abstract, direct concept that we uncovered through mindmapping.

Later on we worked on another group exercise, playing Pictionary. In pairs of two, one member was given a word and an allotted time to depict the word through a drawing in order to have the other member guess the word. The trick was there was another pair with the same word and we were racing to see who could determine the word first. Through this exercise I was able to understand how simple images are able to quickly depict an idea. This concept getting a point across efficiently and effectively will be very important when thinking about my poster design later on.

July 17: Week 1, session 1

Today we looked at various poster designs in groups inorder to detrmine and discuss the Ihi and Wehi behind the design. By doing this I was able to get a better grasp of the meaning of Ihi and Wehi and relate these terms to bodies of work. Ihi and Wehi are complimentary terms associated with emotional and psychological behaviour. Ihi can be described as an individual’s essential force, charisma, power or charm, which emanates throughout the creative process. Where as Wehi, highlights the internalised feelings that occur in response to Ihi. Through doing this exercise I will now be able to bring these ideas in to my project.