I created my posters to bring awareness to the issue of sexual assault at university campuses accross New Zealand. I wanted to make sure the posters had a way for victims to find some form of help by using the help lines. I chose the issue because it is somehting that directly affects me and many of my friends. The concept for my poster was unsing the image of a graduation hat to represent the university students. I chose the image of a girl for poster one so that it would feel very personal since you are looking straight at the person the issue is directly affecting. In the second poster I used the wiggly hands to get accross the gross feeling of being touched with out your consent. The grad hat/victim is in the middle of the hands to give that sense of entraptment.

This week if finalised my prints and finished off all my book work. I learnt more about how to format my document to print at the toy store.

I sent my posters for print on monday and pick them up to cut out on tuesday.

MONDAY

On monday I spent my time time really finalising the poster of the girl and changing my text layout. I tried out different colour variations which all gave the poster quite a different vibe. I think I still like the darker colours better, it represents the issue better.

THURSDAY

I was still having trouble finding an idea I was happy with for my second poster. I decided to make another completely new idea with the hand poster. I then made a bunch of different variations of it, different colours, different amounts of hands, different headings.

I made some with differnt sized grad hats and positioning. I also added a couple of hands up the top to balance out the bottom half.

This week I developed some of the posters I had previously made so they fitted with my concept. I felt the design style was too similar though. I made some new psters aswell. I atepmted to make something slightly empowering.

I learned more this week about laying out my text on my poster and cut back on my body text so it was more simple.

MONDAY

Today we had to show in class our four posters but without he text. This was interesting and made me realise that a couple of mine were definately very relient on the text and the image needed to be a bit more interesting.

It also made me rethink which text was successful and which wasn’t. I think with a more compelling image “She has more to worry about than grades” could be very interesting.

I started doing some more research into the womens libberation movement and also the suffreget movement. I really like how the posters designed at that time looked. Obviously they were created by hand since this was before computers were around. It really made me think about how I could make somehting physically and not have everything be digital.

I decided to make soemhting based off of the colours of the womens libberation movement, green, purple and white/gold. I also started making a line carving version of my text to test out.

THURSDAY

Today we had our interim presentation. It was interesting to see all the other classes work. I was surprised by which one of my posters got the most ticks. Im still not sure which poster I would like to move foward with.

Id like to try and make an actually empowering poster and see what it looks like. Im not sure if there could be a way to have the same words on both posters but have them mean slightly differrent things when combined with the image.

MONDAY

This week we had to create our daily poster using an article. The article I chose was one bout the knox college assault allegations. It definately forced you to think a bit harder since the way we had to design the poster was quite specific. But this poster actually turned out to be my favourite yet. I decided to use a person staring at you to make the issue more personal to the viewer, although I do agree with what was said about it looking almost empowering.

I don’t think thats a bad thing though, it actually made me think about the otherside of the issue and if it was possible to create something positive/a poster that would make girls feel empowered when they looked at it.

Sexual assault is also a very heavy topic and one that could be potentially very triggering or emotianal for many of the views. Considering we are at a university and the statistics are so high. Sexual harrasment which comes under the umbrella of sexual assault is also something I imagine many of the female students have experienced themselves. the last thing I would want my poster to do is cause emotional distress to a survivor, I would rather it make them feel less alone.

After reading that article about knox college it is clear that universities are not doing enough to help survivors or stop it from happening again. I think this could be an interesting angle to take into account.

THURSDAY

This class we looked how a poster change bring about a change. I would like my poster to do this.

I was thinking about a call to action and something that my poster could tell you to do to change the issue.

Either speaking out about assault when you see it happening or a call to universities to take it more seriously. I think talking to universities could be more effective, they actually could make a system change in the way that they deal with accused purportrators of sexual assault. I hguess it also combines the issue of victim blaming and believing the someone when they say they were assaulted. That why for todays poster I brought in the me too movement. Thats something that everyone knows about, it’s easily recognisable as a movement against sexual assault and harassment. I combined it with the books so that you could understand it was about education. I also like how the perspective text looks it would be cool to play around with that.

MONDAY

Today in class we learnt about what ihi and wehi meant, and analysed some images using ihi and wehi. Obviously it was important to understand what those two words mean as it is the basis of our assesment.

We also had some guest speakers from the national Council of Women and the massey pacifica advisor. The two talks were both very interesting.

I started thinking about what issue I might like to do for my poster. I am interested in issue that affect women and LGBT rights in New Zealand. I was thinking about LGBT right as I live in Newtown and someone had just been beated up for being part of the LGBT community.

I was also thinking about the abortion rights protests happening in America currently. I think we have an idea that New Zealand is foward thinking in terms of that issue but abortion is still technically classified as a crime here and you have to be signed off by at least 2 doctors to have the procedure done, they can refuse if they want to.

THURSDAY

Today we learnt about visual rhetoric. We had to come up with 30 concepts in class based on 3 words we were givin. This was very challenging but did help me quickly come up with a few things and not think about it to much. That is a useful thing to continue doing thoughout the project.

I also did some research on sexual assault on New Zealand University campuses. I remeber when the story came out in April about the way sexual assault had been treated at knox college in Dunedin. It’s something I care about and also something that effects me and many of my friends being at university.

A study about this exact topic has actually just been done down in Otago university and I was actually quite shocked to find that the statisitc for sexual assault was actually 1/3 girls.