Amnesty Evaluation.

Considering, that before I started this unit I had not heard of Amnesty International, gaining the knowledge of what this charity does and who they help was the first thing I learned. After finding out what they did, the second item on my agenda was to work out which issue raised, I felt strongest about and what I wanted my campaign to say.

The part of this project I had the most trouble with, was working out what to base it around and the fact that we had to avoid all political views made everything a lot more complicated.

I decided to tackle this problem by using a process of idea generation where I wrote down a list of words with which I associate Amnesty International; with a list of subsequent words I associate with them.

We had a talk with an Amnesty International representative, Barry Tempest, which in my opinion only proved to complicate matters further. Although he obviously had the best of intentions, I found it difficult to be convinced by what he was telling us. I don’t know whether it was just a bad presentation, but I found it hard to see the change happening and felt the money the charity was given could be used to make a bigger different if it was other wise utilised.

The most important thing I had to remember about this project was to take a professional view and to forget any personal opinions I may have towards the cause. I am working as a designer, and it is not my job to show my opinion, but the opinion of those I am representing. Of course, in the real world, I would not have the opportunity to choose the subject matter with which I am working; therefore, the problem of choosing what I believe in would be removed completely.

I chose to base my project around children’s rights, knowing that subjects referring to children are emotive by default. I conducted some research into children’s rights issues raised and was shocked by the statistic, “26 children have been executed in Iran since 2005.” Of course, most of the so called children were 16 and 17 and most of the male law breakers were rapists and murderers, but what shocked me the most was the crimes the females were meant to have committed.

Dina Parnabi was executed at the age of 16 for smuggling illegal literature into her school, Atefeh Rajabi Salaaleh was sentenced to death after allegedly having sex with an older man and Mona Mahmudnizhad was hung for teaching Bahá’í children classes. These incidents in Iran have caught the attention of the media, as documentaries have been made recently concerning these women. I was also very disturbed about the method of execution used in Iran, a slow and painful hanging, death by asphyxiation where as most countries now favour the method where the victim is dropped and their neck is snapped by the rope, resulting in almost instant loss of consciousness. In public executions in Iran, a crane is used to raise the victim above the crowd by the noose around their neck. Most countries use cranes to build homes, Iran use them to carry out unfair, savage capital punishments.

After reading about these inhumane and brutal killings in Iran, I began to doubt my previous convictions that capital punishments can be used as a swift form of justice. If nothing else, this revelation has been an important insight and I feel that I have broadened my sights and acknowledge the evil that can be committed lawfully.

Generally, this project was far more challenging than the text and image unit, this was due not only to the thought provoking subject matter, but also to the freedom given to us in the course structure to direct our own work. In the last project we had much more strict guidelines as to what was expected of us, we had numerous workshops, and the work was directed to include many experiments with techniques, where as in this topic we have a chance to push our work towards a final outcome however we felt appropriate. I enjoyed the freedom this method gave to me to explore my ideas, but this route also gave me chance to flounder unproductively.

I went through a desperate stage at the beginning of this unit when I had no idea how to carry it forward. Those around me seemed set in what they were basing their project around, feeling strongly and safe in knowledge of what Amnesty did, as I crawled closer to a state of desperation.

Then, suddenly one night, with no warning whatsoever, I was struck by a kind of divine inspiration, and after hours and days of searching around for an idea, any idea, I was able to carry my work forward, progressing and developing it into, what I hope was a coherent format.

What I found most successful in this project was my idea development. I started with a very vague idea and was then able to push it forward and expand it until I was left with what I felt was the best design I could produce. A lot of my ideas came with images that weren’t appropriate to the Amnesty International brand, pictures of hangman’s nooses and children’s feet dangling above the gallows, vulgar shock tactics that hindered the message I was trying to get across instead of supporting it.

For this project, we were encouraged to do little research as to create out own individual, original idea and not to be tainted by the adverts that have already exist. If I did this project again, I would probably dismiss the advice to minimise research, and go ahead with it anyway. I feel that I only produced my idea when I grained an in depth knowledge of the workings of Amnesty, and if I knew about this sooner, I feel I could have had my idea sooner, with more time to work on it.

In conclusion, despite the initial teething problems, and the issues I had with the charity, I feel I have overcome my personal views and designed a convincing poster, and am happy that I didn’t have to resort to any obvious images to do so, instead relying on symbolism and a more subtle approach.

If I were a shoe, what would I say?

Here are some shoes I drew.

Fayre Tray Vitamin D.

Oh, you're gunna love this one.

Black Box, yet another intensive day of concentration, breaks and little bit more concentration. Somehow, I always get put into the same groups, which I guess isn't too bad, we can all take our normal rolls, me somewhere in the background, occasionally giving a bit of encouragement to appear like I have any input at all.

Our groups favourite bit of work of the day happened in about 10 minutes, but oh, it was a doosy. We were given a product that we had to illustrate in some way, not too obvious, not too cryptic. And somehow we thought we were being so witty and ingenious when we thought of this idea, thinking back, it wasn't big, and it wasn't clever.

Fayre - Tray - (vitamin) D Barn - Naan - AAARRRRGGGHHHs.

Brilliant, you're going to have to imagine the images, because it would take up far too much space for me to upload all of them and that is just unnecessary.

Well, I'll get to the point, when we switched products and successfully guessed our cryptic clues, we had After Eights, and it was our job to think of an advert to promote it. This is what we did:

He receives comfort like cold porridge.

Bazza, Bazza, Bazza…

What to say? At least before I was forced to listen to Barry Tempest I didn’t know who Amnesty International were, now, I just don’t want to know who they are. Yes, I’m sure he means well, he probably cares deeply about helping someone, anyone. But I just can’t see how this little man from middle England and his middle to old ages friends can possibly even think that they’re making a difference in these barbaric countries he claims to know so much about.

Amnesty claim to be this massive, international company that works day and night for the welfare of those less fortunate than us, those living in countries with oppressive regimes. These stamp collecting, Tupperware partying, plaid wearers are taking time out of watering the geraniums to do something helpful and worthwhile for the little fellows. We’’ be there to write a letter of complaint, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll write another letter of complaint. And I’ll keep doing until you become just so darn sick of me writing you letters in a language you don’t understand you’ll let the poor sod go.

That’s the British way to do things, asking politely gets you everywhere, and if someone loud and obnoxious comes into the room, what will we do? We’ll pretend we can’t see them, then whisper about them behind their backs, perhaps even writing a letter or two to Terry Wogan about it.

Amnesty have turned politics into a world wide Points Of View. They’d better be really careful, otherwise we might start queuing.

100% of all people who save money will die. Eventually.

End recession.

With the country's current economical climate, a brief centered around the recession seemed like an up to date, topical activity. At the beginning of the day, we were put into groups and given the words “Spend more, save less” to do with what we may.

My group seemed to have no trouble at all brainstorming and getting multitudes of ideas down onto massive sheets of paper, but the problem came when it was time to turn these half formed thoughts into something tangible that we were willing to stand up in front of the class and try not to humiliate ourselves too much.

Starting with big, grand ideas, tramps with foreboding signs predicting the end of the world, meteorites, grave stones, talking shoes, it all seemed so promising. But as the deadline drew closer, and all we seemed to have to show for our days work was an A2 sheet covered in profanities and sexist slurs, suddenly everything became just a little less funny.

Somewhere along the line, Helvetica wormed its tricky little way into the mix, and instead of trying to accompany our sheet of vulgarities with unsophisticated images, we decided to put our faith in what we seemed to be doing so well, in the form of a purely text based campaign incorporating a mixture of our humorous catch phrases thought up to persuade people to “spend more, save less”.

To Conclude...

As the first project of the course, this project was always going to be a daunting time. I set out with the determination to do the best I could with the brief given.

In the first few weeks I was intimidated, to say the least, by the abilities of my course peers, slightly disheartened I was hesitant to feel confident with my own work. As the project progressed, I began to receive positive feedback from the very peers I initially feared and my confidence in myself was fast on the increase.

A major milestone in this project for me was our group activity day of Type and Tape. Having the opportunity to interact with classmates who I usually wouldn’t, gave me a chance to understand that everyone else was feeling the same way as I am, and my initial fear was replaced with a steely determination to push my work forward and not get left behind.

The way this unit has been set out helped me first get to grips with what was expected of me, and second, complete said work in the allocated time. I kept a time plan of what I needed to do and when it needed to be done by, which I found very helpful in my personal time management.

At the time, my least favourite part of this topic was our experimentation with paper illustration. Becoming frustrated and embarrassed by my outcome, I was quick to settle into a negative mindset which I had to work to overcome. After looking at other’s work I realised I had been approaching the brief in the entirely wrong way and after gaining more understanding though research and peer guidance, I was able to produce a piece of paper illustration that I am proud to call my own.

The group trip to London inspired a lot of my work this project and by happy coincidence, spawned my character Howard. This trip helped my to think about the project differently; taking my sketchbook to an unfamiliar environment inspires very dissimilar feelings to sitting in Poole Quay where I feel comfortable and close to home. I think a fair deal of my work this project has been inspired by a feeling of threat, be it fear of my peers abilities, or fear of a new environment.

I can gladly say that since the beginning of this term, I have become a lot more confident in my work and myself. I would say my greatest achievement was familiarising myself with Quark and managing to produce a book by myself, where two weeks ago I thought Quark was a type of cheese.

The weak point of my project, in my eyes, is the lack of digital fonts. A lot of my work contains hand rendered typography, or abstract methods of creating text with tape or paper cut outs, but I think my work could benefit from deeper research into digital font design.

Overall, I feel this project, considering it to be the first of the year, has been a great success. Having produced a full sketchbook that I am more than proud of is more that I could have ever hoped to achieve in my first two months here. Hopefully, the rest of the year will be just as successful.

Howard goes to London.

Howard doesn't get out much, and when he does it's just to pop to Tesco to get some Milk.