222258 Design Studio IIB - Josh Phillips

The aim of my poster is to create awareness of the underlying problem that is the extremely large wealth gap in our society. For my first poster, I have used the concept of staying afloat whilst at sea. When people are trying to stay afloat, the majority can stay afloat with a normal inflatable life-ring, whereas the rich are able to do this too but at an over the top standard, on a giant cruise ship. For my second poster, I used the concept of the largest part of the iceberg is hidden below the surface, like my first concept, through the use of juxtaposing subject matter (Boats) and huge scale, we can see how extremely far apart the top 10% richest are from everyone else. The rich keep getting richer by ridiculous standards whereas the majority are getting nowhere and are often going backwards. The posters are supposed to show the viewer how extreme the situation is.

Poster Wall:

Monday was our last class beforehand in, I printed a couple of A2 titled version of my posters for critic and it helped a lot. Together Faye and Lee recommended which direction to go into, they said that my money bag iceberg although showed capitalism, the long shard iceberg showed the extremity of my theme a lot stronger. As well as recommending a few minor changes and to try and make the mass of people in that boat standout a big as they were very recognisable. With this info in mind, I did m changes and played around with different typefaces and weights to see which worked best. I finally refined and came down to my final works.

Here are the final iterations of my two posters, I think they work really well and I am happy with how they turned out. Still a little unsure about the coloured shirted people in the boat one but apart from that I really like what I have produced.

Like the Iceberg Posters, I played around with the different weights of Helvetica Neue and Bebas typefaces. I felt some were more successful than others.

After adding the changes I played and experimented with the typeface and font weight of the tagline. I varied in Upper case and lower case versions. The two different typefaces are Bebas and Helvetica Neue. I tried using contrasting font weight for juxtaposition and to bring attention to it but I felt that it didn't work that well in this case.

-On the Boat (hadn’t updated since last week but showed them again anyway) change the location of text, maybe change the actual tagline instead of equally distributed and make it link more to the passive mass floating there so there is a link. Lee suggested something like top 10% cruising, rest left a float or some variant. - Change/ make the people stand out more and that they are actually people, too broad currently.

After my Interim, Faye recommended me to try to change the iceberg to show more capitalism so using symbols like a big fat rich man, for example, being the iceberg. Which is what I am having ready to show for next class.

Faye suggested trying to change the iceberg to something more symbolic of Capitalism since that is one of the root causes of the wealth gap. She suggested having either a symbol like a fat rich man or money of some sort being incorporated like the iceberg has.  Also, the dollar sign is too transparent to see.

Iceberg: The iceberg also got extended a lot as well as the sea level rose to 90%. I made the text smaller so it was overly dominant and darkened the bottom more to show depth in the sea. I also added 10% and 90% (Edit: I realise it should say 60% once reviewing post) I really like how the iceberg looks almost like a shard or stake stabbing the depths of the sea.

Iceberg - Make the iceberg proportions a lot more dramatic show the 10% vs 90%. - Move the water line up to help with above. - The “Equally Distributed” is too dominant, should be more image dominant that has a relationship with the text.

This week was about refinement and synthesis. I had a think over the weekend between my classes and decided I was going to scrap the idea of balloons (which I had previously chosen to push further). I found a sort of similar style similar to the classic titanic posters which used scale to bring emphasis on certain areas like the size of the boat in comparison to other. This was the sort of thing I was wanting to do so I decided to follow this style. I pitched the idea to Lee about using a boat instead of a balloon, originally with the idea of having the mass of people which I had incorporated into the balloon design in a cramped inflatable raft. But the problem I faced as it looked like a refugee boat you’d see crossing the Mediterranean. Lee suggested using an inflatable of some sort like they would be in a pool to show that grand scale in wealth difference with the boat which is what I tried with the flamingos (It also could add a potentially comical element to the huge serious subject I was using as a theme. We also looked into our second poster which was exploring how we could follow the same central concept but through a different visual solution. For me what came to mind was icebergs, this is because of the mass that's hidden under the surface, much like the wealth issue. The gap is so big that to be honest it's not known by many how extreme it is.

 I think my critique on this would be the people in the boat one arent very obvious which might be a problem but I will see how the next interim will go.

Here are my concept sketches for my new refined posters. I really like the direction the iceberg is going. I feel that I can really show the extreme different through the use of this subject matter. I talked to Lee about the idea of the boat instead of Balloons during the studio and she liked the idea and suggested that instead of using the boat as it could be too close to the racial inequality of refugees, to instead use things like inflatable pool rafts/boats as it would still show the extreme difference. So I decided to look into inflatable rafts and the first that came to mind was inflatable swans or flamingoes so I am going to give it a try.

In the studio, we also started talking about our second poster another variant of the same concept. When thinking about another variation that wasn't vehicle orientated I thought of something that could maybe be hiding things under the surface. the first thing that came to mind was icebergs. As you can only really see whats above the surface.

This week in the studio we prepared for the interim presentation. I finally decided to just go with wealth inequality but more specifically the immense gap between rich and poor. I wanted to focus on the statistics of the top 10% owning 60% of NZ wealth alone. So I am going to be focusing on the scale of things like building or balloons potentially. The posters I finalized as my interim ones I was kinder happy with. To be honest wasn't sure about some of them as I felt something was missing but the monopoly styled one was something different from what I had previously done. After the critique I wasn't 100% sure what to do, I felt like I wasn't happy with either the subject matter or the way I was approaching the subject, so I decided to go back to my FDPs to see how I could potentially do it better.

After looking back at the result of the interim presentation, I have decided to try a different sort of subject matter to achieve the idea I am trying to portray through the wealth gap inequality.