Busra Yildiz

Once I finished my research, I started to design some of my ideas on Illustrator with the slogans. As I was searching up sexists sayings about gender colours I came across “Real men don’t wear pink”. So I used that in the first set of designs I made on illustrator. I used black background on white text. To decide on the font I went to Adobe Typekit to find fonts which were heavy weight and had more aggressive language and more masculine. I think these features works well with the context as it’s a protest the fonts shouldn’t be delicate or soft. Considering all these elements I chose to use Multi Display Bold, Upgrade Bold, Paralucent Bold, Macho Bold. I think these designs do work well and they create a simple but strong visual effect. As a group we thought crossing out words in a placard would be very effective way to go against those sayings. So I decided to try that out digitally on Iluustrator. I think it would work well

These are the first 4 I designed on Illustrator. As a group we decided that we should keep our designs simple white text on black. We thought this would make them more effective and makes them stand out more. Scribbling out words was our initial idea for the placards so I used them trying out different fonts and style. I used Multidisplay Bold in large pt to cover most of the space. This creates a contrast and with the red and pink strokes it stands out. I really like this idea and I think I will create more designs in this style using different fonts and layouts to create visually strong placards which fits our protest. In the presentation, David told us we could be more aggressive in the language which I do agree and will use his advice in other designs.

The designs above are the other designs created on Illustrator. I’m still following the group decision with black backgrounds and use of colours but trying to create more visually strong designs. These designs I played around with type and layout. The use of repetition to emphasis the word ‘Tomboy’. I think this would be an effective technique to use in a placard as it’s an aggressive context so repeating a words could work well. The last one which was something new and I think it could work actually painting it rather than digitally. The feeling of it you can’t really get it digitally but on an actual placards it would look much better. I used a thick paint brush on illustrator for ‘and what’. The meaning behind that is I thought about it in a context such as ‘tomboy’ is being said by someone in a society and protestors are saying ‘and what’ is them questioning and going against those stereotypes and labels. When I asked my group they did like the idea. This idea can be developed into series of placards this way. Also, we’re already doing a placards using screen printing and crossing out words with paint. I want to carry on making more designs.

The new designs using similar style but with new slogans. I thought it looked dull with just words so I added s small details emphasising the blue and pink by adding a paint stroke under the word. I think this emphasising the word and makes it stand out. The hierarchy in the design changes as when you look at it you pay attention to Blue then start reading the text. I think looking at it from this perspective I could have added that to the word stop to convey the message.

 

I wanted to do some research on visual posters and placards made and used in protests which are mainly created by the protesters themselves. I think these visuals are very important as they can grab peoples attention, they show protesters  passion and their thoughts on those simple cardboard placards. I think this is why they are so powerful as it’s how they feel, what they want to change or to stop. I was looking a photos from protests which stood out to me for inspiration.

 Protesters hold up placards during the Women’s March in London on Jan. 21, 2018

This photo of protesters which they are holding a placard really stood out to me and I think it’s visually it is so powerful. The placard is simple, but it is smart. I think the most powerful placards are the ones which only have some words and simple ones created  by protesters all hand made. As in our project, we want to create placards which hold the same style. We can mainly do this in Stanley Green placard which he only uses white text on black background. However, there are few details such the text isn’t a full long sentence just words after words.

Protests when Trump visits UK

Reading the interview on The Guardian artists speaking about the art in protests and about political art. We can clearly see that amount of work being produced has risen significant  as Anti-Trump protests, Women’s March, Brexit etc. All these political and social protests allowed artists to create more art. It was a very interesting interview reading artists opinion on art and politics.

 

References:

http://time.com/5134820/british-suffragettes-centenary-women-rights-inequality/

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/sep/11/protest-art-miro-elmgreen-dragset-isaac-julien-sarah-sze-doug-aitken-interview

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/poster-power-dramatic-impact-political-art/

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/activist-art

Our project is for the week is to create several placards focused on our protest. It should all be mainly focused on typography. In the launch we were shown few artist work to give us an idea and to understand what’s been expected. In the launch, Occupy London: J Barnbrook was shown with his mainly type posters, also protein man Stanley Green’s work was very interesting. Using these artists as influence we’re asked to create several placards which one in the style of Stanley Green. To start off the project I made a map mind of everything that comes to my mind and researched about artists shown in the launch presentation.

To start off with I made notes of ket features in each artists work shown to us and they were mainly heavy weight fonts. The work I liked the in J. Barnbrooks is the financial times where he mixed few fonts together. I think that looks really good and very effective. Also, at the end of the projects we were given further research links I searched up Liz Mcquistons work. Her work is very interesting and can be easily applied to our project. It has a strong effect in the posters. The main feature which stood out to me was the ripped effect. This gave me the idea of a sexist quote which then is ripped apart and the word is replaced. Looking at her work really gave me few ideas. I then thought more about these sexists quotes then maybe we could do a stencil and spray them on a big A2 cardboard. This could be done for Stanley Greens placard. I then saw the poster hang up on the wall in the graphics corridor which is a tweet from Trump. I thought I could use the sexists quotes said in the society about gender colours put them in a quotation. Dan already had an ideas about his quotes and about crossing out words. So, combining mine and his idea we said this could be will one of the placards we will make.

I did research about  fonts on Adobe Typekit to find fonts which are heavy weight, fits the context and also chose both feminine and masculine fonts which we could use in placards. The next step for me was to find sexists quotes so I did some research and thought about what do people say when a boy wears pink or girl wears blue. Gathered all these stereotypical sayings and quickly sketched them in my sketchbook. The next stage is to decide on the font we will use and colour scheme.

GENDER COLOURS RESEARCH

Doing some research on our protest topic would really help us understand the matter and develop our knowledge so we can produce good outcomes which reflects peoples thoughts and opinions about the topic.

“If you go back to the 18th century, little boys and little girls of the upper classes both wore pink and blue and other colors uniformly,” said Valerie Steele, director of the Museum at FIT, the Fashion Institute of Technology, in New York. In addition,  pink was even considered to be a masculine color. In old catalogs and books, pink was the color for little boys, said Leatrice Eiseman, a color expert and executive director of the Pantone Color Institute.

An article titled “Pink or Blue,” published in the trade journal The Infants’ Department in 1918, said that the generally accepted rule is pink for boys and blue for girls. The reason for pink being a boys colour is that it’s been more decided and strong colour. Yet blue is is more delicate and dainty which they said was suitable for a girl. So if the gender colours were completely different back then what changed the concept. Looking into gender colours shows that it is socially constructed, it changes depending on time and place. In the articles, it says that the whole change happened when manufacturers wanted to sell more infant and kids clothes. So they started to colour code clothes in 19th Century before then most children wore white clothes. However, especially in America this colour coding changed as in some states some brands used blue for boys and pink for girls. But in other states it was vice versa. Stores like Best & Co. in Manhattan and Marshall Field in Chicago branded pink as a boy’s color. Others like Macy’s in Manhattan and Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia identified pink as a girl’s color. Artists had a big impact of the colour coding  such as 18th Century paintings by Henry Huntington. His painting ‘The Blue Boy’ a boy dressed in blue and ‘Pinkie’ a young girl dressed in pink. To him he had a colour code in his paintings to identify gender. So many people accepted this as the right way and associated blue for boys and pink for girls.

As I was reading some articles I came across even in 1884 FDR was photographed at the age 2 and dictated that boys wore dresses until the age of 6 or 7. In todays society, a boy wearing pink is seen so rebellious and against the masculine culture which they are immediately labelled as ‘gay’ or ‘not manly’. It’s clearly not acceptable for boys to wear dresses in todays society.

                                     Franklin Roosevelt wears a dress, New York 1884.

References:

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/01/12/health/colorscope-pink-boy-girl-gender/index.html

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-did-girls-start-wearing-pink-1370097/

 

Today we had our presentation. Some of the group members didn’t send in their work but we added in all of the work we’ve done. Our oxymorons were liked and we had few feedbacks from David. He said he can see collaboration between me and Dans work but not in other works. For next project, we said we will communicate more often about our work which will help us make better outcomes. The next project us focused on graphics and we’re making placards. After the presentation we had the project launch.

The final oxymoron I sent is:

 

I started to digitalise the sketches on the sketchbook on Illustrator. To create the hand I used paintbrush tool and thinner strokes to create the outlines first. Once I had the outline done I added some thick strokes in darker areas of the hand and kept some strokes thinner for lighter areas. The illustation  below is the first draft which I like the outcome. I then created the gender symbols in pink and blue then placed them in the palm which looks like its been squeezed. For the bursting colours I thought about using other colours as well as pink and blue.  As a first draft it does work out but I’m not happy with the hand as it doesn’t look so neat and the colours bursting I’m not sure if they all go well together.

 

As I was struggling with the hand illustration I thought about scanning the sketches I made on my sketchbook and using them. I scanned the drawings which had more detail. I then added the gender symbols in more solid block way to change the style. I tried with and without colours bursting I think I like it more with the colours bursting out because it fits in with the purpose of our campaign. The colours are the same but I made them smaller than before as I think they were too big in the first one. I’m not sure on using the scanned images because I think they’re too detailed and I wanted to keep it very clean. I could add a color to the hand rather than keeping it black and white it might be lost with the vibrant colours.

 

These two are the final designs which I feel confident with, there are two versions. The first one is under a skin toned light yellow background with thinner strokes on hard and blue and pink strokes exploding. I changed my idea on different colours bursting because I think the meaning of the act gets losts if there’s other colours as well. So I kept it very simple also it links with Dans video better because he used only blue and pink. The second version is white thicker but simple strokes in the hand and only colour in the hand with white background. When I asked my team members they chose the second version. I agree with them as the second version is clean, simple and it does show the messages clearly. The bursting colours are lot bigger and spread out but as the hand is filled with colour it all balances each other out. I’m very happy with the outcome and Dans video as well. We had many ideas but chose this one which we think fits the protest manifesto.

 

Two weeks ago we had the launch to the field project ‘Protest’. The first week I struggled the most because I think my group wasn’t communicating enough and we didn’t agree on role allocations. The manifesto outcome was created my Dan and I did more of a research about the gender colours. However, I became more involved in the project the second week with the oxymoron launch. This week I was involved in the group more and I had good ideas which were liked by the group. The some members of the group started to communicate more which made me feel more confident about the project. This week we all worked on our own ideas except me and Dan we worked on Quiet Riot. I’ve created 3&4 images which are linked to my idea on quiet riot, we’re just going to create the presentation for monday.

I made some sketches on my sketchbook focusing on quiet riot and harmless crime. This is the main thing in my head which I want to create. I like both of these designs because it clearly shows the purpose. Rising fist  commonly used in protest poster etc. I think I will go with Dan and I’m gonna out gender symbols in the palm as it’ll show the message better. I’m going to scan these images and work on them on Illustrator. As a group we decided everyone does there idea and then we will choose the one which fits the oxymoron the most. I think it’s a simple image which clearly communicates the messages. With the gender symbols and colours I think it would look good.

 

Also, I got told we can’t have text in the outcomes so when I design them I won’t be using the text which I don’t think I need to anyway. The sketches below are the last ones I made focusing on quiet riot and harmless crime. For harmless crime that’s the concept I’m going for but one of my team mates said they really like the concept so he’s making outcome for that one. I will be focusing on quiet riot. As these were designed before I got told we can’t have words I put #challengethecolour because even though we changed the name of our protest I thought we could use that in some posters or banners maybe.

 

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Once we created the manifesto, the second week the lecture was about oxymorons and visual metaphors. This lecture was what is oxymorons and how we can link it to our protests. In the lecture, they showed us many artists works such as Luba Lukova ‘Social Justice’ posters, Joanna Spicer ‘The times newspaper’ and many more. We were given a list of oxymorons which we can pick from that could work well with our protest. As a group we first chose Quiet Storm. We though about a bottle inside it’s full of ‘storm’ which are gender colours and gender symbols then it bursts out variety of colours. I really liked this idea I think it would work well once it’s actually digitally made. Dan started to create the bottle. The next day I felt confused on what to do I wasn’t sure where I was going with the project. Then I had a look at the list again to come up new with ideas. I made a mind map of all of my ideas.

 

The mind map above is what I made using different oxymorons. I think this really helped because I could see what sort of things I could create. When I was doing the mind map on my laptop I was searching up symbols related to protests to give me an idea. As I was doing this I had an idea about Quiet riot. I thought about a rising fist which squeezes the hand and  colours burst out. I really liked the idea because it links with riot as rising fist is a symbol of solidarity and support and quiet comes in as the act of squeezing the hand is a very gentle act. My team mates also liked this idea, Dan said it would be better if theres gender symbols in the palm and as a gif it would really good which I agree. Also, I had an idea about Harmless crime. I focused on the crime part which a boy or a girl stands holding a paper like a criminal photo because they are wearing blue or pink. This concept really made sense and my team mates also liked the idea. I will be choosing one of these concepts.

For this project we are working with the Illustration course. We’ve been put into group to create outcomes for a protest. The first lesson we had a lecture about different protests around the world and posters banner etc created by designers to give me an idea about whats expected. The protests mentioned such as pro-suffrage, anti-war, animal equality. The posters created for these protests are the ones I found the most interesting. After the lecture we were put into our groups. We started to make a mind map of things we are interested. I mentioned we could do something related to feminism or an inequality in society which isn’t spoken about. Then Dan mentioned colours. He said we could do something about gender colours and how it’s become a rule in society that blue is a masculine and pink is a feminine colour. This a social construct which are created by people. I think that would be a very interesting topic. We then thought about other topics such as animal testing and something more political such as Trump/America. In the end, we decided on colours as I think that’s the one we could create the strongest outcomes.  We then started to write the manifesto for the protest. Our next steps was to discuss roles, what style of posters banner we should make. As the group is mixture of graphic and illustration they could have different style. We chose the slogan ‘Challenge the colour’

The week after, we had a meeting with Theo which he said the name of the protest doesn’t clearly show what its about. I do agree with this because challenge the colour can be understood in many different ways. So, as a group we decided to go with ‘De-gender Colour’ which I think sounds way better and clearly shows the purpose of the protest.  The rest of the manifesto is the same but just we’ve just changed the name.

Today we did our presentation in front of the class. The feedback we received was positive. I think we made a successful campaign which the outcomes did look as one campaign. However, we received few feedbacks which will improve our project. For the logo they said the font used could’ve been different because it’s hard to read. In addition, for my poster David mention the boxes behind the header he said watch out for the colour difference the darker orange was overlapping the light one. I’ve then made few changes in the poster to improve them. As a group we communicated very well, spoke when we needed help or when we wanted feedback. I think overall, I really liked this project because I felt very confident after we chose the topic of our campaign and I had few ideas in my head when we were doing the mind map. I’m happy with my outcomes I think they suit the campaign purpose and go well with the other outcomes created by my other team members.