claudiaihiwehi

[claudiaihiwehi]

Rationale

For my final pair of posters I wanted to encapsulate the attitude that underlines income inequality, rather than focusing just on the stats. This harsh divide of income comes with an undercurrent of judgement, a sour attitude from the wealthy toward those with lower incomes, rooted deeply in classism. The conviction of character based on ones bank balance seems so obviously reductive and childish; the judgement passed no different to the teasing that kids do on playgrounds. With this in mind, I decided to work with the concept of childish behaviour to convey this message. Through the excerpt from a nursery rhyme in poster 1, and the taunting “Mine, mine, mine!”  in poster 2, the rhetoric in both posters are intended to mimc cries from a silly playground arguement. The use scale manipulated and colour graded photos of kids playing around are also an attempt at taking the viewer back to the way they once were - unfair, annoying, and silly. They are memories far in the past; whether your baby photos were taken on a film camera or an iPhone, archival imagery seemed the most explicit way to communicate memories of the past. The way you teased your friends, and the way they gave it back, the silly ‘na, na, nana, na’ you shouted from the top of the monkey bars, or the victory you felt after winning tag. The unadulterated belief that you are the king of the castle - that is the attitude of those in the 10%.

Most importantly, I wanted to capture the tension between the kids, thus representing the tension between high and low income individuals... it is realities game of tag, but only 10% get a head start.

[claudiaihiwehi]

Week 6:1

Worked a little bit more on refining my final posters... Got there! 

[claudiaihiwehi]

Week 5:2

Big work day today... Interim 2 went well. Ditched the “Born to Dine” and “Spoon Fed Off Silver” developments and am now going with “Mine, mine, mine” and “... and you’re the dirty rascal” 

Donald confirmed that the two developments are definitely more of a series and I need to go in a different stylistic direction. I first of all confirmed the “Mine, mine, mine” idea, adjusted the text and added a call to action + logo... 

Final

Then worked on developing a new look for “... and you’re the dirty rascal” conception below... 

Played with a couple of weird effects... emboss & oil paint.

Final

Or at least I think it’s the final... quite like the pink and green one but together with the mine mine mine, it’s a bit girly - not my intention. The orange looks better paired with the teal. Not sure if the “NZ’s wealthiest 10% own 53% of our net wealth” is readable enough. Need to check in if this is good enough... 

[claudiaihiwehi]

Week 5:1

Getting ready for the next interim... Did a second development for the “Mine, mine, mine” option, and edited the original a little to suit... 

While I was doing this second one, the overally idea of these two posters became a lot more clear, and the use of the archival imagery became less of an aesthetic choice and more purposeful. 

When it came to choosing the image for the second development, I wasn’t sure if I should do more kids or perhaps another archival image. I looked at this photo... 

Thinking I could do something with a scandalous relationship, politics vs celeb, maybe something about high vs low society, etc. But all was going to be very hard to convey through a tagline with a stat. It also didn’t make a lot of sense! 

After thinking through what I was actually trying to say with my poster, I decided to stick with the kids. When I first started using the old images of children, it was because of an aesthetic choice, then it sort of enforced the idea that this is an age old issue - NZ has never been exempt from a sharp income division - even when these photos were taken, this was still going on. 

However, after talking it through with my flatmates I realised the relationship that ties everything together - we were discussing the attitude surrounding rich vs poor, namely the rich believing they are of higher value to the world because of their job, material possessions, or status, and then the stigma that they (I am making a very broad and stereotypical generalisation here!) look down on those who have less money, as if their bank balance is reflective of their character, intelligence or talent. They wave their designer bags around, posting on instagram flaunting their new all designer wares; a new car, flash house in Ponsonby, an European trip - it’s as loud and taunting as kids teasing their friends after they win tag, or screaming names at the losers. The rich are sore winners. 

I think playing into the whole kids playing and teasing eachother - one being bigger than the other getting an advantage - is a good way to go. I feel that the whole use of the excerpt from the nursery rhyme “I’m the king of the castle, and you’re the dirty rascal” is an obvious enough reference that most viewers will get it! 

The use of archival imagery definitely makes more sense now too, a film photo of retro kids is maybe not apart of everybody’s own personal history - it definitely isn’t of mine - however, it asks the viewer to look to the past, to being a kid, dealing with kids, watching kids - whatever the case - and remember their behaviour, how silly they react to things, how self righteous they are, whiney at times! Then once the viewer reads the stat, that association is already in their head - thus the 10% become the silly children... Or at least that’s what I hope comes across!!

This all being said, they’re essentially the same poster stylistically and have a similar rhetoric - more of a series? I’m not sure if this is correct... will have to check.

[claudiaihiwehi]

Week 4:2

Went and edited the Born to Dine poster a bit - added a call to action with logo. Feedback from Donald and Andre was mainly just to tweak the two - ‘spoon fed off silver’ and this one a little bit more, if I were to keep these as my final. However I do want to go back and work on my “mine, mine, mine” poster and do a second development. I definitely prefer that style much more, and have got a few more ideas to work with. Not entirely sold on this ^^ style for my finals... 

[claudiaihiwehi]

Week 4:1

Away sick, but worked on a development of the “Born to Dine” with a new tagline but similar imagery... 

The painting of the baby used is called The Christ Child by German artist Andreas Johann Jacob Müller. I felt using a child/baby made more sense when discussing being born into something. I feel that the final poster’s rhetoric works quite well, but I’d like to explore a bit more with the imagery and push it a bit further now - it’s feeling slightly safe. 

I’d also like to keep developing the “Mine, mine, mine” poster - I haven’t quite decided in which direction I’d like to go in. 

[claudiaihiwehi]

Week 3:2

Interim presentation today... I pulled two more concepts out but was very sick this week so they are decidedly average! Finals below... 

Not working with these at all... Back to the other original ideas of the “mine, mine, mine” and “born to dine” to develop from. Feedback from interim presentation basically reiterated that these two were the ones to work with...

[claudiaihiwehi]

Week 3:1

Working on posters for the interim presentation on thursday... worked with the phrase  “born with a silver spoon in ones mouth” 

Eventually I went back a few concepts and this was the final... 

I’m not totally sold on the “Born to Dine” tagline and went with a stat about food insecurity - a bit of a change from where I was with child poverty before, however I couldn’t figure out a way to tie in the silver spoon and born to dine, without talking about food. We’ll see how it goes... I worked with a neoclassical portrait called “The Princesse de Broglie” by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, as I felt that this totally screams bourgeoisie and upperclass. I really like the effect of it - luxury and decadence - quite an obviously digestible way to say RICH. Original portrait below... 

[claudiaihiwehi]

Week 2:2

Continuing to work with income inequality and archival imagery I went with conceptualising and editing this image... 

I liked the outcome of this poster. It’s for sure got work to do, but it’s my favourite of the ones I’ve done so far visually. I feel that it’s quite passive and the bottom statistic could definitely be more incorporated to the image, but I like the image, colours and type treatment. The rhetoric definitely changed throughout the conception but I think the succinct ‘mine, mine, mine’ works well? 

[claudiaihiwehi]

Week 2:1

Working with the idea of income inequality I started looking into how I was going to communicate this, as well as what stats to work with. I looked at -  https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/88455171/the-truth-about-inequality-in-new-zealand

https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/latest-child-poverty-statistics-released#:~:text=After%20housing%20costs%20have%20been,in%20five%20children%20(235%2C400).&text=Looking%20at%20that%20material%20hardship,in%20households%20reporting%20material%20hardship.

https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/child-poverty-statistics-year-ended-june-2018

http://www.inequality.org.nz/understand/

https://www.victoria.ac.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0012/1673787/WP11-Income-Inequality-in-NZ.pdf

http://archive.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/people_and_communities/Households/inside-auckland/income.aspx#gsc.tab=0

I was then looking at archival imagery for another project and found a collection of old photos (photographer: unknown) of kids jumping, playing, messing around. I then went with it and tried to fit the rhetoric to the imagery... 

The final...

Not my favourite I’ve done, I think the imagery could definitely be more NZ-centric - keeping it old school with the kids but using photos of NZ houses - I did try, but there really wasn’t any images available at a high enough resolution. If I were to continue with this idea however, I could easily take the photos of the homes myself. 

I like working with this archival imagery - for the most part I just enjoy how it looks, however I do feel that it enforces the idea that this has been happening in NZ for years and years, and now more than ever it needs reform, as we have our highest level of low income households for more than 50 years.

[claudiaihiwehi]

Week 1:2

Second poster - using a random input words bank to inspire new concepts - I got ladder and toolbox. I did a few thumbnails working with these... 

But I didn’t like really any of these... 

After reading the article on diversity within the workplace, I had a bit of inspiration from the line after a quote from Judith Collins “...when looking at a possible reshuffle of her shadow cabinet.” ‘reshuffle’ sort of acted as my own word bank, and then on a second look at the actual word bank on stream I combined heart and reshuffle - then just rolled with a card metaphor from there! 

I tried a few different idioms and way to do things... 

A few concepts later... the final

Now to decide on the overarching idea... I like the idea of exploring something to do with income although I’m not sure exactly what facet. I started thinking about something to do with inequality within heritage buildings... the idea that colonial buildings are very quick to become heritage registered, but Maori buildings and land are barely recognised. An idea I liked, but it was definitely going to be hard to translate this into a small number of words and there’s not a lot of stats or info available on this topic.  

[claudiaihiwehi]

Week 1:1

First lesson, straight into poster design. Using the drawings we all did in Pictionary and basing our issue on an article relating income inequality in NZ... 

I started off wanting to use a drawing of sardines - I didn’t have any particular reason, just basing it off liking the drawing itself - but I did have the “packed in like sardines” phrase in the back of my head. Decided to go with it and started iterating with the inequality issue of overly cramped housing based on the articles discussion of NZ’s income differences. 

Eventually after playing with colour, the question mark placement and the kerning/using condensed on the “tightly” I decided to go back a few concepts and combine into the final below...