Laura Taylor: January 2010

For this personal project we are encouraged to write our own briefs, I don't really enjoy self-directed projects because I can never think of any and prefer working to meet demands. Not enough briefs to choose from... I thought I'd read every brief by ISTD, RSA, Roses, YCN & D&AD. Wow, a lot of briefs, I've chose D&AD's Don't Panic brief to create an image to represent 'resistance.' It's really open and you can do absolutely anything, which is fun.

At the moment I'm liking the idea of humans resisting death and the medical life saving equipment they use. "Defibrillation" - the electric charge which starts the heart again...sometimes, yeah I might actually research this first.

- Life saving equipment everything from oxygen masks / defibrillators / syringes / needles / scalpels / stitches / morphine / anesthetic / chemotherphy the fight against death, resisting nature.

- Immunity / vaccination is also an interesting subject, the natural & man-made forms of fighting antibodies & disease.

The brief encourages us to exit our 'safety zones' and as it's stated an 'illustration' brief, I'm going to draw, first time for everything [I suck at drawing.]

My idea led to this poster, I wanted it to be open to interpretation and look gruesome.

I chose to do the Amnesty Brief because I was having trouble trying to collate a 'visual essay' for the extended themed project of Silence. The brief was to create a strong conceptual campaign and image for it's 'continued promotion of free speech' aimed at countries generally with the United Nations who censor free speech. The campaign is intended to focus on the concept of human rights and freedom.

To begin with I was working in a team with Nia & Arron through the research and idea generation stages but then we went our separate ways but I decided to carry on with the brief. We looked at past Amnesty campaigns and other similar campaigns which intent to raise awareness and get people involved, Nia found probably all the past Amnesty ones (which I've used for reference so I knew what already had been done and Amnesty's style of posters/campaigns and design.) Our idea generation as a team didn't really lead anywhere, Arron came up with a few good ideas and the general theme we liked at the time was a "game" idea, something like "It's not a game" and relating the subject to well-known boards games but I didn't pursue that idea any further. I experimented a little with folding paper and how this could reflect the censoring of words/image and unfold to deliver the message.

I was stuck for ideas which weren't cliche or had already been done so I began thinking about physically speaking and how this is represented in print - speech bubbles. I found some quotes that were really blunt and powerfully raised & slated the issue of people having no freedom of speech, which were also extremely intriguing and stuck in my head for ages. I used a similar shape speech bubble as the notifications bubble on Facebook for the reasons that it's quite intriguing, urges you to read inside & generally I just liked the shape :)

So that's the poster side of the campaign, I used the strap line:

People are wrongly imprisoned for having an opinion

Freedom of speech - strike the conversation

I'm not really an advertising/campaign thinker, everything I think of is ultimate cheese but I quite like this one, it's got the 'shocking' fact, the issue, and the positive ending with 'strike' connoting 'taking action' and quite 'dramatic' and 'conversation' connecting with the audience to become physically involved. I kept the yellow box with Amnesty & it's logo in to keep with their 'style' of campaign as the brief stated a 'continuation'.

I decided the poster's weren't enough alone so I designed a bookmark, drink coaster and what would appear on the back of an exhibition admission ticket as advertising space, if they have any? they do now.

I related a topic for each of the formats:

Bookmark - 'Keep these words to yourself' - Putting the audience in those with no free speech's shoes, how would it make them feel? How hard must it be not to say what you think?
Coaster - 'Try keeping your thoughts to yourself after a few' - Using the affects of alcohol and how it is more likely to make us say things we usually wouldn't say or be offensive and how horrible it must be to not be allowed to voice your opinion at any time or anywhere.
Exhibition ticket - 'Your opinion is wrong' - An exhibition is a place where people are encouraged to form their own interpretation and opinions of others work and generally on the whole is about self expression. How would you feel being told your opinion is wrong?

I think these work better than the posters because it's easier to connect with as socially drinking, reading and art galleries are all part of British popular 'culture'.