Perception of Space

Just my visual communication blog By Joshua McEvoy

[atypical-individual]

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[escapekit]

$5 MAKES A DIFFERENCE

Ogilvy & Mather New Zealand has created a series of clever ads for wildlife organization Forest & Bird. Incorporating actual money the ads show how even small donations of $5 can help “put a bird back in its natural environment”. 

[illustratosphere]

Moleskine Doodles by  Kerby Rosanes

[artisthemovement]

Nike Chalk murals by Ben Johnston.

+artisthemovement

[notsolstice]

Saúde Mag | Sérgio Bergocce

[ddccad]

Every week a mysterious duo plague the chalkboards of Columbus College of Art & Design, seeking to inspire and motivate, leaving behind a trail of chalk dust. Who will be their next muse?

Keep checking ddccad.tumblr.com.

[rideitlikeitsstolen]

[mereko]

[attractiontotheinsane]

Yin e Yang

[joshdignam-blog]

Evaluation

The opportunity to choose and explore a brief from the ISTD 2014 was a great chance to extend my knowledge on a subject and to develop and refine my skills to create a strong piece of work that could be used within my portfolio. ISTD has served to challenge my creativity and to see how far I can challenge a brief and progress a concept.

Throughout the brief I believe what I found most difficult was grasping the idea of what protest is really about, as seen in my development I have been given the challenge of creating a socking poster but at the same time I did not want my work to get lumped with all the other protests that have fallen on deaf ears. In my research I found that a lot of animal testing protest use imagery of animals being harmed. I felt with my work I wanted to create more of message, the idea of the brief is to make people aware of animal testing and to turn them against it, so I adopted an approached that would aim to shock and to inform.

Through research I discovered that in 2009 animal testing in cosmetics has been banned in Europe and furthermore this year there had been a law that bans the sale of items in Europe that have been tested on animals outside of Europe. With this in mind my concept was to inform the public that although animal testing isn’t an issue in Europe, companies that do sell products in Europe are still testing in countries like china. Essentially by buying a product by L’Oreal you’re not buying an animal tested product, but what you are buying is a product that will then finance a company that does test on animals.

With this idea of boycotting companies I had the challenge of creating a strong message to reinforce people to take note. Some of my earlier mock-ups had the message there but they lacked the shock impact. Through more development I decided to work with the idea of using animals as the ingredients on bottles of shampoo, I discovered that on average 72 animals are used on the testing of a product and so with that information, I created ingredient lists that said how many animals went into making it and I also included how they were tested by using information previously gained on different kinds of animal tests used.

This project has proved to be quite challenging and has had its ups and downs, I believe that in future projects I need to apply myself more and become fully immersed in the brief, time management is one of my weaknesses and I need to put all my concentration into my projects. I feel my final outcomes are relatively successful but if given slightly more time I may have extended the idea by actually taking to the streets and protesting the message, from this I may have gained some video footage or changed the imagery slightly, but overall I am happy with how it has turned out.

[joshdignam-blog]

Here are some tests with the photographs I have taken of the bottles with the new labels. I have taken the background away from the photo in order to add some colour to the posters, although this could look okay, i feel that the original image is stronger because there is natural shadows and so on that make the images look more interesting.

[joshdignam-blog]

These are some designs for the new labels I will be sticking onto  my bottles of shampoo. I have decided to use Tressemme as opposed to simple because it adds a little bit of diversity in the colour.  The labels include the ingredients, which describe the tested animals, I have also changed the type slightly of the original slogans as to highlight the important parts of the message. Some elements of the labels may change slightly but as I have based them on the actual original shampoo labels they won't change much.

[joshdignam-blog]

These are some experiment I have created, with these the idea was to use the shock of telling people what experiments are used to test animals. Most people don't actually realise how extreme animal testing is and this aims to show them. The first image serves to show that the animals used are stripped of their identity and just become another animal to be used in torture. The second image I have used a photograph of a monkey in a  cage, this is to actually give stimulating imagery so we are shown what actually goes on. the image also serves to stir emotion within the viewer, the monkey appears to be staring at the viewer, this creates a feeling of sorrow and empathy for the animal.

[joshdignam-blog]

[joshdignam-blog]

From previous research I have picked some of the more commonly used animals that are used in cosmetics testing to create these phrases to add on to my posters. I have decided to highlight the number of animals used because I felt in the hierarchy of text it needs to stand out but also not outshine any of the other information on the poster. As this information is a side note from my concept I have decided to keep the text slightly smaller and to place it in the bottom corner of the page.

[joshdignam-blog]

China Animal Testing Complicates L’Oreal’s Expansion

L’Oreal SA’s push into China’s $32 billion beauty market has a hidden cost -- if you’re a rabbit or a mouse.

In my last critique I suggested putting changing the labels slightly and writing that so man animals have been killed to create this product. Because the products I’m using in my work don’t actually use animal testing because they are European brands, I didn’t feel like putting information about animals killed for the bottle on the bottle worked. Instead I have decided to create a sentence that I can place on the poster somewhere that suggest that ‘this many’ animals were killed for products like these. The link I have found here gives me information on roughly how many animals are used to test each product.

“In China, companies are required to submit samples of their products to be used for tests at local laboratories, according to advocacy group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. PETA estimates at least 72 animals are used for each product.”

[joshdignam-blog]

As I said previously I feel the posters need a little more information to give full understanding of the tag line. The short sentence I have used is kept succinct and yet still gives the information need to understand the point of the posters. Although this sentence isn’t very harsh or impactful I feel when it is used with the imagery it helps to convey my message.