Revisions

Final Voting Posters:

Greek Americans have an overwhelming sense of pride when it comes their heritage. This starts with their immigrant roots in this country, but also reaches much further back to their distant relatives of ancient Greece. As distant as they might be, Greek Americans feel that they really do have a bond with the ancient creators of democracy, architecture, civilization. The symbols of ancient Greece are almost inherent in the minds of the modern Greek American.

Final PDF Poster


This poster attempts to play off this reverence for ancient roots, and uses ideas of the “birth of democracy” to empower voters in our current election.

The formal technique of the collage is utilized to reference the beginnings of democracy and voting in ancient times, mixing with contemporary elements to speak to modern voting; Vote Like You Invented It.

The poster employs the rhetorical trope of parody on a few levels; parody on modern voting systems with ancient Greeks in line for modern voting and a Krater pot in place of a ballot box; Krater motif is parodied by replacing scenes of Greek gods with modern voters in booths.


Final PDF Poster

Keeping in mind how important heritage is to this demographic, I made reference to the honor of the Greek flag. But here, I employ a heavy dose of irony to get my demographic stirred up by trashing their heritage and pretending that it’s okay. The Greek flag, made out of trash, becomes a metaphor for discarded heritage as a result of not voting. The vulgarity of encouraging the disregard of something so important to this demographic becomes the motivation to vote.

Process Documentation

More Refinements

Found voting campaign:

GAP's Vote For ___________.

Gap is getting out the vote by encouraging individuality; vote for whatever makes you you. This has a nice customizable aspect to it, allowing you to purchase a shirt (or button ect.) and write in what you vote for. Unfortunately, as can be seen on the website, this has lead to things like "vote for cupcakes" and "vote for fannypacks", and some insightful reasons to vote from The Cool Kids like "I vote for more bass" and "I vote for looking good, like I should." wtf?

With the addition of Bill Maher's satirical "vote for BBQ", it's hard to tell if Gap is serious. Do they really think that a vote from personal aesthetics is always valuable, or is there some subtle (maybe unintentional) message here about the uneducated vote. Either way it's at least got me thinking about my own reasons.

Refinements

Jr/Sr Crit

It was great to get some fresh perspectives on my work as I move into the final iterations. This seemed like a good time to introduce this dialogue; major problems had already been resolved, and fresh set of eyes helped to work out those final bugs that may have otherwise been missed.

The Gregs both voiced there feelings on the general message and use of rhetoric devices as being powerful and effective, and working well in terms of my demographic. They confirmed that both text and image content were working to create two variations of a call to action; one being more urgent and inciting (heritage isn't important), the other being a little more lighthearted but still empowering (vote like you invented it).

more specifically on the "trash" poster, everyone seemed to be responding to the potential of the more constructivist inspired composition. Gentry suggested we view theses posters from a distance, and then noted that there were two levels of read; from a distance the poster seemed to depict the flag alone, drawing someone from my demographic in close to then reveal that it is made of garbage. While they encouraged more exploration towards the constructivist composition, they emphasized that this was an asset to hold on to.

I got some good feedback on the use of red and blue in the collage poster, and also some issues of the contrast between the people and the pot. Greg K also showed me a great photoshop technique for adding color to my black and white collage.

Round 2 iterations

Execution and Refinement

Trashing Heritage: here I tried to arrange a composition that would display both the main view of the flag, as well as some details of the trash collage .





Krater Collage: here I looked at a few general issues of composition;where the krater might reside on the poster and type placement. From here, a more extensive collage will be explored.





Ancient Ballot:

Formal Explorations

Ancient Ballot:
Pre-distressed, Printed on paper bag




Distressed (aged), crumpled, stomped, torn, soaked, burned,


First Greek Ballot:

Transfer maker on broken pottery—a modern design, or typeface would be printed on a shard of pottery to reference the contemporary elections and the first elections in Greece; in which candidates names were inscribed on a piece of broken pottery.

Krater Collage:



Red Figureware:Drawing with blue marker on white paper, invert color mode on camera.


Trashing Heritage:



Your culture/heritage in the garbage


Priceless photos of your Greek immigrant grandparents turned into a coaster


Greek Motif Type:

Matrix

Lateral Thinking: mind mapping