Work
Done and done! Both series have been completed and received back from the printers – even with enough time for me to start picking apart the design. Nevermind.
I think I’ve done enough chatting about where the concept came from in general terms, so I’ll just go through a brief summary of each final piece…
‘National Security Hotline’ Series
The first of these links Alan Jones directly with the Cronulla riots, by juxtaposing his picture above news shots of the violence. The text of the poster discusses ways that tabloid media continues to ‘get away’ with inciting this kind of anger and hatred…
The second of these takes a similar look at Andrew Bolt’s continued attack on race and ethnicity. It includes a broader range of images than the first poster, with everything from the Camden Islamic school protests and Woomera Detention Centre, to general racism in Australia, like the teenagers on a Sydney beach, happily showing their stomachs emblazoned with “Fuck off, we’re full”…
The final in this series looks directly at the comments encouraged by these types of journalists. Every comment used to create the image of Australia comes from members of the public who have commented on Andrew Bolt and Tim Blair’s blogs. Some of it is nothing short of frightening. Spending many hours reading this stuff made my head spin…
‘What Are You Afriad Of’ Series
Unlike the previous series, which were a deliberate reference to an established campaign, these posters were designed from scratch. The first of these points out that Australia actually receives very few asylum seekers, when compared to other countries. Not quite the situation which calls for levels of hysteria going around at the moment…
The second of these ‘red, white and blue’ posters displays the difference in financial cost between processing boat people offshore when compared to taking them somewhere like Sydney’s Villawood Detention Centre. Why we feel the need to put them in detention is another point altogether, but comparing cost is something that everyone can respond to…
The final image shows the military might that the Australian government puts into protecting its borders from boat people. When you consider that the vast majority of asylum seekers come by plane, it’s an obscene amount of money…
The printers did a great job (particularly for putting up with hundreds of questions from a clueless uni student). The only trouble we ran into was when printing the blue ship poster. It seems that when I selected the colour in Illustrator, it had a large amount of magenta as part of its makeup. So when the printer wanted to make it slightly darker than I was seeing on my screen, the magenta came through much stronger, making the blue a purple colour.
After some trial and error, the fix came from flattening the PDF file, lightening it and fiddling with the colour balance slightly – all in Photoshop. I’ve decided that it might be time to invest in a monitor calibrator, like the Spyder, or some frighteningly expensive Pantone cards.
I think I’m happier this semester, having taken on projects with a little more concept and social impact. I don’t think my design has been as well developed as it probably could have been, but that aside, I feel like I’m heading in a pretty good direction with my graphic work.