Poster

[PSPDan]

Something I designed for one of the briefs on good50x70.org

It's my first ever poster, I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.

I need criticism though people.

So criticise away :D

http://i26.tinypic.com/9pvtpw.jpg

[Broacher]

Die of what?

Being reduced to an object? Is a 'child' an 'it'? Perhaps 'their' instead?)

What if you're not... watching? Or even... standing by?

And isn't that... the point? I'm very confused about your message.

[PSPDan]

Die of what?

Being reduced to an object? Is a 'child' an 'it'? Perhaps 'their' instead?)

What if you're not... watching? Or even... standing by?

And isn't that... the point? I'm very confused about your message.

SORRY, I didn't mean to put "its life" as you said that is reducing a child to an object.

It was about children in under-developed countries dying of diseases which are extinct or easily-curable in developed countries.

And "standing by and watching" is a metaphor.

[frankster]

The thing is, most of these kids die of starvation or disease, so the notion of "thier blood being on your hands" (I'm guessing that's what the hand prints are about) makes the poster have more of an anti child abuse/domestic violence feel.

As Broacher says, their, not its. Better still, if you're using just the one image of this little boy, why not his.

If you're going for the guilt approach then it's more effective to make the veiwer look at this little boy and ask themselves "do I want to stop him dying?"

[Virgo Nightingale]

The imagery instantly made me think of gun violence because of the bloody handprints and the kid's gun-like hand gesture. If you want an immediate, heartfelt reaction to the plight of sick children around the world, I'd consider using an image of an sickly child, not one who's smiling and looks relatively healthy. Use more shocking imagery (within taste, of course) to go along with your shocking statistic. I don't feel as moved to help a child if he doesn't seem to be suffering. I'm also not crazy about the outline treatment around the photo. It really doesn't lend anything to the design.

[PSPDan]

The thing is, most of these kids die of starvation or disease, so the notion of "thier blood being on your hands" (I'm guessing that's what the hand prints are about) makes the poster have more of an anti child abuse/domestic violence feel.

As Broacher says, their, not its. Better still, if you're using just the one image of this little boy, why not his.

If you're going for the guilt approach then it's more effective to make the veiwer look at this little boy and ask themselves "do I want to stop him dying?"

Yeah I'm taking this all on board.

The idea was to try and make the viewer feel guilty, but please remember I haven't even started my graphic design course yet so I find it difficult to portray what I want htings to portray at the moment.

How would you go about it?

[PSPDan]

The imagery instantly made me think of gun violence because of the bloody handprints and the kid's gun-like hand gesture. If you want an immediate, heartfelt reaction to the plight of sick children around the world, I'd consider using an image of an sickly child, not one who's smiling and looks relatively healthy. Use more shocking imagery (within taste, of course) to go along with your shocking statistic. I don't feel as moved to help a child if he doesn't seem to be suffering. I'm also not crazy about the outline treatment around the photo. It really doesn't lend anything to the design.

I see where you're coming from, although as frankster said, I wanted the viewer to look at it and think "do I want to let him die?", and I thought using an image of a child who seems to be happy would make this more effective.

[Virgo Nightingale]

That's a valid direction as well. However I think to pull that off you'd need a closer shot of the face of a kid with big puppy-dog eyes begging for someone to give him a hug and tell him a bedtime story. This kid looks just a little too happy-go-lucky.

[PSPDan]

That's a valid direction as well. However I think to pull that off you'd need a closer shot of the face of a kid with big puppy-dog eyes begging for someone to give him a hug and tell him a bedtime story. This kid looks just a little too happy-go-lucky.

That's another good point.

It's funny how you can finish a piece of work and think it's ok, and as soon as people start criticising it you realise all the blatent mistakes that were staring you in the face all along.

Thanks for your time and help people!

[Virgo Nightingale]

The headline doesn't really stand out either, so MAKE THE LOGO BIGGER!!! Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that, I just mean to make the headline bigger to grab a bit more attention.

:D

[Jackimalyn]

You need a call to action. OK, I don't want to let them die. Now what? Send happy thoughts?

[PSPDan]

You need a call to action. OK, I don't want to let them die. Now what? Send happy thoughts?

Sorry I should've explained better.

The brief was not to design a charity poster, but a poster to raise people's awareness of the social problems in the world. I know this poster fails as it doesn't actually tell you which social problem it represents!

[Broacher]

Maybe I'm too old and cynical, but the real problem isn't so much raising people's awareness as it is lowering their apathy. And the root of that is a depressing sense of hopelessness. Agree with Jackimalyn: now what?

And I would completely avoid the guilt/sad starving waif approach. That button has been pushed so often (and often by unscrupulous scoundrels as we all know) that nobody trusts it any more.

You have to find some instant, quicker way to 'bring it home'.

[PSPDan]

Taking everything on board I came up with this.

I feel it contains too much information now...

http://i27.tinypic.com/2s76nbs.jpg

[Katie]

I like this one but the child has a bit of a weird shaped head. you need to be a bit more careful when you cut it out next time. The info is a bit much maybe you could shorten it a bit. other then that well done. xx

[sierng]

yayy for finger painting.

[gentlepurespace]

sorry, the bloody handprints are over the top, it feels like a parody poster

[Cyclonearts]

I think you should include capital letters where they belong in the text. Also, play around with some brightness/contrast and hue/saturation effects on the colors. Try adding some border and/or a pattern somewhere in the poster instead of the bloody hands.

[Broacher]

My ignor-o-matic sense would trip in an instant with this. I think you have to get out of the 'designing for the converted' mode. There's nothing new under the photo-inspired pity sun. That may be callous, that may be hard to accept-- but it's closer to the truth than the expectation that another picture of an innocent child victim will change people's behaviour and response.

Nope. Again, look for relevance. What about a picture of a typically overweight young North American decked out in 'synthetic poverty' of the latest rapster fashions, looking suitably bored witless and absorbed in text messaging? "Some necessities are more necessary than others." Then hit them with the cost calculations for comparison.

But at all costs, I would avoid the impoverished black African child-- unless you truly are shooting for the pre-converted market.

[frankster]

It seems that the aim is to enlighten people on infant mortality, not just poverty, although I gather the two are obviously related. In this situation it is impossible to "avoid the impoverished black African Child" given the statistics they make up. (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a1/World_mort_rate_2007.png)

An African child all alone and surrounded by bloody hand prints brings to mind atrocities like the Rwandan genocide of the mid 1990s where hundreds of thousands of children were violently orphaned, so I think it is a mistake to be using the bloody hand prints in this situation.

Having got that off my chest I do think that Broacher is right about preaching to the choir and that comparison is the key to jolting people out of apathy towards the subject.

United States: The Revis family of North Carolina
Food expenditure for one week $341.98
http://blog.halbergphotographers.com/images/ATT00026.jpg

Chad: The Aboubakar family of Breidjing Camp
Food expenditure for one week: 685 CFA Francs or $1.23
http://blog.halbergphotographers.com/images/ATT00044.jpg

[Broacher]

^ Good points. More convincing graphics!

[JaCkinbOx]

26,000 under the age of 5 die everyday? What twisted serial killer is responsible for this? Exactly 26,000 children under five everyday? How persnickety! He must get up VERY early in the morning.

His itinerary must go something like this:

Death
Death
Death
Breakfast
Death
Death
Death
Death
Lunch
Death
Death
Afternoon tea...
Death
Death
Death, etc.

[frankster]

Too much Eddie Izzard for you!

[JaCkinbOx]

Too much Eddie Izzard for you!

lulz.

[Broacher]

Numbers are numbing. By themselves. On the other hand, a well-designed infographic can be a beautiful thing to look at.

Some ideas: a world map where continents are scaled to represent their percentage of the world's infant mortality rate.

Baby booties. White ones. Black ones. You figure it out.

Baby bottle? White milk, black milk?

[frankster]

Numbers are numbing. By themselves. On the other hand, a well-designed infographic can be a beautiful thing to look at.


Yes! I loved the Grande Reportagem "meet the world" flags... (http://programmerstools.org/node/498)

http://img66.imageshack.us/img66/9186/burkinafaso1zi.jpg

Some ideas: a world map where continents are scaled to represent their percentage of the world's infant mortality rate.


There is a website that has an application that allows you to rescale the world map based on various statistics such as infant mortality or GNP etc.

World mapper (http://www.worldmapper.org/) has hundreds of proportional maps and makes for some very interesting observations.

This is the infant mortality map...
http://www.worldmapper.org/images/largepng/261.png

[Broacher]

^ Wow! Neat link. Thanks!

[cornfed]

Agreed with everything said. I also think that the background color isn't adding anything to this piece. White can be very effective.

I like Edward Tufte's "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information" to get ideas on presenting information in a variety of forms.
http://www.amazon.com/Visual-Display-Quantitative-Information/dp/096139210X

[Broacher]

Here's a little type idea that just popped into being:

Take the words:

infant
mortality

Now, take the lc 't' in mortality, reverse the colour, and drop it into a larger shape (the recognizable top half of the African continent perhaps?) and what do you have?

'infant morality' with a cross grave marker? Dunno, just thought you may be able to do something with the coincidental relationship between mortality and morality.

[dot]

i actually disagree with the folks who are saying that the kid shouldn't look happy.
happy children is the goal - positive/affirmative images are useful and a lot less overworked than the typical pathetic starving child (god it's gross to type that).
i do agree that the pointing finger/gun thing doesn't make sense for this poster though.