Simple Poster

Sorry, I’m a bit late to the party here.

When I first saw it, the thing that jumped out was the sentence construction, which you have now fixed.

Overall though, I think it works well. It is definitely a well-considered approach. No knives and blood drips, or, as you say, black eyes and split lips. So often, here, we see people put up work for critique where what they have done, evidently, is stopped at the first idea – usually the most obvious cliché – and flogged it to death. You have not.

Unless, you have. If so, I wish my first ideas were that apposite straight off the block! You appear to have considered the issues, causes and consequences, and put together at thoughtful, emotive piece of communication that speaks to its audience. The very reason design exists.

The are things wrong with it, when it comes to the finesse of the typography at the bottom, and these issues do let it down a little. For example, the use of a humanist, geometric font erodes the gravitas of the message a little, to my mind. I’d have gone for something with a little more weight (emotional, not typographic). It just feels a bit ‘friendly’. The tracking and kerning needs looking at. I think you either have to go completely emotionless and neutral, or give the words the power of their meaning.

I am nit-picking. It’s a great concept. It actually brought to mind a little – though different, of course – Saul Bass’ Anatomy of a murder, in terms of communicating sinister intent.

Good job. We’ll done.

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Thank you for your kind comments!
I posted this here exactly because I am unconfident about the typography.
I used a free alternative of Futura font, which is ,in most cases, a safe bet.
An afterthought was to use a more vertically streched or condensed font in order to match better with the shape of the figure.
As for kerning/tracking, I used the “optical” mode, and then I manually tweaked the kerning in words “NOT” and “LOVE” to create some tension. Maybe “LOVE” word needs more attention.
If you have more time to elaborate on tracking/kerning about this poster, I would appreciate it!

I’ll try to use a more “aggressive” font, maybe only for the words “NOT” and “LOVE”.

Again, thank you for your time and your kind comments.

I still don’t think the ‘robot’ character is good enough. It doesn’t look like a menacing person to me - it still looks like it could be something like out of I Am Mother

Sorry - but I don’t agree that it’s a good concept.
I think it misses the mark - if the figure was more human like then I’d be more persuaded.

Adding the date and the title to the poster was missing from the start - there was no context.
There won’t be a well done from me for adding it.

The original poster was completely out of context and could have meant anything.
Menacing figure to a:
Child
Animal
Woman
Man
Prisoners
Asylum Seekers

etc.

I don’t think it hits the mark.
It’s only now with the addition of the title and the date it makes sense.

But still feels a bit cartoony to me - and I don’t think it drives home the point of the actual day.


What I will say is that it’s a brave effort - a fine piece of work using typography to create the figure - it looks fantastic.

Overall you’ve done a great job.

I just don’t think it’s hit the point exactly.


The reason they use photos of women who have been abused is to shock people to seeing what happens. It’s to say - if you see this happening you can stop it - or if you know it’s happening you can help. You don’t have to stand by and see someone being hurt.

A lot of the posters I’ve looked at in this area have also showing comforting women - a hand up to say stop - and things like that.

You’ve steered clear of these - what you would call - stereotypical approaches to the poster design.

And where you have come up with something original - I just don’t think it immediately resonates with me.

That robot person could be menacing to anyone or any group of people. It doesn’t necessarily say it’s against women being abused.

Only for your tagline - and everyone has said it - that they didn’t know what the date was for.
The tagline helps.

But in terms of positioning - say on a bus poster, and people’s bags perhaps blocking the lower half of the poster

  • you wouldn’t know what this was for

For me - it’s a great effort - don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to destroy the work that you’ve done.

I think it’s great - but it’s slightly off target and misses the point a little bit.

Just my opinion.

If I may, I have an opposing opinion. While the photos showing the consequences are common and have been effective in the past, there are a couple good reasons to stop using them.

The first ties into the OP’s reasoning, that they’re cliche - but rather than just the desire to be different, it’s important to note that a lot of people tune that stuff out nowadays. Images of violence and the victims of unfortunate circumstances are so prevalent in both physical print and digital media that at this point people can’t be emotionally invested every time they see a photo of someone hurting, because otherwise they’d be emotionally exhausted. I actually remember reading something talking about it in detail, but I don’t remember if it was when I was in school or if it was a passing internet article. The point being that people are much more numb to that approach than they’ve been in the past.

The second is that bruised, battered, bleeding women is not what all, or even most abuse looks like. Since it’s stopped being acceptable to “discipline” your significant other, everyone gets concerned when someone shows up with a black eye or bloodied lip because they “fell down the stairs.” This also makes using them as a call to action less potent, because they already are for most people. But also, it means that physical abusers typically strike in other ways that aren’t as visible after the fact. A black eye or bloody lip is easy to spot and call out, but bruises on the legs, abdomen, or arms? Easily hidden inside clothes, and “falling down the stairs” is at least a more viable excuse. An abuser sees the photos of bloodied women telling people “this is bad!” and, being an awful person, decides that it’s fine as long as nobody can see what they’ve done.

What I like about this approach is that it’s not trying to show you what the consequences are for another person, it’s putting you in the shoes of right before something does happen, as an appeal to empathy for the fear rather than sympathy for the pain. I could tell you about how well the image of someone standing in the doorway, with the hallway light on behind them, staring into your dark room personally resonates with me, but, well, if you are an actual therapist I’d still have to pay you - but I can say that it is very on point with my experiences, to the point where it’s a bit hard to give it a fair critique.

I do think the figure could be refined a bit, maybe have the proportions exaggerated to increase the looming effect and drive the point home a little harder. I also think that, while this is a very good concept for conveying abuse in general, the design is supposed to be for day against violence against women specifically - and, as good as the concept of an abuser is portrayed, the absence of a representative of the victim means the role of the person is up in the air. The figure is masculine, but the relationship between them and the viewer/victim isn’t defined at all, which means they could be anyone - the parent, the child, a roommate, a lover - male or female. In that way, I do agree that it’s off target a bit, but it’s still a very strong concept at it’s core.

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That’s basically what I said.

This thread reminded me of this copy-driven poster on the same topic. Once of my favourite examples of how good copy can stand alone.

Refuge1

I really appreciate that comment !
Thank you for your time writing it!
I can see Smurf’s point, he is not wrong.
Any suggestions improving the figure without nerfing the concept of blocky rough letters constructing a male body?

As for the relationship between the victim and the masculine figure, it is undefined indeed.
But by not showing the exact relation, more victims can relate to it.
There are not only abusive husbands or lovers. There are abusive fathers, brothers, grandfathers etc.
Well, maybe that poster would be more to the point if it were about domestic violence in general.
Anyway, it was a concept that came up to me in split second.

As always I apologize for my English, as I am not a native speaker.

There’s some great advice here, the only thing I would add is that I’m not a fan of the character. I wouldn’t say it looks like a robot but it does look very masculine which seems out of place as the main perpetrators of violence against women in relationships are other women. I would try something more neutral, everything else looks really good.

This is off-topic, but I can’t let it pass. Are you suggesting that domestic violence in relationships between two females outnumbers domestic violence against women in male-female relationships?

Of course, female-female violence occurs. I don’t think anyone disputes that, but I can’t imagine it comprises the majority of domestic violence cases.

I’m not sure where you picked up that little tid-bit … but it’s wrong.

Lets just pick a year …

2017 to 2019 Female victims of domestic abuse ending in homicide by a partner, ex partner or family member totaled 274 and 96% of the suspects were male (263 out of 274).

Abuse victims are most always female and their abusers are most always male.

They don’t outnumber as obviously there are far more same sex couples but the percentage isn’t even comparable, 44% of lesbians are victims of domestic violence.

Oh obviously the homicide rate is higher when the perpetrator is a male who is much stronger than a female but as far as incidents of violence it isn’t even comparable:

If it’s a poster against homicide specifically and I missed that then apologies but it comes across as being anti-violence and the main perpetrators of violence against females are other females.

Reading your source, you’re misinterpreting the statistics - when compared to hetero relationships, more same-sex relationships have an abusive member - but the LGBTQ+ community is only around 5 or 6% of the overall population. Either that, or you’re misunderstanding the application of what “main perpetrators” means - because that does, very much, imply that they’re the most common aggressors out of the total.

Proportion and incidence are being conflated, here using the numbers provided in your source, if 18% of the “general population” experiences abuse, and we remove 6% for the LGBTQ portion, you come out with .94 * .18, or about 16.9% of the total population in cis/het abusive relationships. And if you take that 6% and multiply it by the highest percentage of violence (44% of lesbian relationships according to your source) that’s only 2.6% of the total population in an abusive LGBTQ relationship, which means that there are, approximately, 8 times as many abusive heterosexual relationships than there are abusive non-het ones.

The odds are higher for a gay/lesbian/etc relationship to be abusive, but using the data you there are more abusive relationships between heterosexual couples than all LGBTQ relationships in the US. Assuming I remembered by stats courses right, that is. We could discuss why LGBTQ relationships are more likely to be abusive, but that would probably merit it’s own topic.

In hindsight, I probably didn’t need to explain this, but I went to all the trouble to do the math and type it out, so…I’m hitting the post button anyway. May RKK bonk me if I have erred.

2 Likes

No I’m not misinterpreting the data and I’ve already mentioned in another response that obviously there are more male/female couples than same sex couples.

The type of relationship with the highest percentage of violence is same sex female couples so it doesn’t really make sense to focus on having a masculine character.

If no one can prove that the data I have linked (44% of female same sex couples are violent) is incorrect could we please stay on topic because I come here to discuss graphic design not try to justify factual statistics to people’s feelings.

Yes it does. If the poster is aimed at the general public, then far more men are abusers than women.

Although it is often overlooked that women are the aggressors in both straight and gay relationships and this does need addressing, straight female aggressors as a percentage is academic in this instance, as the poster is raising awareness of violence against women.

Let’s say for argument’s sake, your figures are correct. Without fact checking, I can’t know for sure, but there’s no reason to doubt them. Given that LBGTQ+ relationships account for around 6% of the total and not all of them are female-female relationships. Even taking into account the straight relationships where the perpetrator is female, it still leaves a significantly higher proportion of male perpetrators.

Again, for argument’s sake, let’s say all-female vs all-male relationships is a 50/50 split of LGBTQ+ relationships, then 44% of 3% is 1.32% of the overall. Whereas 25% (quickly researched figure for percentages of male abuse in straight relationships) of the remaining 94% (straight relationships) amounts to 23.5% of the overall.

Your statement would only hold true if the poster were targeted at LGBTQ+ audiences. It’s not.

Either way, the figure in the poster is intended to threatening, which is the point. It doesn’t appear to have gender. It is just a looming, threatening figure, intended to invoke a sense of fear, which would work for victims of abuse whether the abuse comes from a man, a woman – or a robot.

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As I was writing a response, I noticed @sprout was writing one too. I had feeling he would write close to the same thing as I was planning to write, which turned out to be the case.

For the sake of argument, assuming the percentage of women-women domestic violence is higher than in a heterosexual relationship, that violence still represents only a small percentage of the total.

The poster might not be inclusive of every domestic violence combination, but it still addresses by far the most common problem and gets the point across without diluting the message that women take the brunt of the physical abuse in violent relationships.

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Sorry but your subjective opinion doesn’t trump anyone else’s no matter how much you like to rant at anyone who disagrees with you on here. Your known for it and I won’t bother engaging with you.

@Schmick - I don’t see anyone as ranting.

You made a blanket statement that is wrong.

Everyone has tried to kindly point that out to you. But, I’m getting the feeling you aren’t liking that very much :wink:

Your call. I won’t be losing too much sleep over the fact, but just for the record, I don’t actually care if someone disagrees with me. My ego can take the hit, but last time I looked, this place was a discussion forum.

To me the one with the far, far higher percentage is more worrying (44% thats 1:2, that’s horrific). In either case I’m not suggesting to make the character feminine but just to make it neutral so that It’s not gender specific and shines light in the fact that violence isn’t tied to a certain gender (no one here seemed to even know about the epidemic levels of female violence).

I’m not sure why this has has hurt so many feelings (especially when they didn’t even design the poster) it’s a simple suggestion backed up by real world factual data. I honestly don’t care what the OP does with their poster, it was supposed to be some constructive feedback from a more experienced designer. I’ve given them exactly what they asked for and don’t care about what people who didn’t even design the original poster think about the advice.