War on Want poster development

Today was optional wether we went in or not. I went in anyway to print my essay, etc. Not many of us were around which was quite a weird feeling but it worked out ok as I had a chance to speak to Sally about my 'WaronWant' poster.

My idea from the start was to 'trick' people into looking at the poster, as Charities unfortunately aren't the most appealing to viewers as they normally are trying to persuade people to give money.

By taking this approach and getting people interested at the first sight of the poster they would then be tempted to read the rest. After seeing the image(not shocking) people would then be presented with the sad facts of Sweatshops and what happens in these places.

So...I thought of using a garment. I considered using male or female clothes but got to the conclusion that it would be more appealing to both sexes to see a dress on a poster, and not a suit.

After this I thought about different ways in which I could deliver the message. They were the following:

-Hang a dress on a coat hanger on a rail so it would a bit like a wardrobe. (At one point I even considered using wardrobe doors to represent this better and not just have a rail hanging and have scratched handwritten text to represent the writing of a sweatshop worker);

-Have the poster work like an outdoor newspaper;

-Present the facts next to a hanging garment as you would in a form. E.g. Name- Tasleema, Age -14, Workplace - Sweatshop.

I had a tutorial with Sally today and she felt that it would probably be best to have an actual model wearing the dress. This would mean I would have to get rid of the coat hanger and rail. After putting some though to it I decided this would clearly benefit my work as it would in fact be more appealing to the viewers. Probably not as intriguing as seeing a dress hanging on a coat hanger though - that's the reason why I wanted to do that in the first place. I wanted to awake people’s curiosity but the idea of having someone wearing the garment would in fact be better.

Hand rendered type is also something that she said would probably be best to avoid as there is quite a lot of that around. I was aware that by using handwritten text my poster looked messier and less professional but the idea behind it was to have the viewer ‘believe’ that a sweatshop worker had written it.

Maybe I was trying to get too complicated with the ideas behind it!!

I’ve considered the constructive comments that Sally gave me today and re thought my poster. The initial idea is still there, the contemporary look, the use of a garment to attract attention, what has changed is the way in which I  am going to deliver the message.