America is a land where a citizen will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, and won’t cross the street to vote on a national election. Bill Vaughan, Journalist, KC Star 1915-1977
Our third project of the semester will be to create posters based on the AIGA initiative to Get Out the Vote. In keeping with the intent and spirit of the program our work will have as its theme a call to action, encouraging voter registration and turn out on the national election day of November 10th 2020. The posters should not advocate particular candidates or bias on issues (though you can use issues like the economy or environment to promote the idea that voting gives voice to voter concerns you just can’t hang the problem on a party or individual). This message can be framed in a challenging manner but not such as “likely to offend substantial numbers of citizens”.
We will publicly display the work at the Watson Library (and thereby put them to their ultimate use in encouraging voter participation).
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THU NOV 14
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As with all our projects we need to operate out of a knowledge base that is established through research. To that end our first step is to create a 10-slide presentation that presents the following:
- Background facts, history and attitudes about voter registration and voting. Who has the vote? How does one register? Who votes? Who doesn’t?
- What do you think are the main factors in citizens not exercising their right to vote?
- Describe your audience, the message you want them to receive and the action you want them to take.
- Make a “to suggest” list of at least 20 key words for your project+ full definitions of at least five of the most important words
- Supply 10 texts you think appropriate to the message and that could be the poster’s actual text. These can be slogans, imperatives (VOTE!), statistics, charts, facts, jokes, quotes (quotation site: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/voting.html)and will eventually be your poster’s texts. This project should seem pretty familiar to you given our advocacy poster project. Here you need to define a particular voting issue and the solution – the action will always be to vote or to register to vote.
Include a mood board that gives context to your ideas -– show both type + image inspiration. For your eventual posters you will need to create this imagery or get it from copyright free source.
Below are some other resources for your research. Supplement with your own sources:
wikipedia.org on voting related subjects
www.rockthevote.com
The League of Women Voters (www.lwv.org).
Ultimately you will be targeting your poster to a (wider or narrower) demographic, so as you begin your research start to think about specifically whose attention you are trying to capture. Do you want to target the youth vote? the disenfranchised? the disinterested? Do you want to celebrate the right to vote, or stress the relatively minimal effort it requires to register and vote? You can choose to be broad in your message and audience, or very specific: e.g. sometimes the only thing that prevents a person from voting is a ride to the polls – promote ride sharing.
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TUE NOV 19
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Review Presentations
We will use the period to review the paper’s and mood board content and use the feedback to determine the appropriateness, interest and clarity of the themes and messages.
Watch this talk by Ellen Lupton on How Posters Work and Here
Homework:
Reference your advocacy posters – in terms of framing the text message. What made them successful? From this choose 3 texts with which you will do at least 4 concepts each (one image dominant & one type dominant) (that’s a total of 12 posters).
Note on Concept Sketches and Mockups
Do whatever you need to do to visualize your ideas. Make each poster concept fit 2-up on an 8.5 x 11 in piece of paper so we can see it. (6 sheets of paper)
Review Women’s Rights are Human Rights poster series here. And here.
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THU NOV 21
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Review inital poster concepts. Choose the best 2 concepts (one image dominant and one type dominant) do 3 variations at actual size (for a total of 6).
Print each poster concept on an 8.5 x 11 in piece of paper so we can see it.
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TUE NOV 26
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Review posters and narrow down to final two.
For next class print each poster concept full-size (tile if you want to save money)
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TUE DEC 03
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Review posters and refine for next class.
Homework:
1. Bring in Books
2. Final poster in AIGA template.
3. Create a presentation (18x40in) how this concept will connect to your audience outside of the poster. (include your poster too)
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THU DEC 05
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No class workday.
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TUE DEC 10
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1. Drop off books.
2. Final poster in AIGA template.
3. Create a presentation (18x40in) how this concept will connect to your audience outside of the poster. (include your poster too)
How will it extend in three ways? To Who? What format? Where? Why?
THU DEC 12
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Refinements to extention concept(s).
Refinements of 18”x40” presentation of your project printed out (tiled if needed)
From Patrick:
Need final Book and Reflection: See handout final guidelines.
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WED DEC 18 (9:00am)
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Final Due. Poster