We’ve come up with so many ideas by now, we had to take over a wall as an “Idea Bank”! This way, as we continue to move forward, we can check in with ideas we’ve already worked on for inspiration or to pull things from to re-design.
And now we get busy! Today we broke into groups, with each group taking on particular elements of each poster series. We talked about different brainstorming techniques to advance our conceptual approach to image making. All of the groups made great advancements in the development of their series. Dakota, Rebecca, Michelle and Casey worked together on the “Good Love” series. They began by listing different elements that make up a healthy relationship, such as good communication, trust, boundaries and affection. Then each chose an element to do a series of small, quick thumbnails about. I worked with Michelle for a few moments, who was brainstorming on affection. Often in this phase of the process, it can be difficult to transition from doing more complicated drawings back to simple, quick thumbnails. I explained that going from listing words and defining concepts into drawing quick, rough thumbnails was an exercise in language translation. You are taking these complex ideas, and then translating them into a universal visual language. Thumbnails are not meant to be particularly beautiful; mine are often bizarre scrawls that no one can understand but myself. I assisted Michelle in doing rapid-fire thumbnails; first she drew a couple embracing, then holding hands, then taking a nap together. I encouraged her to combine them. “When you put these all together,” I asked the group, “what do you see?”. Casey replied “Spooning!” Michelle was going to start drawing a more developed image based on this, but felt intimidated by drawing the figure. I encouraged her to either use members of her group as models, to work collaboratively with a team member who she felt may have drawing skills she could learn from, or to find an alternative way to represent that image. We asked the group, “How could we show spooning?” Laughingly, they answered, “With Spoons!”. Michelle than began drawing images with the spoons. I came back a little later, and asked the group, “What could we say about spoons that relates to healthy relationships?” Dakota said, “This love is stainless!” and I replied, “And strong as steel!”. The group then began talking about doing the “Good Love” series using imagery of inanimate objects that belong together. They started another brainstorming list, including things like chips and salsa, a tv and remote, peanut butter and jelly, a plug and outlet. Then they started doing more small drawings of these objects. Next week, we’ll work on developing metaphors and similes and writing catchy, concise statements to go along with these ideas. —Tanya Linn Albrigtsen-Frable
Today July 21, 2011 we took on the task of creating designs for our anti wife beater campaign. First we created several thumb nail sketches and brain stormed on clever ideas that could woo our viewers. We also created a mind map to help prioritize what we needed to focus our art work on. We then proceeded to make larger revisions on our thumb nails in order to make it presentable to our peers. We received great feedback on our work. Many people wanted to see if we could combine ideas together. They also gave us minor feedback on what to add on to our rough drafts such as adding some indication of someone climbing up a ladder like a hand or a foot, etc… Every one helped us by narrowing down our choices by coming up one by one and selecting what stood out to them the most. Right now the direction we are heading right now is thinking about how many designs we are willing to use and how many colors can we choose for our work. We also need to focus on time management. We currently have two projects that need to be completed such as the wife beater shirts as well as our comic on “Love means never having to say…” We aren’t fully sold on the idea of making “love means” as our comic topic so that’s something we need to brain storm about. We are thinking about working on the comic next week and then going back to the wife beaters to meet our deadlines since they are both quickly arriving. One hour could be devoted to the wife beater refinements while another could be devoted to creating comics and story boarding, deciding is still a work in progress. -Sarah Sanon and Cherry Sompanya
On Thursday July 21, 2011, we picked up from where we left off from Day One. We divided the different topics on abuse we covered into teams to work on. Me and my partner Suzan chose physical and sexual abuse to design posters on, but for now, we designed thumb nails. Our project has a great start so far. Our previous works based on physical and sexual abuse influenced us, but it can use a little more work once we have our Internet working. We also brainstormed ideas based on physical and sexual abuse to get an idea running across our heads. —Sandra Aghedo
Today July 21th 2011, me and my partner worked on thumbnail concepts for abuse posters. We had the topic of sexual and physical abuse. We also edited ideas from old posters the group did. We took a look at our designs and narrowed down the ones that we thought would be best for the posters. We each came up with four ideas by brainstorming out ideas on a piece of paper. We branched out the words consent and coercion to help with our topic. My part of the project is going well and one question I have is how are we going to afford these poster printings? —Suzan Aghedo
Today I sketched some thumbnails for “Warning Signs”. There are many different types of warning signs such as jealousy, having a temper, false accusations, isolation, blaming, apologizing for your partner, and making excuses for your partner. The process for making this poster was simple. I had to brainstorm all of the different warning signs and choose the most important ones to sketch. Next I used previous sketches that showed the different warning signs to incorporate in my sketches. This project is going to finish as a poster for warning signs. —Emeli Herrera 15
Technological abuse is when people are in an intimate relationship and their partner is constantly calling, texting, emailing and looking through personal website profiles. Today we drew thumbnails for our topic on technological abuse. We drew objects that had to do with technology and abuse. Also, we used examples from other people’s ideas and combined it with ours. We used statements to go with every thumbnail that we drew. The influence we had were from other people drawings and sketches. They had ideas that were good to combine with our topic. Our part of the project is going on a poster with 4 ideas on 1 poster with red, black grey and white. We want to look at what other examples can make our topic stronger. –Jonell Santiago & Tichinia Alexander
Today we designed more posters for the campaign we are working on. We were separated into groups that were from 2 to 4 people in each group. While we were going through the process of brainstorming ideas we selected which sketches were good or okay. My partner and I came up with a few ideas that we had to come up with our topic which was emotional/verbal and financial abuse. We defined both topics and came up with several different ideas for our thumbnails. The influences came from our collages that made us draw serious, funny and emotional sketches. The feedback we got was positive and motivated us to come up with better sketches and ideas. Our part of the project is going well and going on the right track. —Dominique and Glory Ann
