FINAL - in progress

Surrealism with Photoshop

FINAL

Essay:

The topic of my poster and the message I want to convey to the Academy is the juxtaposition of global poverty and the privilege we typically see in both the Western world and Woodstock Academy itself. One perspective shown in my design is the suffering that comes with aspects of poverty (specific to this design is hunger), whereas the other perspective is overindulgence and satisfaction that comes with it. I find this subject of great importance since I have witnessed both sides of the situation and feel that there is not enough true awareness of what’s happening with global poverty or even why it’s happening. It’s frustrating to see students being unaware of the advantages they have compared to the other half of children that don’t have the privilege of experiencing anything close to what we experience. My hope with this project is that students are able to see both perspectives and lifestyles and can feel both empathy for those with disadvantages and appreciation for what is offered to them. I plan on students going through the process of identifying and understanding the images presented in separated and split up strips. Since the images overlap are are broken up with each other, it is more of a process to see the images.

I chose a poster as my media and feel it was the best option for the subject matter, since posters are typically the most recognizable form of communication amongst the public. I’d like it to be displayed in an area of school that a good amount of people pass through throughout their day or week - probably in a main hallway or towards the cafeteria.

To creatively communicate my idea, I aimed to make my poster visually pleasing while also making sense compositionally. For colors, I chose black, white and a blue toned grey in both the images to create a somber and empathetic vibe while also connecting the images, since they are broken up. I used a bright red color in the text to make the phrases stand out against the duller background. I gave both the image representing the poverty and parts of the text a roughened texture to give a more visually pleasing image and convey feelings of discomfort. I oriented both phrases towards opposite sides of the page to create balance and to draw the audience's eyes to both sides of the image. The reasoning for splitting up the images is not just to add an interesting element; since I wanted to show both lifestyles, I decided to evenly split the images and overlap them to connect the images and not have the divide of showing both images separately. I also made the columns uneven and inconsistent to both reveal certain parts of the images to what I felt was appropriate and to not make it as uniform. To add more visual appeal and to overlap the images further, I had varying opacities within different columns. I decided to have a landscape orientation rather than a portrait orientation because this made it easier to show both images as well as the font, and students in the halls can look at it for longer as they walk by.

There is not one focal point in my design; rather, I have a certain focal point in both images (the poor boy’s eyes’ and the face of the boy who’s eating) and then the text. The columns/lines that I mentioned earlier helps the audience move through the image and draws interest that they can ponder further and work harder to identify the purpose. The placement of the text also moves the audiences eyes from one side of the page to the other by being placed a bit outside of the visible frame. I used filters from the filter gallery in Photoshop to edit the images and make them more visually interesting with texture and colorization. Since I used a multitude of textures, opacities, and values, there is more variety in the poster as a whole.