PREVENT BRIEF

Jacob Ham

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DATE

23rd January 2017

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Brief.
Create a poster that will guide students and members of staff to make them understand that they have a duty in preventing radicalisation and help the college communicate with those who attend the college to make them feel safe and make them aware of what they can do if they don’t.

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The poster should be in A2 format being 420 x 594mm and all imagery must be original.

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Key dates and planning.

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Monday 23rd January.
On Monday 23rd the brief was initiated and I began researching key areas for development along with producing initial designs which I would then develop in the week off.

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Group Task.
Once we had been given the brief we got spilt into groups, were we had to answer a set of questions each based on a short documentary called Combinations where Imran Naeem  talks abut British Values and how, what and why he considers to be British

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The questions my group got given was based around the statement “During the film Imran talks about a school visit where a young girl insults him by swearing at him and calling him “Osama Bin Laden”.

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Question One.
How do you think this made Imran feel?

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Question Two.
What was special about Imran’s reaction to the situation?

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Question Three.
What other responses could Imran have given?

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Monday 30th January.
Posters to be printed and present to both the class and the client for feedback on further areas of development.

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Thursday 2nd February.
Final design to be printed and handed in for submission.

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Friday 3rd February.
Chosen designs shortlisted to client.

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Research.
Throughout my research for this brief I wanted to cover a wide aspect of equality and looking at poster design overall as It is something that I have designed once or twice in the past. I decided to start by looking at gender and race equality. Throughout this process, I have found a wide range of both simple and rather abstract designs but in the end giving a bold message to the reader.

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While looking at equality based posters I came across one that appealed to both one gender then others focusing on both, personally I feel that those that focus on both genders work better but that all depends on the talking point. For example, the one showing the terms of what society classes a girl/woman as depending on the height of her skirt, is a strong example from what I have found. This is down to that using small words and photography together making it look like tattoos on the girl’s leg. This s rather powerful as it expresses that a girl is often scared by what people judge her by, even though in the end it is her body.

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From there I went on to look at posters that use photo manipulation or illustration to help show a key point on the topic. Throughout looking I found a fair amount of animal abuse based posters, even though the brief is not aimed around this I still felt that they displayed a similar message, that being we are all equal. The next two posters that really hit home are “The Show Must Go On” and “Animals are not clowns” these posters are not directly aimed at humans but they get the message across by using photography and wording. As soon as you see the posters you instantly understand the aim and key points that are trying to be made without having to read in depth about the subject.

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The next thing I decided to look at was using posters to display an argument, for example using it to stop sexual harassment. One poster in particular stood out too me, where the poster uses illustration of hands to create an outline of a woman’s body which expands on that and creates the parts of a female’s body that are often disrespected in harassment. Relating back to before this poster is powerful as it explains a problem without saying there is a problem.

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After that I decided to look at posters in general to see what makes a good or bad poster. I found that posters that appeal well must be balanced in the way they are designed, so that there is not too much happening at once. Text should be left aligned unless it is a heading or main talking point. The use of colour is always important to giving the viewer the correct message. 

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Something that I noticed throughout looking at my research was that the colour white is used quite frequently, this is because it is associated with doing good and can often represent a successful start. Although the white is rarely used for the background colour it is used for the typeface and often the illustrations that are present on top of a coloured background or image.

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I conducted my research on both Behance and Pinterest, but I found a lot more usable pieces of research while searching on Pinterest this is down to the way that Behance splits each project into sections whereas Pinterest complies it all into one board.

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Keywords.
Poster, Direction, Violence, Message, Equality, Diversity, Values, Communication, Shame, Identity, Issue and Fairness. 

 

Group task.
Prior to starting research on designs for this brief, we got split into groups of three and analysed a video called “Combinations” where Imran Naeem discusses issues he has faced with racism in today’s society, whilst watching the video various groups had to answer the following questions about the short documentary;

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Group One.

How does Imran identify with being British?

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1. What makes you the same as Imran?

2. How did he feel about being British?

3. Why was Imran chosen to carry the Olympic torch in the London 2012 relay?

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Group Two.
Imran said in a PE class that the student was looking solely at his beard and were not listening to him.

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1. Why were they looming at his beard?

2. What did he choose to do?

3. Why was this important?

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Group Three.
During the film, Imran talks about a school visit where a young girl insults him by swearing at him and calling him “Osama Bin Laden”

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1. How do you think this made Imran Feel?

2. What was special about Imran’s reaction to this situation of events?

3. What other responses could Imran have given?

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Group Four.
In his first fight Imran was subjected to racist insults and abuse from the crowd.

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1. How did the referee react to this and what did he do?

2. What did the referee mean by that?

3. What did that say to the crowd and to Imran?

4. What has Imran promised to do in his gym?

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Radicalisation and extremism.
Following on from the group task, we were presented with a PowerPoint and a few questions based on definitions to do with key words that relate to either extremism or radicalisation. These key points will help me understand the brief even further and give me key research points.

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Radicalisation.
Radicalisation is the process in which an individual or group of individual join forces to adapt social, political or religious identities and aim to ruin contemporary ideas of freedom of choice.

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Extremism.
The act of extremism is the disagreeing with fundamental British values this includes democracy, rule of law and simple mutual respect.

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Terrorism.
Terrorism is the act of committing violence with the intent of causing mass destruction or harm, often to purist political aims.

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Ideology.
Ideology is the beliefs or opinions of an individual or a group often based around political or culture.