Formative Research
I started this project by researching posters with different compositions and seeing which caught my eye. This is arguably the most important function of a poster: to capture the attention of someone walking by. Without attention, information cannot be communicated.
Mono-focal posters—compositions which focused the viewer's attention on a single point—seemed to work best. Because this was an academic project, I took the liberty of assuming that what caught my attention would also catch others'.
Sketching and Ideation
I then sketched out 10 sets of 3 poster concepts, featuring a few statistics related to my chosen Amnesty International advocacy areas: Arms Control, Corporate Accountability, and Refugees, Asylum Seekers, and Migrants.
I chose these because they felt actionable and directly relevant to people’s lives. Arms need controlling, corporations need accountability, and refugees need support and asylum.
I narrowed my concepts down to a combination of multiple sketches, making use of both a strong diagonal and bold colors with black and white illustrated elements overlaid. I felt that a consistent angle to elements within the poster series would create a sense of unity and action.
Major iteration changes
I refined the visual design of the posters through several rounds of iteration and critique.
I also added texture to the backgrounds. With a more “grunge” stylistic direction, I felt that a solid color was too artificial; real stencil art is usually sprayed on a rough surface. Texture thus lent a more realistic feeling.
At one point, refining visual cohesion across all three artworks became difficult. To circumvent this, I changed the “Corporate Accountability” poster topic to “Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.” I paired this topic with an illustration of bread; the most archetypal economic right is freedom from hunger, and the most recognizable symbol for food (in the West) is bread.
As I made the final content and kerning adjustments, I made one last change to the typography: adding a black block shadow to the white display text. I came up with this by doodling on my poster as I let my mind wander.
Using Style to Communicate
My approach began mimicking stencil protest art, which helped to communicate quickly that this poster was about political advocacy. However, I had no first-hand experience with graffiti.
To mimic spray paint more convincingly, I needed to understand how spray paint behaved. Fortunately, my position as a design lab assistant allowed me to use a spray booth to test it
for myself.
An expert at the lab told me political stencil art is often done hastily — someone slashes a piece of used cardboard with whatever knife they have, throws it up on a wall, and sprays over it. We had all the tools, so that’s what I did.
I learned that cardboard stencils often create a soft edge, and that spray paint can be dry and faded or dense and drippy, depending on paint quality, distance to the wall, and time spent focusing on one spot.
There’s an emotion to it as well; a sort of hasty anger hidden beneath a rushed creativity. The way you wave the paint, the force of it coming out, and the randomness of the splatter all lend to a sense of both fun and desperation. The possibility of paint dripping adds a potential for surprise.
