Assignment 4: Post It

For Assignment 4, we were asked to make a poster with the theme of saving/protecting/preventing something. I decided to do something green, because it's one of the issues that I personally contend with. On one hand, I realize the imminent need to start taking care of the environment before it wreaks chaos and havoc on all of humanity. On the other hand, I am constantly frustrated by big corporations riding the green wave and appealing to consumers' environmental consciousness to make a profit, but never really changing their environmentally harmful ways.

So what better way to tackle my cynicism than head on right? I decided to do something on disposable coffee cups because it poses an ethical dilemma of sorts. On one hand, the coffee industry is a billion-dollar-a-year industry that aids a lot of third world countries through export profits and technology transfer. A lot of coffee farmers benefit from this as coffee is a relatively easy crop to grow, there is such a high demand for it and more and more coffee companies are paying fair trade prices for quality coffee. On the other hand, there is the issue of the environmental impact of the industry, particularly disposable coffee cups. So I realized that there is a need for a practical solution, which is not to discourage people from drinking coffee (because that would be both stupid and impossible), but rather discourage them from using disposable cups.

In terms of design, I wanted to make a poster that directly addressed the reader and call attention to the possible consequences of his/her seemingly harmless caffeine habit. I find that posters are normally too impersonal and generic, so the idea is to catch people's attention by changing the tone of my poster from an authoritative one, i.e SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT OR YOU DIE!!!, to a friendlier, more familiar one, i.e. Hey buddy, got a second? I just need to tell you about something. So here's the first draft:



I wasn't completely happy with how it turned out, but since I did it in such a rush, it had to do for the time being. The class suggested a clearer contrast between my invitation and the hard facts through type size or face, but they did like my coffee cup. One of my classmates, who's incidentally a coffee addict and an avid user of disposable cups, thought the coffee cup was very enticing. So I figured, hey, why not go with that, lure the reader in then give him the hard facts. I tried again, and here's what I came up with:



I streamlined the poster more and decided to use the words to form images instead. I went with my classmates' suggestion of creating hierarchy using type face, type size and type color differences. For this artwork, I was trying to call attention to the fact that everything has two sides to it and so we have to learn how to read the fine print, so to speak. From afar, it looks like a really enticing and inviting coffee cup, with friendly messages on it. This is meant to symbolize the selling point of most coffee chains these days, which is to create an atmosphere of home and friendship within their shops. When the reader gets closer, however, he is able to see that the coffee cup is actually made of sentences - of the bad, hard facts - hopefully encouraging him to read on. This is a throwback to the idea that beneath coffee shops' cozy and friendly exterior, beneath it lies the ugly fact that the coffee industry's use of disposable paper cups is seriously harming the environment. The ultimate goal is to make the reader think twice about his everyday choices and realize that their actions have farther-reaching consequences than they realize. Did it make YOU think? Let me know!