Studio Brief 4 - Poster Development | OUGD403

I have been struggling with coming up with ideas for my posters and deciding which area of transplantation to focus on. In terms of dead heart transplants themselves, I have come up with virtually no ideas. So I feel that I would rather focus on organ donation in general and encouraging people to become donors. I am considering these themes

-Lack of education with organ donation

-Encouraging opt-out scheme

-Encouraging organ donation in general

-Tackling laziness when it comes to signing up

-Myths/Lies about organ donation e.g. we won't take your organs while you are still alive

-A focus on the lack of time/the frustration of waiting

-General interesting statistics I have come across to encourage signing up

I have thought of limited ideas so far, I have begun to explore an idea that I felt was my strongest. This involved using the 3 posters together to encourage organ donation. Two posters would contain illustrations of organs, one of which would be alive and working with plants flowing out of the tubes. I found this plant idea from my research and I feel it represents new life well. Along with this heart would be the simple words "thank you". This poster represents a scenario where an organ has been donated and a person has survived as a result.  The other poster would have a much darker colour scheme, no text and an illustration of a 'dead heart'. This would represent an person not signing up and leaving their organs to decay, only death is seen in this situation. Central to these posters would be my text only poster. I am unsure as to what I would like to write but I feel it needs to be able to make the meaning of the posters either side clear. Below I have begun to explore this idea...

I used the pencil tool on illustrator to trace a human heart. I then began to add details including plants and flowers to symbolise the new life that had been given. My first attempt of writing thank you turned out quite childish, but I like how this could represent the heart going to a child, or perhaps the positive emotions of the situation making writing difficult. I opted for a colour scheme using pink/purple tones as this is often associated with organs. Out of personal style I chose pastel tones but I feel this adds a softness to the image which reflects the thankfulness felt by the person. 

Here is my central, text only poster. I have never really used helvetica before but upon hearing its positive reviews I thought It might be appropriate to get a clear point across. One student commented that this looked too much like the "three" adverts, this had already crossed my mind. One of the statistics that hit me was the fact that 3 people die everyday just because there aren't enough organs. I had trouble wording this for the poster. I wanted to tie the two sentences together with the element of time. Time runs out for people waiting for organs, yet registering is so quick. 

I feel this poster really needs work but it was created quickly so that I could visualise my idea. It was created using the same technique as my first heart illustration. A darker colour seemed more appropriate to symbolise death. Black seemed too harsh, so I tried a purple to tie in with the colours of the other illustration. 

I feel that the images work well together as a 3. I want to explore a number of phrases for the central poster to see what can communicate the message the best.
I came up with the idea of giving viewer a choice, like a questionnaire. Each poster represents the realities of their choice.
I decided to use another fact about organ donation I found interesting as a potential answer. The fact that one body can save up to 10 lives. The other option is to leave your organs to rot in the ground.  I was unsure as how to word the second option in a way which got the point across but didn't sound disgusting! There seemed to be too much text going on and I really wanted to get a point across quickly. I chose to have the 'better option' in a brighter colour to represent the celebration of this choice.

When I tried this poster with the set, it looked okay but something wasn't working like the last textual poster. 

 I then thought of a way of phrasing the question without directly mentioning organs. "Would you like the chance the save up to 10 lives? Yes or No? Who would really say no to that question? Again, either side of this poster represents the consequences of their answer. I'm unsure whether the message is clear straight away, so I may need to mention organ donation in a smaller typeface at the base of the poster. This will work in a similar way to the posters I previously researched which trigger you to read the smaller print.

A screenshot from illustrator with my alternative poster off the art board.