POLITICAL POSTER DESIGN 2023
The task was to design two persuasive posters that employed visual rhetoric to communicate a standpoint on a societal issue and encourage people to vote. The rhetorical solution must convey critical themes of the problem conceptually and visually engagingly.
Poster 1:
The Wehi of fear, anger and disgust in this poster is created by grotesque imagery, red drawing and rugged typography. To evoke a feeling of repulsion, I intentionally depicted the landlord as highly unattractive, using a mask resembling a deformed man. Through this approach, I effectively created a frightening depiction that evokes disgust while retaining the human form to signify the character as a landlord. The stylistic approach of sketching over an image in coarse red helps to highlight the drawing whilst evoking fear due to the associations of red with blood and cults, reminiscent of the devilish motif. The poster's heading portrays desperation as it mirrors the hurried handwriting of someone in distress, capturing the urgency and fear that often accompanies a plea for help.
Poster 2:
The Wehi of confrontation and shock is conveyed through merging the gun and key, as New Zealanders are not accustomed to firearms. The use of torn paper in the shape of a bullet hole rips back the shocking statistic, helping to emphasise the importance of this unsettling topic. The contrast of the red background on the blue image helps to highlight the merging gun and key, making it visually shocking. The varying hues of blue layered atop the graphically stylised image of the gun and key generate a deliberate juxtaposition between these two objects. This contrast emphasises the disparity that ideally shouldn’t coexist, yet in this metaphor, they do, intentionally amplifying the extent to which funding for housing has become a pressing issue. The bold text helps the metaphor sink in and creates a visual hierarchy that flows from the top of the gun to the bottom, tying the whole poster together.