Subject Object - Poster Ideas

MY INTENTION:

 To bring awareness to and persuade people to stop supporting the use of wild animals in circuses.

I started by doing a few simple Google searches on circuses and animals. Then I watched a bit of Dumbo and Water for elephants to make sketches. I made a few quick sketches of ideas in my sketchbook to get a sense of what kind of shapes and colours I'd need for my posters.

I found Joh and Nic's poster making workshop really helpful. Sometimes an idea that doesn't make sense in your head works well when its in front of you visually.

I went out to purchase some coloured paper and card then started to sketch out and cut shapes relevant to circuses, animals and the cruelty that takes place in training these animals.

This was my first poster. I wasn't thinking much about the typography but started by focusing on the image shown. I like this poster but feel that its slightly cliche. 

This next poster particularly gets to me as its a photo of my pet cat. I feel that this works because its more personal and therefore makes the poster stronger and more direct. People are used to seeing bears dressed in tutus dancing with hoops in circuses but its only when they see an animal they consider a pet that they make the connection.

Initially for this poster, I was going to have a puppet drawing of a human or a child. Ideally, the shape of the poster would be of a circus tent, drawn back to reveal the monkey (or child) with an audience in the front. Though, I like this idea, I can't visualise how I'd go about it. I might do a few more sketches and examples using this as inspo.

This is the poster I least like. I feel that even if the drawing of the bear and the cage were better, its a poster that I personally wouldn't look at twice because its been done before. I don't really think the colour of the background works.

I love the way this turned out. I used the same idea that I did in the typography workshop last week. I cut out individual letters and stuck them on to paper then inked on top and peeled the letters back. I love the marks and textures that naturally occurred with my sponge and roller.

I wanted to make a poster that focused more on typography than a drawing and wanted to create something more simple, direct and dark.

The letter 'I' on the word 'CIRCUS' is of an elephants leg, chained as it would be at the circus behind closed doors. I'll definitely be experimenting more with this one. I might experiment with typefaces, scan things in and maybe try making a digital version. I also think using a printmaking method might look nice.

This was one of my very first ideas. I like this but don't think it would work as a poster. Even though it has a sarcastic but powerful message once read, a poster is supposed to grab the viewers attention immediately and a ticket just wouldn't. I'd love to design this digitally and play around with colour and fonts.

This is another poster idea that I really love, however, I dont really like the colours I've used and the way I've gone about making this poster. Again, I may play around with this digitally and use shapes and block colours without any details to make a minimal but powerful image.

Again, I feel that this would also work well with a simple black and white lino as I feel that the detail is needed to portray the emotions of the mother and baby elephant being separated.