The subject I chose was LGBTQ+ discrimination. Although
LGBTQ people have legal equality in most ways, there is still a lot of casual
(and dangerous) homophobia and transphobia in our society. True equality would
mean that there is none of this. I focused on the emotional damage that verbal discrimination
and microagressions cause. My aim was to make people who say things like ‘that’s
so gay’ realise that it can be very harmful.
I showed the emotional impact of this with scale and colour,
by portraying these phrases as a dark mass of attacking magpies cornering or
surrounding the small, vulnerable LGBTQ birds. I used birds to make it New Zealand
specific, and because birds can represent freedom (when alone), but also a
violent swarm en masse. I used traditional ink drawings of the birds and words
to create a scratchy, aggressive feel. The black splatters on the version with negative
space have connotations of graffiti, or even blood splatters, which can both be
violent. Colour is also an important part of both designs – the only colour in
each design is the birds, which are brightly coloured in Pride flag colours,
and create the main focal point. The rest of the image is black and white, the
harsh contrast is aggressive and antagonistic.
The headline “They’re just words” is a contradiction to the
visual aspects of the poster, therefore it becomes another part of the
discrimination – those who say that discriminatory language doesn’t cause any
damage are just adding to it. The headline in the other poster is a more
complimentary headline, which emphasises the effect that it has on LGBTQ
people. These both, combined with the image of the small cute birds being
attacked, appeal to the viewer’s emotional response (pathos), and the tagline
on the second also adds a statistic about suicide as a logical means to
persuade the viewer.
I have both a physical workbook, and a digital workblog here: http://layamrihiwehiworkblog.blogspot.co.nz/