Social Action - Thumbnails

This assignment was all about creating a poster with some sort of social action message (peace, environment, sexism, etc.). We could use any colors we needed the only other requirement was that it needed to be at least 8.5" x 14". As I mentioned in the thumbnail section of the photo collage project, I have a certain fascination and interest in nuclear weapons and disarmament. I decided that would be the basis for my thumbnails.

We had to make 20 thumbnail sketches for this project and I think I came up with some good ones for the most part. After looking over them with Adrienne, I picked out three to continue working with. The first was an image of a bomb, except that the warhead was the dome from Capitol Hill. I wanted to make a connection about how these actions are put in motion, and who are responsible for the decisions to go to war and bomb populations. This was supposed to be focused on nuclear weapons in particular, so I used a photo of Little Boy as the body of the image. Adrienne also suggested making a later design (plain type with the words "NOCLEAR WEAPONS") a sort of letter mark in order to make a stronger connection with atomic weapons.

The next design was really kind of simple. When I put it down I didn't really expect to use it but Adrienne thought it had potential and after discussing it I agreed. It was simply an image of an hourglass with the word "disarm" underneath it. In the thumbnail I had meant the two bulbs of the hourglass to be made out of warheads. After deciding to work on this idea further, I decided to make it more of a general figure rather than trying to make too many specific references.

My final thumbnail was another one I put down without much thought. The idea was to use the image of a risk board, with lines charting out the paths of missiles, and then having an ominous message at the bottom. I was surprised at how much Adrienne liked this design. Once again, talking with her made me see more potential in this image when I first thought of it. The idea that the game is Risk, and that in games someone is always the loser, both have multiple connections with the message I wanted to get across. I want to point out how foolish it is that we have more than enough nuclear weaponry to destroy most of civilization, not including the effects of fallout and radiation.

All three of these design have potential and I'm in the unfamiliar situation of liking them all. I'll just have to see how the roughs turn out.