Week 4 Monday 7/08/2017

Today I continued trying out different concepts and styles of using Barbie. These are some more ideas I have been trying out. I have been trying to see how text and image can work together to creat a powerful visual.

Week 3 Thursday 3/08/2017

Today we clarified our aim, concept and strategies. My aim is to highlight the issue of domestic violence in New Zealand. Initially, I thought my concept was the "domestic dream house" which is about the perfect women and the perfect life being projected on the outside but in reality, at home, there is domestic violence hidden. I had Barbie, a NZ dream poster, barbie and ken house and shoes as my strategies. Now I think I am focusing on using Barbie as my actual concept as she represents the perfect life everyone wants to have. My strategies will be to use her in the box as pastiche, her out of context as subversion, her feet/shoes as subversion and maybe the Barbie logo as pastiche. I am still developing different ideas of how I can use Barbie. These are the posters I have been testing out.

Week 2 Thursday 27/07/2017

Today we focused on creating concepts and ideas for our posters. I used Barbie in a lot of my concepts because she is a good metaphor for domestic violence. There's a lot of phrases that help create a message about women being toys. I can also use pastiche to reference Barbie packaging or advertising. Some other concepts I came up with is using the Princess as a metaphor,  the famous blue and black, white and gold dress and some jail scenes. 

Week 2 Monday 24/07/2017

Today in class, we got given a word or saying and we had to combine this with our chosen topic to create some ideas. My topic is gender inequality. I got given the words: Fireman, weasel, and roll out the red carpet. This exercise was very helpful to get the imagination working and discover how different subject matter can be used to portray the same ideas about gender inequality. These are the ideas I came up with.

For homework, I have done some more research about statistics that could be used in my posters. I am still undecided which path I want to go down so I have been researching all of them. 

Abortion:

• In New Zealand the law says it is legal to have an abortion if two certifying consultants (doctors) agree that continuing the pregnancy would result in serious danger to a woman’s mental or physical health. 
• Each year, an estimated 22 million women and girls have an unsafe abortion, almost all in the developing world. As a result, 47,000 lose their lives and millions more suffer serious injury. 
• 12,823 abortions were performed in New Zealand in 2016.
• 57 percent of abortions were performed before the 10th week of the pregnancy in 2016.
• Most abortions (64 percent) were a woman's first abortion in 2016.
• Women aged 20–24 years had the highest abortion rate in 2016.

Sexual abuse:

• The 2006 Crime and Safety Survey found that approximately 29 percent of women and 9 percent of men experience unwanted and distressing sexual contact over their lifetime. Sexual offences were the fifth most common offence disclosed in the survey.
• indicate 99% of adult sexual violence is perpetrated by men. 
• 20% of girls and 9% of boys in New Zealand report unwanted sexual touching or being forced to do sexual things.

Domestic Violence:

• 76% of family violence incidents are NOT reported to Police. 
• an average of 12 women and 4 men a year were killed in the context of Intimate Partner Violence
• 1 in 3 women experience physical and/or sexual violence from a partner in their lifetime. 
• New Zealand has the worst rate of family and intimate-partner violence in the world. A shocking 80 per cent of incidents go unreported
•  On average 13 women and 10 men are killed each year as a result of family violence.
• Kids are present at two thirds of these incidents.
• On average, police attend a family violence incident every five and a half minutes - that's 279 calls each day
• 14% of young people report being hit or physically harmed on purpose by an adult at home in the last 12 months. 
• A child is admitted to a New Zealand hospital every second day with injuries arising from either assault, neglect or maltreatment
• Every year an average of 10 to 14 children were victims of homicide
• On average one child is killed every 5 weeks.
• Ninety percent of all child deaths are perpetrated by someone the child knew.

I have also started to think of some quotes and phrases that would be incorporated into my poster as a tagline. 

Domestic Violence 

Actions speak louder than words

How many second chances has he had?

Abuse is not love, it's about control

When did he stop treating you like a queen/princess/ royalty

Every rose has its thorns

Not all secrets are worth keeping

Don’t be blinded by love

Love should not hurt

Make him a one hit wonder

The scars you can't see are the hardest to heal

If he loves you why did he hurt you?

“It won't happen again,” he said last time

She's not your puppet

I'm, not a doll, stop playing with me

There's no place like home

Sexual abuse

It's not the clothes its the mind set

Abortion
If you can't trust me with a choice how can you trust me with a child

Analysis of Precedents:

Week 1 Monday 17/07/2017

Understand: 

Today we went through the brief so that we are clear on the requirements of this project. We then did a group exercise that involved identifying the Ihi and Wehi components of a set of images. This was very helpful to gain a deeper understanding of the two concepts Ihi and Wehi. It was helpful to determine how the designer has used rhetoric and other characteristics to create feelings and emotional responses in the viewer. Looking at these images will be helpful when I create my own posters as I can see which techniques were successful. 


Below are the answers my group thought of. 

For homework, I have been researching artist models and posters about inequality. I have also done a brainstorm of all the inequalities in New Zealand. I am still undecided which path I want to take at this stage. 
                             
I have also included my 3 image observations of Ihi and Wehi that I did for homework using the exercise template we did in class.

I also did the recommended reading by Maz Rashbrooke, The Inequality Debate: an Introduction. And I have written down some key comments he made in his book that could be useful for this assignment. 

•       Rising income inequality in many developed nations is a source of growing international concern. Large income disparities pose serious economic, political and social risks, and raise acute ethical challenges.
• ·         The diverse range of contributors reflects the complex shape of income inequality in New Zealand, spanning education, housing, crime, welfare, work, international contexts and the experiences of Māori and Pacific peoples.
• ·         ‘Behind the statistics are real people who are to varying degrees experiencing the stressful and demoralising exclusion from ordinary life that financial strictures and moral hardship bring.’
• ·         how income inequality affects people across the country; and what the consequences might be if this divergence persists. Woven into this story are many kinds of inequality: of opportunity, of status, of rights, of participation.
• ·         ‘we have to raise poverty, to understand that poverty has direct impacts on society, not simply because we pay for it but because we will keep paying for it over time. Deep poverty is not a temporary event.’ 10 This deep poverty has long been a crisis for New Zealand,
• ·         Continuing structural discrimination in public services means Māori are less likely to be treated for similar health conditions even when they have the same need as Pākehā.
• ·         Income inequality is also apparent when comparing the incomes of women and men in New Zealand. Over the second half of the twentieth century, the average income for all women (including those not in paid work) as a percentage of men’s increased from around 20 per cent in 1951 to around 60 per cent in 1991 – but has stalled at that level ever since. 29 There are complex reasons for this disparity. While the number of women in paid work has increased, the care of children and other family responsibilities take women (more often than men) out of the paid workforce for long periods. This affects women’s incomes in a number of ways over time. Women also do significantly larger amounts of unpaid domestic work than men, as Marilyn Waring set out so plainly in Counting for Nothing.
• ·         Because of the constraints of childcare and interruptions to their career, many women are forced to accept part-time, low-paid or low-status work.
• ·         Low-decile schools report many children coming to school without being properly fed, or without adequate clothes – again, because their parents, even when working, don’t earn enough to pay for these basic necessities.
• ·         The argument for reducing differences (in this case, for reducing income inequality) has strong ethical foundations, grounded in the idea that all human beings ‘are equal in some fundamental respect’, as Jonathan Boston outlines in his contribution to Inequality . People’s ability ‘to participate fully in their society and enjoy a sense of belonging’ is especially important. While people have a responsibility to contribute to society, they also have a right to share in the rewards of the society that they have helped create.
• ·         Social mobility does not reduce the number of people in poverty if pay rates remain low: as people move ‘up the ladder’, others will simply take their places in poorly paid jobs.
• ·         Focusing only on equality of opportunities also overlooks the fact that we cannot separate opportunity from income. When people have hugely different incomes, they have different opportunities – and these differences can persist through generations. Children from high-income families typically go to better-equipped schools than children from low-income families. 70 Geographic differences can define opportunities since communities with concentrated disadvantage often lack good healthcare facilities, access to affordable and healthy food, and well-supported schools.
• ·         If people’s incomes were a fair reflection of their worth (however measured) and the result of decisions they had made, income gaps could be seen as simply right and natural.
• ·         While it could be argued that some income gaps are justified on the basis of extra hard work, there is little evidence that people on lower incomes work less hard than those at higher levels.
• ·         And to take a very different social constraint, much of the work mentioned in this book is undervalued simply because it has traditionally been carried out by women.
• ·         A growing body of evidence demonstrates that unequal societies are less functional, less cohesive and less economically sound than their more equal counterparts – and that these weaknesses are felt widely.
• ·         more equal societies are likely to have more social cohesion – people feel they have more in common with each other, and are more trusting.
• ·         $76,000. 1 Anyone earning above that is richer than 90 per cent of the country.
• ·         A single person household disposable income in this group of $12,000 a year in 1984 has risen to just $14,000 a year in 2013. And if housing costs are deducted from those figures, these households actually have less money to spend than they did in the mid 1980s.
• ·         The word ‘fairness’ has many inflections, and it is telling that a key phrase in New Zealand’s history has not been ‘a fair society’, which might imply something about equality of incomes, but a ‘fair go’, which hints at being given a chance – and then being left to get on with it.
• ·         Rather than reduce income gaps directly, the current government appears to be focused on equalising opportunities