Procrastintion-turned-coursework

  While creating the "misleading" posters as part of the pre-production module, I got a bit bored and ended up creating a couple of posters just for fun in Illustrator.  The theme of fruit was the same for the first poster, with the slogan "Drop Acid", which led to the second idea of "Get High" with sugary sweets.   Making something a little more tongue in cheek ended up as some work which I was actually quite happy with.  The posters could be taken either way, as a pun or as a warning to the (mild) dangers of eating too much acidy fruit or sugary sweets.   Of course I'm not going to compare either of the posters' contents to drugs, however it is widely known that sugar has been found by scientists to trigger the same response on an MRI scan that cocaine would, and is an addiction for many people because of this.  The "Get High" poster was a visual play on this particular fact.  "Drop Acid" is a little more abstract as it started out as something I made for my own entertainment.

The work I have done here has got me thinking about habits of consumption people have and how I could play on this is subsequent honours project development.  Much of my reading on brand identities and advertising has been based around consumer persuasion, or consumer preferences, all with the end goal of making people buy more, or eat more, or use more.  Post hand-ins I expect my work will start looking at ways in which this could be encouraged, or dissuaded.  The idea of the seven sins is being floated, as in today's society a lot of the sins are actually pushed and encouraged (gluttony, greed, jealousy in particular).   This theme is something that has been done to death, so if I am going to go down that route, the artwork will have to be presented in a way that conceals the true theme.  Initial thoughts are for a brand identity that promotes a habit, or conversely one that encourages the opposite.  If the message is presented in a way that people are already conditioned to believe or "give in to", then there is a wider scope to play around with this and not create something cliche d.