Over the past few days,

I am working on the publicity for my event and thinking more about presentation. As a graphic designer, one of my favorite parts of any project is designing or publicizing my event. I started drafting a poster idea last Wednesday that was kind of like a collage. I found royalty free photos on the internet that I wanted to turn into a story about this issue. I had a photo of gazelles running in Africa to represent   a sense of freedom or beauty but at the same time show their vulnerability. There was going to be a photo of an African baby, showing the impact that this legislation will have on future generations and also the hope that there is for the country still. The baby also alludes to the number one argument fueling this inflammatory hate speech; protect our families and protect our children. There were going to be a photo of a man and a woman who look both hopeful and destitute. I found a really cool photo of a man performing some sort of tribal ritual in which he breathes fire and I wanted to use that imagery to represent both the fire of the protestors who rose against the bill and to show how Uganda is adding to the fire that is homophobia. I wanted to use a photo of the Washington monument in the backdrop to symbolize how America is behind this catastrophe in some ways. I want people to see how this issue is an American issue so that we can't ignore it. Lastly, I wanted to put a royaltied photo of David Bahati on the poster because I want everyone to be able to recognize his face. I want Bahati to be more famous than he already is so that when the next member of parliament or congressperson comes around and tries to do the same thing as Bahati, we will be able to recognize their actions and stop them from ever succeeding as much as he did.

This all sounded good in theory, yes? Well, honestly put, the photos just didn't go well together. Even if the idea was good, I just couldn't turn in something that wasn't executed in an eye-appealing manner. Instead, I used three strong images, the baby, the woman, and the man, to become focal point of my poster. They all look off into different areas for a reason; it shows the polarity that exists in the world when it comes to this issue and is a reflection of how as Americans we have refused to confront it and look it straight in the eye. I used all black and white because I find it ironic to talk about LGBT issues and not use full color (like the rainbow flag). It also shows the seriousness of this topic and contrast can symbolize many things to different people. To me, black and white contrast makes me think of us vs. them behavior and closed-mindedness, two concepts I think apply to this issue very well. The barbed wire acts as a separator for the page mostly because the imagery needed to be broken up but also because it is a pretty universal symbol of oppression or danger. The most eye-catching part of the poster is the text "Kill the Bill" which was done in an army sort of font. The title was intended to be an allusion to Quentin Tarentino's Kill Bill which is why I used a skinny, sans-serif font to mimic the movies look. From just looking at the poster, I don't think there'd be anyway that someone would guess
from the poster that this is about an LGBT issue which is what I wanted. I wanted it that way because underneath it all, these are not LGBT issues, these are human issues.

I always find a deeper understanding for my topic when I make a poster for it. I think images are really important in telling ones story. I need to have good images behind me as I'm talking about this problem because numbers and statistics are too abstract for the average person. The saying is true that a picture is worth a thousand words so I feel that it is one of the most important objective was to collect compelling visuals that told me a story so that I could share those stories with others.