Blog Reflection: What's My Stance Poster

Throughout the process of creating a poster, I tried using various ways to portray my stance on Donald Trump's opinion on Syrian Refugee Crisis. To create a poster, I used the Adobe Illustrator to help me show people about how I feel about this topic. To be honest, I struggle a lot when it comes to using the Adobe Illustrator because it is very different from Adobe Photoshop. 

I personally feel that my poster does portray what I want to show the audience about my thoughts about Donald Trump's approach toward the Syrian Refugee Crisis though it is not perfect. The reason why I feel that my poster does show my stance is because I made sure that text is clear and straightforward. I made my poster more simple on purpose so that way people can recognize the message immediately. Here's my final poster:

My Final Poster 

As you can see, I placed the text in a form of stairs to show the steps that Syrian Refugees had to take on their journey to several countries. The majority of Syrian Refugees experience being denied access to safe homes. Once they are denied, they have to return to their homeland that is unsafe. I purposefully have the background color to dark blue to convey the dark mood. Syrian Refugee Crisis is a sort of depressing topic but people should be aware of this topic. In addition, I used the image of Donald Trump as an authority figure so to show the audience that Donald Trump should be the President of United States because he would refuse to let refugees and immigrants come to US simply because he think that they are criminals. I also used red and yellow shapes  to make the poster pop out which also helps the audience's eyes to move throughout the poster.   

The process of re-creating my idea from paper to digital wasn't easy. I had to learn how to use Adobe Illustrator tools which is totally different from Adobe Photoshop. As I started the project, I kept going back and forth in using the tools. So I feel somewhat successful in putting my initial ideas into a digital file. 

I originally thought that I want to make a poster that has text only like my initial poster above because it is a straightforward in terms of showing the message about Syrian Refugee Crisis. However, when I see more examples of posters, I started to realize that my initial poster wasn't effective in showing the message. So I decided to change the color of the background, layout of the pictures, and add more picture so that way I can show my stance effectively. I wanted to create something that catches people's eyes and make them think about what's going on around the world today.
                                         

     My Initial Poster 

Looking over the rubric for this project, I am a bit more confident in my design rather than skills and techniques because I put a lot of thoughts into formulating a poster design. I made sure to consider the purpose of each color, shape, and image. I also made consideration on the importance of text. Like how I place texts in form of stairs, this way I can emphasize how Syrian Refugees have to face in time of crisis. I am not great with technology so it was hard for me to used to using Adobe Illustrator. 

The most challenging aspect of this poster project conceptually is figuring out how exactly am I going to show my stance through representation of images and text. In the beginning of the process, I came up with my personal views on today's society. Syrian Refugee Crisis really captures me since it happened to thousands of people living in Syria. It is not like they asked for it; they were forced to escape their homeland in fear of being victims of violence. From here, I did quite a bit of research on this topic as way for me to think about words and images that associate with it. 

The most challenging aspect of this poster project technically is implementing my ideas digitally. As I mentioned couple of times, I'm not awesome when it comes to technology. Sometimes, things don't go the way how I wanted them to be. It takes time to create a poster the exactly the way I vision them to be. I learned to create certain shapes using the tools give on Adobe Illustrator which helps a bit in enhancing my message for the audience. Not only I learned to use tools that create shapes, but also how I create paths using pen tool. These skills allow me to create better poster than before.