Strangely a lot of people I have spoken to thought that the word "men" in that quote made the idea of equality irrelevant. I guess I should clear that up. The line is most commonly attributed to Thomas Jefferson and his involvement in the Declaration of Independence; however the phrase has been used many times beforehand. It is suggested he 'borrowed' it from his Italian friend Philip Mazzei. Regardless of the history, the idea of "all MEN are created equal" refers to men not as a gender, but as a race; mankind.
Before landing at this final concept I also thought about the following quite seriously:
- A variation of a shop window "We're Open/Closed" sign relating to Tony Abbott's stance on "Boat People".
- Faces of Tony Abbott and Clive Palmer crossed out to support the need for a Labour government in Australia.
- An infographic related design
- A message for the idea of government being a voice of the people, not a personal infliction.
Here are some resources I used (there aren't really many):
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_men_are_created_equal
- http://australia.gov.au/directories/contact-parliament
- www.avantcard.com.au
Finally, where I landed in the end... The idea of implementing photo montage seemed a bit hard/irrelevant to most of my other ideas. The other strong contender for the final result was the one about a need for Labour government in Australia, but when I thought of this I was already set to work on the current design so I decided to stick with it.
The idea of the card is something people can pick up and read. It gives them a chance to think. From there they can write their own message and send it to their local MP to show their support.
I thought about a lot of ways to show the diversity between every day people. The most accessible in a controlled environment was of course, my peers. I thought about doing the portraits with a polaroid camera, but that would have cost me about $40 in film and every shot used/taken would have cost around $2. It also bought up the issue of whitespace for the polaroid frames. Despite it being a cool idea I don't think it really added anything to the concept or design so out came my trusty 7D and I persuaded some people at RMIT to let me take their photo.
I consciously tried to keep my design minimal. I used one typeface and two weights (apart from the quotation marks). This was to support the idea of equality. I tried to make everything uniform but still slightly unique. All the photos were taken really quickly to make them look more authentic instead of some kind of generic set of people you couldn't tell apart.
The colour was something I just had as an idea in my head. I'm not really sure why and I can't fasely justify it too much, but it worked with the colour of the pin board in the classroom aka my DIY backdrop so that helped me out.
The back of the card is something relatively simple. There isn't too much room to work with and form certainly follows function. I kept in theme with the front of the card and allocated all the required spaces for the message, address and stamp. I included a website reference which lets you find the contact details of politicians and it can be filtered by postcode etc so you can find the contact for your local MP to send them the card.
Here is the final result:
A big thank-you to everyone who let me take their photo, I appreciate it a lot.
