Tuesday 21/1/20 - Sandwich board

A set task was to create a sandwich board around a theme and issue I felt particularly passionate about. I had an immediate idea in my head, since my focus is the idea of mental health, the media and huge world issues relating to them (climate change etc) I thought of a phrase. Inspired by the song by the band Muse (called Propaganda) I took a line from the lyrics, the phrase "Keep telling pretty lies". This really felt relevant to me as my propaganda is almost trying to be anti-propaganda and it relates to the issues such as the stigma of mental health.

First I created a mockup on my phone, just a basic and minimal design. I used the colour red inspired by the cold war posters as it is a very bold and eye catching colour.

I liked how this turned out but when it came to the actual sandwich board I went for something different. I moved away from the clean professional approach as I use this all too often, instead I strived for a messier and more chaotic look that still kept some aspects of this mockup.

I printed out the black text "Keep telling pretty lies" with one word per A4 sheet and stuck it onto the board. I then used a red marker pen to add a messy outline on two sides of each letter, this was to lightly mimic the red on my previous design but make it look hastily made. To add to this I then printed out a few copies of an A4 sheet covered in the word "lies", I quite literally wrote down a lot of lies. The board was covered with these sheets at different angles with cuts to add a sense of a homemade style. It gave the impression that I just layered multiple sheets on top of each other.

This was the finished product:

One other alternate design would be to cover the entire background in "lies" however this was more difficult to actually create. I would likely need to print out the background first then manually draw on the text or spray it on with a stencil.

This is a mockup of the idea:

I also had the opportunity to be photographed with my sandwich board whilst in front of a green screen. This was to give us a chance to learn how to edit backdrops using green screen however in all honesty I preferred the original photos without editing. They felt too out of place, if I had better editing skills in terms of photoshop I would likely use this in future. But for now I will use physical backdrops for any shoots I do.