For this design project, I was instructed to design a poster, icon, and gif, to raise awareness about an important social, environmental, political or health related cause. I chose to center my work around sexual misconduct in the local music scene. The project involved visual research and lots of experimenting with layout, font, and logo composition.
Keep predators out of the local music scene.
Young people have been attending local music shows for decades. It can be a beautiful thing to have quick and easy access to art and music within a given community, but there is also a lot of violence that comes with these circles. Things that the local San Diego music scene is constantly struggling with are sexual assaults and predators.
Despite bands being listened to religiously at times, most groups, especially male dominated ones — which seems to be most of the music scene — shove these issues under the rug. Some of these people have such an iconic and significant public essence in their communities, and they do nothing to raise awareness about dangerous people that ruin communities and ultimately, ruin lives. Most bands tend to not remove these awful predators from their musical groups until the public forces them to, via social media scrutiny, leading to the downfall of their short-lived musical legacies.
This isn’t just a problem in San Diego or in rock music. This has been a trend ever since rock music has been born. And the root of the problem stems from inequality between men and women, but communities could keep our listeners and musicians safer if they wanted to. Bands shouldn’t be afraid to bring this conversation to the forefront, despite all the stigma and changes to public image that comes with being active about important and touchy subjects. When a community fails to protect one person, or a handful, that is affecting the entire community in certain nuanced ways, and it is hard to be fixed, but these issues should be addressed.
Rape is Not Punk!
I grabbed inspiration from the Riot Grrrl movement, zine culture, and punk concert flyers. The elements I would choose for my project were important because I was targeting a specific demographic of people, my local scene.
Logo:
My poster process was very fun and I learned a lot from it. I experimented a lot with different half-tone textures, colors, and opacities. I originally planned on giving the image a zine feel by editing it in Adobe, but then I decided to create the poster myself. I tore my icon, and cut out my letters with an X-ACTO knife. I used glue and tape to put the skeleton of my project back together, in order to give it a true, DIY look.
Final poster:
Social media gif:
app icon:
