OUGD401 - Study Task 07 - Developments to Solution One

It was decided to take this first prototype solution forward and develop towards a final outcome. One piece of feedback gained from pitching this idea was that the imagery was not very clear and impactful. It was felt that the use of line-art meant the imagery sunk into the background, and so failed to convey the appropriate message. This piece of feedback was taken into consideration and developed so that more colour was incorporated into the design.
Experimentation with colour started by using the same shade of yellow used for the outline of the LEGO blocks to fill them in and using these against the same green background to keep the themes of gender-neutral colours. However, because of the simplicity of the bar graphs this meant it was not instantly clear which column symbolised males and females. Based on this, it was decided to create a contrast with the gender-neutral theme and ‘label’ the columns using the stereotypical colours for boys and girls as pink and blue. Because this colour stereotype is universally known, it would be clear for the audience to identify the message being conveyed in the graphs. The contrast between these colour labels and the message of the advertisements would mean that the audience would potentially enage more with the message and show the impact of such stereotypes through the fact the columns are not labelled through text but colour and the audience still knows what they mean, because of these universal stereotypes.

Further developments in this prototype looked at adding text based on research and the statistics conveyed within the imagery to make the overall message clearer. However, this created another problem in that the text did not stand out enough against the original green background. The background colour was therefore changed to a pale shade of yellow. It was felt this worked better in the composition of the advertisement, as it did not overpower the imagery and text, whilst keeping the originally intended links to gender-neutrality.

Although LEGO bricks a suitable universal and well-known brand of children’s toy, it was felt that this did not have a direct link to one set of information. Therefore, the posters were developed into a series through the addition of illustrated books to produce similar bar graphs that better linked to the piece of research which showed that out of 25 books, 21 showed images of women wearing aprons or in domestic roles.