Evaluation
For this project, I have produced a website and two posters for my campaign called 'Women's Ethnic Minority Union'. The main purpose of my campaign is to challenge racial, sexist and religion intolerance attitudes towards women in the workforce. I want to raise awareness on this topic and bring to peoples' attention to the fact that a lot of women from ethnic and religious backgrounds do not get employed even though they are qualified. Some religions have items of clothing that have religious significance meaning that people will recognize the religion of certain people that wear the items of clothing like a turban. Religions like Christianity aren't affected as much because people don't typically wear certain items of clothing with religious significance. Religions like Islam, Judaism, Sikhism etc are more affected especially women.
One of the campaigns that I took inspiration from is the 'Women for Women' campaign. I applied some of its design elements to my website and logo campaign. For example, on
their website, they use pictures that are the size of banners and add text written in white font on the image. I used this design element on my website because I find it effective as it catches the eye. The other campaign that I analysed is 'UN Women'. I also used its design elements from their website on my own website. An example of this, it the banner and menu on their page. I liked how they placed the menu bar horizontally and below the logo. I felt that it best suited my website design.
My main source of research was online via Google. I read articles and graphs to give me the findings of my statistics and to learn more about my chosen topic. This form of research was sufficient and helpful because I applied it to my products. I wrote the facts on the circle on the posters. However, I didn't use any of the facts on my website, and I think that if I had made drafts for my website, I would have remembered to add the facts and I would have received feedback on it. One of the points of the feedback that I would have most likely received for the website would have been to add facts and statistics. I was inspired to add a box or multiple boxes filled with straightforward statistics and also facts on the website by the 'Women for Women' website. Through my findings in the research, I realised that the unemployment rate for women of ethnic and religious backgrounds has actually decreased throughout the years. This is great news and I wanted to keep raising awareness and making sure that the rate keeps going down every year. However, my fault in this is that I chose the topic before doing some initial research. If I had done thorough research before finalising my idea and presenting it during the Pecha Kucha, then I would have noted that the numbers have gone down and that this topic isn't as big of an issue in society as it used to be, meaning I could have chosen another topic. Nonetheless, there is no harm in producing a campaign to raise awareness in order to help decrease the numbers as I have done for this project.
For my primary research, I conducted a focus group. I also received feedback from my classmates on my logo and from my teacher for my posters. It was the first time that I had conducted a focus group and I found it to be very helpful and reliable. The members of the focus group gave me critical feedback and suggestions. Additionally, they told me what they liked about the posters. It was better than conducting a questionnaire or interview because receiving the feedback via a focus group is quicker than a questionnaire. Furthermore, for a questionnaire, I would need a lot of people to fill it in to get a valid representation of my target audience. I think that I should have had more members in the group, maybe six people as I only had three people. They were of different ages and of my target audience demographic because they were of ethnic minority backgrounds; two were Arab and one was Mongolian. However, I needed someone in their 50s, because I had people of relatively similar age groups; 18, 28 and 37. This is because people also get employed around their 50s, and a woman of ethnic or religious background I just needed one more person, perhaps in their 50s. I will most likely conduct many focus groups in the future. This project has taught me to get a bigger group and have people of different age ranges to be more representative of my target audience. Preferably, I would have had 1 male and 1 female of the age 18-20, 1 male and 1 female of the age of 25-30 and 1 male and 1 female of the age of 30-50. Altogether, 6 people.
I believe that I should have had a variety of sources for my research. For example, I could have visited museums/exhibitions, read books, analysed websites in more depth and I could have conducted multiple focus groups and even a survey.
To present my campaign, I was planning to make around three posters in different formats such as a billboard, a bus stop shelter with its poster ratio etc. However, I didn't get to do that because I didn't spend enough time on the products and more time on making the drafts. Nonetheless, the process of designing the drafts allowed me to explore a variety of styles of design when using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. In fact, the main reason that I chose to do print media for this project, was to improve and explore my graphic design skills. However, I also chose to make online and print media because I believe that they go well together when making a campaign. A short video on the website would have been a good addition to my campaign, but as I mentioned earlier, I wanted to develop my skills in the area that I'm not quite used to and that area is Graphic Design. The purpose of the posters is to make them effective and to represent the message of my campaign clearly to my target audience. I wanted to use photographs of women that are effective and powerful. I wanted them to make my target audience feel sympathetic. I asked the women in the posters to portray certain facial expressions to display the emotions of sadness, seriousness and feelings of anger and just generally looking upset.
I feel like the poster with the black woman is better than the poster of the woman that is wearing a headscarf. The reason is that the text box circle has more text and is less straightforward than the one of the black woman. Nevertheless, I do communicate what I'm asking my audience to do. This is shown on the text on both of the posters that starts with "Support our work to end racial inequality in the workforce. Visit our website, sign petitions."
Out of the three products, I like the website the most. The only problem that I faced with it, is that the background colour in some parts of each page isn't shown on every screen monitor. The colour is light purple, but on the Mac computer where I created the website, the colour was visible and it complimented the elements of purple throughout the website. However, on other monitors, it isn't obvious and looks Off-White. To change this outcome, I should have researched how to use Adobe Muse correctly.
For the images on the website, I used copyright images from Creative Commons Flickr. However, after finishing the website, I noticed that one of the images require credit to be given to the person that the photograph belongs to, meaning I had to put the person's name in a corner in small font size.
During this project, I feel that I spent a lot of time drafting the posters and experimenting with the different styles to the point that I haven't posted all of the experimentation since I haven't posted them all and I deleted a couple of them. However, I only spent like four hours creating the posters, but I didn't do them both in one day which I feel that I should have to allow me to have more time to create the website since I hadn't spent any time drafting the website. I made probably four to six changes to the website, but I didn't post it on my Blogger because I didn't take a screenshot. I've learnt to manage my time spent on certain products better.
I mentioned earlier that the website has been the product that I prefer visually. However, more time and effort was spent on making the posters, especially the drafting process. Overall, I believe that the most successful part of my campaign is my logo design and the poster with the black woman in it because I took a picture with the lighting that I prefer, so I didn't need to adjust the photograph like I had to with the poster of the woman wearing the hijab. Additionally, I think that her hair on the left side brings the attention of the viewer down to the text in the circle, then to the text next to it on the banner/footer. The shadow on the left side of her face brings the attention to the right side of her face and highlights the whites of her eyes.
I think that the campaign is cohesive because the products hold together. This is shown on my posters and mostly on my website. For instance, I used a colour palette that resonates with the campaign logo. I used most of the colour of the logo on the header of the website on each page, and for the menu bar, I incorporated the purple colour from the nail polish on one of the hands on the logo. Additionally, I learnt to change the shades of purple depending on which page the viewer is on. I made it slightly darker when they're on the page, and slightly lighter during the rollover mouse. For the posters, the typeface for the text is the same on both posters and purple is included in the poster of the woman wearing a headscarf, but not on the poster of the black woman. I feel that it would have been better to use purple instead of pink to make follow the colour scheme, but to be honest, I like pink and it is a feminine colour. Additionally, the logo is also displayed in the top left corner. If it were placed on the right top corner, my product would be aimed at people that speak and read the Arabic language because the text starts from the right side in Arabic. However, my target audience includes English speaking people.
One of the campaigns that I took inspiration from is the 'Women for Women' campaign. I applied some of its design elements to my website and logo campaign. For example, on
their website, they use pictures that are the size of banners and add text written in white font on the image. I used this design element on my website because I find it effective as it catches the eye. The other campaign that I analysed is 'UN Women'. I also used its design elements from their website on my own website. An example of this, it the banner and menu on their page. I liked how they placed the menu bar horizontally and below the logo. I felt that it best suited my website design.
My main source of research was online via Google. I read articles and graphs to give me the findings of my statistics and to learn more about my chosen topic. This form of research was sufficient and helpful because I applied it to my products. I wrote the facts on the circle on the posters. However, I didn't use any of the facts on my website, and I think that if I had made drafts for my website, I would have remembered to add the facts and I would have received feedback on it. One of the points of the feedback that I would have most likely received for the website would have been to add facts and statistics. I was inspired to add a box or multiple boxes filled with straightforward statistics and also facts on the website by the 'Women for Women' website. Through my findings in the research, I realised that the unemployment rate for women of ethnic and religious backgrounds has actually decreased throughout the years. This is great news and I wanted to keep raising awareness and making sure that the rate keeps going down every year. However, my fault in this is that I chose the topic before doing some initial research. If I had done thorough research before finalising my idea and presenting it during the Pecha Kucha, then I would have noted that the numbers have gone down and that this topic isn't as big of an issue in society as it used to be, meaning I could have chosen another topic. Nonetheless, there is no harm in producing a campaign to raise awareness in order to help decrease the numbers as I have done for this project.
For my primary research, I conducted a focus group. I also received feedback from my classmates on my logo and from my teacher for my posters. It was the first time that I had conducted a focus group and I found it to be very helpful and reliable. The members of the focus group gave me critical feedback and suggestions. Additionally, they told me what they liked about the posters. It was better than conducting a questionnaire or interview because receiving the feedback via a focus group is quicker than a questionnaire. Furthermore, for a questionnaire, I would need a lot of people to fill it in to get a valid representation of my target audience. I think that I should have had more members in the group, maybe six people as I only had three people. They were of different ages and of my target audience demographic because they were of ethnic minority backgrounds; two were Arab and one was Mongolian. However, I needed someone in their 50s, because I had people of relatively similar age groups; 18, 28 and 37. This is because people also get employed around their 50s, and a woman of ethnic or religious background I just needed one more person, perhaps in their 50s. I will most likely conduct many focus groups in the future. This project has taught me to get a bigger group and have people of different age ranges to be more representative of my target audience. Preferably, I would have had 1 male and 1 female of the age 18-20, 1 male and 1 female of the age of 25-30 and 1 male and 1 female of the age of 30-50. Altogether, 6 people.
I believe that I should have had a variety of sources for my research. For example, I could have visited museums/exhibitions, read books, analysed websites in more depth and I could have conducted multiple focus groups and even a survey.
To present my campaign, I was planning to make around three posters in different formats such as a billboard, a bus stop shelter with its poster ratio etc. However, I didn't get to do that because I didn't spend enough time on the products and more time on making the drafts. Nonetheless, the process of designing the drafts allowed me to explore a variety of styles of design when using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. In fact, the main reason that I chose to do print media for this project, was to improve and explore my graphic design skills. However, I also chose to make online and print media because I believe that they go well together when making a campaign. A short video on the website would have been a good addition to my campaign, but as I mentioned earlier, I wanted to develop my skills in the area that I'm not quite used to and that area is Graphic Design. The purpose of the posters is to make them effective and to represent the message of my campaign clearly to my target audience. I wanted to use photographs of women that are effective and powerful. I wanted them to make my target audience feel sympathetic. I asked the women in the posters to portray certain facial expressions to display the emotions of sadness, seriousness and feelings of anger and just generally looking upset.
I feel like the poster with the black woman is better than the poster of the woman that is wearing a headscarf. The reason is that the text box circle has more text and is less straightforward than the one of the black woman. Nevertheless, I do communicate what I'm asking my audience to do. This is shown on the text on both of the posters that starts with "Support our work to end racial inequality in the workforce. Visit our website, sign petitions."
Out of the three products, I like the website the most. The only problem that I faced with it, is that the background colour in some parts of each page isn't shown on every screen monitor. The colour is light purple, but on the Mac computer where I created the website, the colour was visible and it complimented the elements of purple throughout the website. However, on other monitors, it isn't obvious and looks Off-White. To change this outcome, I should have researched how to use Adobe Muse correctly.
For the images on the website, I used copyright images from Creative Commons Flickr. However, after finishing the website, I noticed that one of the images require credit to be given to the person that the photograph belongs to, meaning I had to put the person's name in a corner in small font size.
During this project, I feel that I spent a lot of time drafting the posters and experimenting with the different styles to the point that I haven't posted all of the experimentation since I haven't posted them all and I deleted a couple of them. However, I only spent like four hours creating the posters, but I didn't do them both in one day which I feel that I should have to allow me to have more time to create the website since I hadn't spent any time drafting the website. I made probably four to six changes to the website, but I didn't post it on my Blogger because I didn't take a screenshot. I've learnt to manage my time spent on certain products better.
I mentioned earlier that the website has been the product that I prefer visually. However, more time and effort was spent on making the posters, especially the drafting process. Overall, I believe that the most successful part of my campaign is my logo design and the poster with the black woman in it because I took a picture with the lighting that I prefer, so I didn't need to adjust the photograph like I had to with the poster of the woman wearing the hijab. Additionally, I think that her hair on the left side brings the attention of the viewer down to the text in the circle, then to the text next to it on the banner/footer. The shadow on the left side of her face brings the attention to the right side of her face and highlights the whites of her eyes.
I think that the campaign is cohesive because the products hold together. This is shown on my posters and mostly on my website. For instance, I used a colour palette that resonates with the campaign logo. I used most of the colour of the logo on the header of the website on each page, and for the menu bar, I incorporated the purple colour from the nail polish on one of the hands on the logo. Additionally, I learnt to change the shades of purple depending on which page the viewer is on. I made it slightly darker when they're on the page, and slightly lighter during the rollover mouse. For the posters, the typeface for the text is the same on both posters and purple is included in the poster of the woman wearing a headscarf, but not on the poster of the black woman. I feel that it would have been better to use purple instead of pink to make follow the colour scheme, but to be honest, I like pink and it is a feminine colour. Additionally, the logo is also displayed in the top left corner. If it were placed on the right top corner, my product would be aimed at people that speak and read the Arabic language because the text starts from the right side in Arabic. However, my target audience includes English speaking people.
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