by Eli Toelle and Charlie Fallon

This summit poster was our second assignment and is being used to expose the harsh realities of our world today, and how human trafficking and pornography are two rampant factors in today's world. This year's summit at Brophy is called "For Sale: The Commodification of the Human Person" which is about the dangers of leaving the vast criminal networks and human trafficking rings unchecked.

Behance Collection: https://www.behance.net/collection/168857361/Summit-Poster

Initially, we focused our research on more dry and dark elements of human trafficking. We found these elements to be a little too bland for our taste however, and after looking further into the topic and realizing how bleak most posters were. We decided to use more vibrant and brighter colors to change up the scene; and provide a poster with more lively and hopeful components.

We experienced a lot of turmoil when trying to decide on the format of our poster. Initially we wanted to go with a vibrant duo-tone effect with a sleek font using a quote by Nelson Mandela. Then, we saw the 15 modern effects in photoshop video Mr. Davis showed us in class, and we tried out a glitch effect that we thought would look cool with the picture of Nelson Mandela we found. Furthermore we thought about making a text portrait poster where half of the portrait is covered by text. Eventually, we decided on the duo-tone effect for our final.

We played around a lot with our sketches and thought about many ways we could incorporate cool effects and text into our final. These are sketches of our ideas using the glitch effect, text portrait poster and disjointed text. We also tried to use different quotes, but we eventually settled on "There is no such thing as part freedom." - Nelson Mandela.

Our two drafts both had the same idea of being centered on Mandela's face with text (specifically a quote) surrounding him.

The comps were created by moving the image mask of Nelson Mandela to the left side of the document. We attempted using different styles of text and experimented with using a quote or just a single word. We ended up choosing the comp that included a white box around the text because we thought it looked more refined and fitting for a poster.

After receiving multiple critiques from both Mr. Davis and some classmates, Charlie and I eventually created the final poster you see above. We decided on the use of duo-tone to set our poster away from the bleak and depressing compositions of most other posters that are about human trafficking. The bright blue colors and Mandela’s shining smile inspire a sense of hope. Also, the sleek text and the use of the word “Freedom” shine light on the dark reality of human trafficking letting everyone know that there is hope for the future. Also, the use of Nelson Mandela a world renown anti-apartheid leader and president of South Africa who fought racism. Nelson is another beacon of hope in this poster showing how a person in the real world fought against corruption. This poster is intentionally supposed to be bright so it can metaphorically shine light and eradicate the darkness of the world and let people know that they don’t ever have to give up hope no matter how deep they are in the shadows.