Assignment 4: Stop Shark Finning

It was the Chinese New Year Week, and it was still in the Chinese New Year mood that I came up with this poster. After all, inspiration comes from our everyday life experience. I could easily identify stalls selling shark fin at Chinatown and from the news, I know a number of species of sharks are nearing extinction from the cruelty of shark finning. Hand in hand, it was just the perfect idea for this assignment.

In developing the poster, the question I asked myself was how to attract audience. My solution was to make my poster look tasty, as people tend to avoid awfully done poster. Therefore I made my poster to make it look like it was promoting shark fin soup, furnished with a replicate recipe, except that the ingredients are slightly different from expected. The idea of the slogan was derived from the feeling of how good time tend to end fast while hardship always seem to last longer.

5-mins of Savory, Forever Extinction

Second variation.
Tried plane view of the shark fin instead of side view...
Which one looks better? Still the first right?

After presenting to the class, the feedback was that the use of red for the background was too taxing on the eye and that the color was too close to that of the shark fin. The wording “Stop Shark Finning” was too small.

Personally, I felt that using red as the background color went well with my theme. Red associates with Chinese New Year, at the same time depict danger. Probably, what I could do to revise my poster is to reduce the brightness of the red while adjusting the color of the shark fin away from the reddish tone. As for the caption “Stop Shark Finning”, I felt that the size was just right. If the text is bigger, it will cause an imbalance and weigh down the poster. Having the caption bigger than the copy text, is enough to grab attention of audience who actually took notice of my poster.

Revised

Shark Fin Soup
Ingredients:
20g Shark's fin
50ml Sheer Cruelty
75g Callous Nastiness
25g Mindless Brutality
1x Unfeeling Heart

For over 400 million years, sharks have swum our oceans, playing a vital role in maintaining the health of the ocean ecosystems. Today, however, this prehistoric animal is under severe threat of overfishing. Currently 18 species of shark are listed under the IUCN’s Red List of species threatened with extinction, mainly due to increasing consumption of sharks' fin soup. Because sharks breed slowly, they simply cannot sustain this high level of demand. Sharks' fins are obtained by hauling them onto the deck and their fins hacked off. The body, often still alive is tossed back into the sea, starting a slow and excruciatingly painful death for the shark as it sinks to the bottom of the ocean. Barely alive, it will now bleed to death slowly or drown because it cannot breathe, as water no longer flows through its mouth, and over its gills. Support the ban.

Stop Shark Finning.