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Working with the Communications Team at Associated Students of Portland Community College to provide artwork for such relevant social justice awareness events such as this was always a highlight for me.
We received the poster request from my good friend and colleague Sarah Doyle from the PCC Women's Resource Center. The event itself was all organized by her (on top of her busy full credit schedule and two part time jobs!), and she came to me specifically and asked for a poster design that would grab the student body's attention while also making them think along relevant lines as the event's main idea itself.
As you can see (and this was an issue with most of our poster requests), Sarah, the client, was in need real clear vision of what she wanted the poster to be, despite her inclusion of a few key adjectives. So, when we had our conference together, I tossed around a few ideas that came up when I had first looked over her request form. I also asked her if she could specify any particular imagery that was a prime, concise example of rape culture in general.
Sarah brought in this cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue and pointed out how explotative it nature it was. I asked her if she could make a collage of photos like this, so we could maybe make it all congealed and repulsive and frame it within something like an old vintage televison screen.
She made the collage (which I wish I had a picture of), and it wasn't anything we could really get away with using, professionally speaking, since it was mostly just pictures of celebrities being suggestive. On top of that, they were pretty graphic!
Then there came the idea to make it anonymous, like this ad that I found within the pages of the same SI issue:
Still, however, this didn't feel either appropriate or artistically satisfying, so after some work I did trying to build my own mock-up of this "model" in Illustrator, I made the decision to ixnay that concept altogether.
But! I still wanted to keep the TV framing theme (because that's where most corporately induced rape culture is the most accessibly prevalent).
I sketched out what I was seeing:
Thus my hunt for a vintage picture of a family (or couple) watching television in the 70s/80s began!
And I couldn't find one, even after a few hours.
So, why not tweak the concept a little and just use a freesource picture of a television that I found instead?
But what about the suggestable imagery? Did we really want to be hypocritical and sell an event that was about the barbarism behind using sex to sell - with sex?
The imagery of the lips worked, I believe, because it was tastefully suggestive, and enough so that it would get attention. It kind of reminded me of the very eye catching (and heavily suggestive!) poster for the documentary Inside Deep Throat. Perhaps my inspiration was influenced by this subconciously.
(The picture of the lips I used were also freesource.)
Originally, I wanted to reverse the color scheme, where the white text would be black and the backround white, but I think that the way it is is much more sleek and edgy in a way, if not a bit more tongue-in-cheek, like the cover of one of Beck's more bombastic albums/singles.
Sarah (the client) loved the finished product, and the event itself turned into a huge deal, with all seats taken!
