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Hi, we are Valid can you hear me at the back? :P
We’d like to start by quickly reminding you
of our topic, which was the rising cost of essential living for students, a
problem which obviously effects all of us, and is a problem that, we believe,
is getting worse.
These are the images that one of our
illustrators completed last week, showing a student on a day in London, showing
how they are struggling to afford the essentials, such as bills, toiletries and
travel.
First of all this week we decided to take a
closer look at how much a student in London would pay in one year. Looking at
the financial situation of one member of our group to judge by and by taking
into account some obvious payments such as rent, and some less obvious payments
such as printing credit, we came to the conclusion that an average student
would spend £21,514. This is a very large amount, which makes us struggle to
see how people, especially students would afford this and so would have to be
making cuts…even to what people may consider essentials.
We’ve taken on board the feedback from last
week and have started focusing more on our layout and attempting to come up
with some good visual metaphors.
We started with this idea for a layout, as
you can see it’s quite a simple layout that puts emphasis on visualising the
problem and the proposed solution.
We have decided to keep using the red from
our images before, as we feel using red to represent any place money is spent
helps make the problem clear.
With these couple of sketches you can start
to see some ideas such as showing someone physically carrying debt, or people
struggling up the graph labeled ‘cost of living’ which we believe is a strong
visual way of reminding people that this rising cost is making things
difficult.
On the left here, you can see two simple,
clear layouts that rely heavily on the use of red to symbolise getting more and
more in debt. In this second image, we can see some stick figures stuck in the
washing machine showing that this is a cycle that people are trapped in.
The final image you can see here takes
inspiration from some of the earlier sketches, using many aspects again, but
this time in one layout. In this image you can see us trying to make use of a
few visual metaphors. For example, the path leading to the sun, symbolizing hope,
which obviously seems very far away. You can see the graph showing the rising
costs used on the right hand side, and you can see a figure struggling to climb
it, which is showing how people struggle to overcome this steep rise.
We’ve used the red again, this time to
symbolise where the money is needed and to make the students standing around
the image stand out.
The long rope at the top of the image shows
a figure trying to get across to the sign reading ‘payday’ but he’s balancing
on a singular coin and so it looks like a struggle to reach it. The scales down
in the bottom left are labeled ‘unfair balance’ with the needs outweighing the
money. The money floating away in the image, like balloons, symbolise how
easily money can disappear.
Iain :)
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