Speech for 23rd

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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 :)