Malala Yousafzai
Speech Poster
This project was focused on exploring the text and messages within the motivational Nobel Speech by Malala Yousafzai. Since reading her memoir, Malala Yousafzai's experiences has been an inspiration that I aspire myself to be as she's overcome resiliency from opposition against the violence of her homelands and fighting for the rights of education for women and children as her life pursuit. Because of this, her story was my source of designing and exploring how her message can be conceived within various type treatments and integrating visual elements through a creative process from sketch, text layout, color explorations and photographic integration.
image + Photo layouts
I drew this image with pen and paper, then brought it into Photoshop and adjusted it with a filter (from Pixelate and Crystallize), which created a texture that sharpened my crosshatching. As for the text, I chose to stagger the paragraphs in a way that adheres to the rhythm and beats that Malala's speech is read, separating the paragraphs as they each have thirds of space for attention. Following the grid of staggering text, I emphasized the names of her found sisters and her call to action in serif type and red text to draw its importance.
Illustration of woman walking to taliban
In this initial iteration, I drew a portrait of Malala Yousafzai
and I was using the selection tool to cut out the lines from
my journal that were visible on the sketch. In doing so, it created a collage-like result that was desirable for a narrative as if piecing parts of her. I used white shapes to place the script of her speech on an axis following the logotype of the word, 'WOMEN'. Continuing along the axis of the logotype,
I placed the supporting quotes to experiment how the direction of readability is arranged. I used the color brown and pink as thematic tones to support the message of empowerment.
Illustration of Malala Yousafzai
I used before and after photographs of Malala's home village, Swat, as I remembered how much of the significance that the landscape underwent by Taliban control, a notable reason being that girls were banned of their right to education. I used a halftone texture to create likeness between the two images and placing the logotype along the center. I used green in the text to emphasize the stories of the women who impacted her and these women share the same fight with her. The text in black on the right is her truth and her argument that harks back to the reason she's fighting for everything - even for her homeland.
Before and After of the Valley of Swat
Logotype Color Study
These are my reference images to use for my color studies. The images draw from indigenous artifacts, an image of Malala Yousafzai, an image of Matika Wilbur, and Bisan Owda. I used these references as they tell the same story of facing violence against oppressive regimes.
Axis Study
This layout, I was experimenting the placement of information in a stacked and flushed left rag right aligned text with the quotes being offset from the left aligned grid to call attention to those points of areas as well as cropping the letter 'W' to create some visual interest.
This layout uses the logotype as a hierarchy of focus and contrasts the mass of the scale as I stacked the content of the speech in approximation to the size of each letter of the logotype. The bottom content is staggered to draw the eye toward the logo and to emphasize the last line, "Let this end with us."
This layout used the letter 'N' as a strength and following the vertical legs as a guide for the grid for my other text components while the bottom text contrasts the grid to state the call to action as Malala's ending speech.
I experimented in this layout with axis placing the logotype on a strong angle, I decided to place the main content of Malala's speech to follow the angle of the logotype. Offsetting the quotes as hairlines on both sides of the logo to draw focus in the bottom area.
This logotype project started from sketching various ways to conceptualize the overall themes of my chosen Nobel Speech. The two words that stood out from Malala Yousafzai's Speech were: education and women. In the sketches of the word education, I questioned how might the word be in different contexts from breaking it up as syllables, using pronunciation marks like an upside question mark that draws to the experience of Spanish speakers or an emphasized T to illustrate the separation of bordered lands and opportunity of education. For my sketches of the word 'Women,' I played with the idea of a woman's figure and how can the word be abstracted to embody the spirit of Malala's message. Sketches 6 and 12 were the best moving forward in my process as they were the most clear and thought out.
Hand
Sketches
After my hand drawn sketches, I chose the most legible sketch to explore for my digital iterations. In the Education sketches, I used san serifs and slab serif fonts. The serifs in the U reminded me of old rigid restrictive forms whereas the serifs contrasted these forms into modern philosophy for freedom of rights. In my sketches I use a line as a graphic element to underline CA as a way to parallel my experiences as education in California has challenges in different ways from students who cross the Mexican-American border. In my sketches for the word Women, I used serif typefaces only. Trying to replicate but explore my hand drawn sketch, I was experimenting the way the forms interacted with each other and the space with each letter. Some sketches have a circle above the 'w' as I was experimenting the idea of the letter 'W' being a human figure and it's arms being the stems of the letter. Ultimately, sketch number 9 was most desirable from it's simplicity and clear legibility.