This was a valuable exercise for its failure in terms of message meeting its target recipient. The work its self was satisfactory and does make the statement I intended and the style was reached through honest metaphor rather than style for the sake of style. Having said that, because I chose to step outside of the conventional understanding of the brief to produce the work, I did find it difficult to focus in on how the message would be received. Because the message does fly in the face of fast/convenience food consumers it is difficult to find a method which perhaps wouldn’t turn them off to listening if I was to remain true to my own beliefs and understanding. The imagery on the main poster would be reproduced on a very humble sandwich wrapper and card soup cup to serve as a reminder to the consumer of what they are showing their support for. The food would then be sold via an indie stalls, ideally outside a large brand food outlet to draw attention to the idea that consumers have been lead astray and perhaps stopped thinking for themselves when it comes to eating and how much they buy and from where. For some, it is a natural human reaction to opt for the simplest and convenient food option which is all fair and understandable, and the project is designed to remind people of what they are supporting when they choose to buy from chains and corporations, despite some being unaware of the implications. The message of the whole exercise is to inform and provide a temporary, non profit alternative to chain store convenience food with the hope that some people may after time, choose to make their own food rather than support the routes of social, health and economic ills. If I were to repeat the brief, I would either chose to increase the strength of the message by using installations outside of food vendors with easily understood metaphor regardless of how tasteless some may find and speak directly to the consumer and spread the message virally through the internet and word of mouth or sanitise it somewhat to speak to local MP’s or the stores them selves and use the media to distribute the message for me. This project did make me realise how important it is fort me personally to decide earlier on which way to take the work. Either to treat it purely personally or reign back to speak to the public. Sitting on the fence created a lot of unnecessary confusion and lack of direction when generating ideas and causing the overall impact of the work to be lesser quality than intended. The way in which the message would be distributed also needs more consideration as unfortunately idealistic communications miss the target they are intended for. In order for it to be more credible in the eyes of the intended recipients it would need money behind it and backing from mainstream supporters.
Reflection: Visually, this work for me, has a particular look because it stays deliberately clear of any use of style over substance in order to communicate the meaning. I would argue that a lot of commercial design is used to camofluage the true nature of whatever it is helping to sell and is effectively misleading. There are shifts however at the moment back to honest forms of commerical, packaging design etc.. because of an understably distrusting public. Judged on its visual merits, this work may well fall down, but if altered, it would fail to communicate what it is supposed to. I would argue that it would therefore lose is value and miss the point, if it were to take the generic visual form.
