Oh snail

Climb Mt Fuji,

But slowly, slowly!

 

‘Standing Out’  is a poster I made in my Design101 course at the University of Auckland. I was charged with the agency to create a visual representation of ideas I found in my Haiku listed above. The poster in question had to be composed using geometric shapes, the element of repetition, and black and white as the only colour components. 

 

I composed this poster with a plain white background and black acrylic paint, though if I were to redo it I would have painted a base layer and gone back over parts of the black with the white to add more intricacy and layering. Because the theme I picked for this poster, my image is addressing the adversity people face simply because of who they are and the level of expectation placed on them because of their stereotype, like how the small snail would never be assumed to be able to climb such a mountain because of the assumptions made around how capable he is. I used rigid squares in the background of my image to represent these expectations and assumptions and a large dry brush stroke through the middle to reference back to the poem’s origins as brush strokes in Japanese art usually had fast paced and dry brush gestures like this. Also to suggest a fervent burst of energy and act as negative space to show what I aimed to be the main focal point of the white circle standing out against the rigidness of the squares and their preconceived ideologies.

 

I believe I did well in translating the significance of meaning behind the Haiku into an emotive image made out of icons which aren’t very significant signifiers of any definitive meaning and creating such a strong message with them. However, I believe the execution of the poster was done very poorly, not only because I forgot about it and did it at the end but because I was so eager to get onto making it that I forgot the 40cm x 40cm dimensions the poster is supposed to adorn.

 

Lisa Yannucci. (2020). ‘Mama Lisa’s Blog’. Mama Lisa’s World: International Music and Culture. https://www.mamalisa.com/blog/japanese-haiku-a-snail-climbing-mt-fuji/ 

Giuseppe Signoritti. (2017). ‘History of Sumi-E’. Sumi-E. http://www.sumi-e.it/en/history-of-sumi-e/