Project Brief:
Brief in short: Your brief is to identify a problem that, to your mind, needs to be fought against, that needs to be given attention and that would benefit from a wider awareness. This could be a global issue like those mentioned above or it could be a small and more local concern.
You are going to create the materials which will be used to protest against your chosen injustice and inform those less familiar with it - importantly, the materials you create should available to be used by anyone, anywhere, to join the fight.
You are going to create the materials which will be used to protest against your chosen injustice and inform those less familiar with it - importantly, the materials you create should available to be used by anyone, anywhere, to join the fight.
Possible Ideas:
- Ocean Cleanups - trash littered on beaches and in the ocean/seas causing problems for the aquatic wildlife that lives there as well as the overall environment.
- Testing on Rabbits - animal testing has become more normalised within the beauty industry - they are not treated right before or after being tested and will feel a lot of discomfort from all the chemicals used on them.
- Save The Bees - In the UK, we have already lost around 13 species and another 35 are currently at risk. This is also a global issue and I want to make others more aware of how bees help make us survive.
- Animal Cruelty in Circuses - chained, strapped in cages, only to be let out to 'perform', animals shouldn't have 'jobs' and should be let back out into the wild. They are often beaten, kicked shocked to be obedient.
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Webpage Research:
I wanted to find some blog pages that go into detail of how bees are going extinct and what the best ways are to help them. Bees are mainly dying pesticide which leaves harmful chemicals that can paralyze and even kill them but mostly they are declining due to climate change. This is causing extreme conditions such as more powerful storms, heatwaves, and snowless winters. If bees lose their homes due to extreme natural disasters, they won't be able to reproduce. Thus, bees won’t be able to pollinate. Without bees, plants that rely on pollinators would no longer be able to survive and animals who feed on bees will have lost their food source. To help bees you can plant pollinator-friendly plants like basil, rosemary, or sunflowers. And avoid using pesticides.
All the images have been linked to their webpages. 
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Video Research:
Most of what I referred to from my webpage research applies in these videos, the first video is a short and quick explanation of why bees are dying, the middle video is a longer ted talk about the same topic and how it affects us and our food sources, the last video is a short practical video on things we can do to help bees in our gardens.
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The Huffington Post has shared what grocery stores would look like when we won't have bees left. Now to shorten my protest I want to focus on pollination and how we need bees to survive as they help pollinate flowers as well as vegetables and fruits and without bees the population would begin to starve, businesses would shut down
Which Bees are Endangered:
Below I have tried to look up which species of bees are considered endangered or are nearly on the list to being extinct. The honey bee is currently not extinct but there's been a few concerns that it may end up on the list so I have added them to the list nonetheless. Hawaiian yellow-faced bees and Rusty patched bumblebee have made the list - other than those two I have found some less common known bees that have hardly been seen or have much information on them.
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Bumblebees
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Honeybees
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Hawaiian yellow-faced bees
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Squash Bee
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Rusty Patched Bumblebee (Bombus Affinis)
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Franklin’s Bumblebee (Bombus Franklini)
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Suckley Cuckoo Bumblebee (Bombus Suckleyi)
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Southern Plains Bumble Bee (Bombus Fraternus)
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How To Help The Queen Bee:
As most bees hibernate over the winter I may look more into how we can help the queen bee rebuild her nest for the spring such as planting flowers in your own gardens as this can be an interactive task for both adults and kids who love to play outdoors and help the environment.
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Flowers & Plants:
Bees, hoverflies and butterflies, moths and beetles are all in decline, and are massively important for humans. I've looked into different foods bee's thrive off of and these should also work well for the other creatures that feed off plants. I've looked into lists and what ones work the best and the Coneflower seems to be a popular option, these flowers grow in summer and autumn - this plant is also a good food source for hummingbirds. The Winter Jasmine, Oregon Grape and California Lilac can grow in the winter creating a food source for the bees during the colder season.
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Black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia Hirta)
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Rosemary (Rosmarinus Officinalis)
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Coneflower (Echinacea Purpurea)
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Cranesbill (Geranium Spp.)
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Winter Jasmine
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Sunflower (Helianthus Annuus)
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Oregon Grape (Mahonia Aquifolium)
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California Lilac (Ceanothus Spp.)
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Target Audience:
My intended target audience is to cater to kids and teens mostly as my own primary and secondary school allowed a gardening club, eco committee and bee club - I only ever joined the first two as I was only aware of the bee club a few weeks ago by my sister but looking back I do remember hearing a bit about the club when I was there but my own fear of bees did not make me as interested in this topic than I am now. I do believe kids would overall enjoy any sort of activity that involves the outdoors and can be easily done within their own homes under supervision.
Artist Research:
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I like the way Jessica uses both traditional and digital mediums for her illustrations. Her bird designs are really unique and have their own sense of personality in them.
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I enjoy the way Lianne uses colours and how she arranges her work, it feels quite magical and warm.
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The way I found Kaelin's art was through a Twitch stream, looking further into it I found they have been working on Camp Mustelid for some time now. They primarily work using animals and camp related scenarios.
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Raahat is an amazing illustrator who creates small stories within her work. I also enjoy seeing her appear on my feed and love the small little wildlife creatures she draws.
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Kit Essentials:
Below I've listed different ideas I could add for my kit, I do not plan to make them all but I'm very much into the idea of making a flower seed pack design as that sounds fun and much more 'interactive', I think the most obvious option is making stickers but I most likely believe the target audience would be young kids and adults - kids love stickers so I do think it is a must to add in. I also love the idea of making another package design but for honey!
List: Sticker Sheet, Badges/Pins, poster, Product Design (Honey Jars), Flower Seed Pack Designs, Masks, Shirts, Tote-Bags, Postcard, Guide Book, Garden Planner, Bee Identifier Guide, Bookmark, Washi Tape, Water Bottle.
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Flower Seed Pack Designs
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Honey Packaging Design
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Stickers
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Bookmarks
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Looking into a way to grow seeds was through paper itself - as an illustrator I'm constantly using paper so to be more sustainable and environmentally friendly I thought my kit could incorporate seeded paper that would have some cute bee illustrations that kids would love to grab and plant it themselves to help out.
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Textures:
I gathered some seeded paper textures to add over my designs, I don't think these will come out that noticeable but when I did add it on top I could see the change in my design and the texture the paper gave.
Thumbnails:
To start off my first idea is to create flowers and have the bees roam around them, a garden filled with blossoming flowers that attract the bees. After some feedback I thought more on showing why bees are important and thought maybe I could split my illustration, one side showing a vibrant sunny day with the flowers blossoming while the other is grey and dull, nothing to show there is any life around there.
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Logo:
I wanted to create a simple logo design for all my work so they all tie in together. I like the simplicity of it and have added them onto the designs I've already created to see what they would turn out like. For my designs I lowered the capacity to 60% as to not make it too vibrant and in the way of the illustration.
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Seeder Paper Tutorial Design:
Alongside my logo I made a small little instructions on how to use the paper showing the process of planting, watering and finally letting it grow and taking care of it.
I plan to add these to the back of my poster and bookmark designs. |
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Poster:
For my main poster I wanted to show the queen bee in hibernation as the plants and fruits wither away. To show that we need bees for our crops and plants to survive. For the queen bee herself I thought I'd go a human like approach to make it less 'scary' for those afraid of bees as well as taking the title of the bee a bit more literal. I wasn't sure what to do for the text and have currently just added my logo text to the image but I'm liking how it looks and may keep it as it is.
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Front & Back:
For the front I needed to add a bit of text just to give small amount of detail of why bees are endangered and what we can do to help. Then for the back I added more information about the decline of bees and for it to be more informative than to be illustrative. I go into detail about why bees are important hoping this will make people more involved in saving the bees, I have done my best to keep my writing short as to not go over detailed. I've added my instructions to the back of the poster, although they appear a bit small.
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Seed Package Design:
For my seed package I wanted to keep it minimal compared to the rest of my designs so I chose my thumbnail in which I preferred the most and the one I personally found fit the idea I wanted, I also feel like it contrasts with the poster and gives a different look as to not make everything look overall similar. I changed the original design to have more colour as to give more life to the design. To my final design I added a cut out to make it more visible where to tear as I want it aware there are seeds inside to plant.
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Bookmark:
For my bookmark I decided to go with only 1 design although I did want to try and get around three done but again, due to time I stuck with the one that was more captivating and still fit the overall theme as I've mainly been using yellow toned flowers for my designs.
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Sticker Sheet:
Taking the illustrations I've already done I've compiled them onto a sticker sheet. At first I was going to create separate stickers but felt like to not waste too much time I could take parts of my other design and use it as separate decorations.
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