"speak sweetly, listen deeply" was my final Illustrator project in my SMAD 201 visual design class. The Illustration, following completion, was submitted into a contest, and after winning, was made into a sticker sheet to be distributed to JMU students at an event that touched on subjects such as combating political biases and finding common ground with others when discussing difficult or un-agreed upon subjects.
Each sticker I created followed a different requirement of the project specifications. The sun, moon, and stars included a gradient with more than two colors. Parts of the music notes were created by building and deleting compound paths and shapes with the shape builder tool. I created a repeating pattern that can be found on one of the balloons. The strings of the balloons were drawn with the pen/pencil tool, and I also used that same tool to make the stems of the flowers, and additionally to create the text along a path for all 5 stickers. It was frustrating at first to have to design these stickers with the requirement to follow this criteria; I almost felt restricted in a sense. However, I think that this was initially just because I was new to Illustrator and not fully comfortable with the functions yet. The more I played around on my own (and also researched methods of creating shapes, editing shapes, etc.), the easier it became.
I chose to create the illustrations I did because I knew it would work with the intended audience this project is meant to reach. Theoretically, we can say that half of the statistic that will be receiving these stickers will be female. That being said, I took inspiration from lots of the girls I see around campus who put stickers on their water bottles, computers, etc. I also drew from the artists who make stickers to sell to this demographic at the JMU Farmer's market. It was easy to stick to a “tone”/aesthetic since I understood the demographic I was creating it for. I felt that that demographic aligned well with the theme/message of Civic Dialogue and Responsibility. The final illustrations were meant to be light, breezy, flowery, and meant to invoke joy. I chose a more subdued color palette to invoke a sense of calmness, and the rainbow tones are meant to entice the female demographic, as well as metaphorically invoke a sense of community, belonging, inclusivity, and understanding. I made sure that most of the illustrations had soft, rounded curves, instead of sharp edges, to create the idea of safety, welcoming, warmth– basically, the opposite of hostility, aggression, and disruption. (Double meaning to that– since the point of the “Promoting Civic Dialogue” campaign is to avoid those things!)
The idea behind the actual illustrations themselves (a sun, moon and stars, different types of music notes, different keys on a piano/keyboard, different shaped balloons, a bouquet of different flowers), was to invoke the message that all of these things would be pretty dull and uninteresting without their different counterparts. The sun, moon, and stars can’t exist without each other; a song wouldn’t be a song if it stayed on the same note the entire time; a piano wouldn’t be able to play without a range of notes; balloons aren’t fun unless they’re vibrant and different; a bouquet of flowers would be pretty uninteresting if they were all the same type. This is to support the idea that different ideas and viewpoints aren’t a bad thing– and when they come together as one, they can create something beautiful. This is to reinforce that idea of understanding each other, and showing that wonderful things can happen when we do.