Design — Poster: Election 2009

Pawns in the game

Results of general elections in India are announced a few days back. This time, many of the candidates used the latest technologies like blogs, twitter, Orkut groups, Flash banner ads in websites, SMS campaigning… Also we saw a lot of public service ads urging citizens to use their fundamental right to vote.
In my college, this year’s Students’ Council Elections were held on 16-May-2009. I got the opportunity to design a series of posters to inform students about the election. Time frame for executing the work was very short.

Design Thoughts
Three posters are planned: One, a general poster about the election and important dates; second, a poster about Soap Box event of the candidates and third; a ‘Vote Now’ poster.
I didn’t want to depict a ballot box, people or other often repeated images for the work. A few months ago, I have used an image – ‘Leader’ taken by Sanja Gjenero from Zagreb, Croatia. Sanja has other images too in the same series. I selected three images – ‘Parliament,’ ‘Public Speaking’ and ‘Yes/No.’ Thus the ‘Let us…’ series happened.

And then…
The posters stood out in the notice boards owing to the bright and the riot of colors in a white background. The contrast of the posters was very high compared to the other posters and this became the differentiator. I am not claiming that the students’ turnout on the voting day is only because of the posters.
From the feedback, I got the impression that I goofed up in the body copy. All the dates were very confusing to the people. I think a small formatting may have done the trick. See what I mean:

Thanks a lot for all your feedback. Thank you Sanja, for the great images. You saved the day! More information on the students’ council elections are available at ‘Voices’ website.
Software: Photoshop
Design Date: 12-May-2009