Lavine Obeng-Boateng

We’vecomethisfar...Lavine Obeng-BoatengChristianity & Atheism

FMP Proposal

Christianity & Atheism

Intended Audience:Religious and non-religious people, young people, adults, sociologists, researchers, collectors, anyone who is interested.

Area of Reserach or Content:I will continue to look at different atheists and go in deeper, into their mindsets, and to find out what makes them think the way they do.

I will also look at what Christianity has to say about atheists. I may move into getting opinions of actual Christians in my local community/church, instead of the Bible, to give it a more personal perspective.

This is to get people thinking:Why Christianity? Why Atheisim? Why reli-gion? Why faith? Why the contrasts?

Proposed Media/Outcome:I propse to try and have posters on a large scale format as well as a possible small book to bring them together as a nice col-lectable.

How would I relate to other faiths? A place as diverse and multicultural as the UK. Take the work to the other side. More perspectives. Projecting them into build-ings or pavements. I could have them on billboards, possibly near Churches or on an A0 poster near Chruches.

It would be quite exciting and unusual, to have it on a large scale board, in the middle of nowhere; or a very busy place, where people would stop and look, for example a shopping mall, whether indoor or outdoor.

I would monitor them from an angle and take photographs, or video how many people that would stop to read it, or to try and read it. I could also get the opinions of those who did stop to read it, and see what they thought about it.

As you may recall with my posters from the last project, I used a contrast of atheist quotes and verses from the bible. I used different colours and slightly different for-mats. I put them together in a little issuu booklet, as a collectable. I think in the end it was a success. It all came together quite

well. My next challenge was to push it slightly further. To think about what else I could do to it, to make it just that bit bet-ter.

Ok, so the idea is typographical posters on Christianity and Atheism, bringing opposite faiths and views together into one format. The reason for this, is to get poeple to think about their faith or to think of if they have a faith. Why they believe in what they do and to perhaps re-evaluate their persep-tions.

After the first project, I thought about where else I could move to, keeping the same concept but showing it differently. I moved onto introducing the qu’ran to the idea. Whilst looking at verses from the qu’ran, I found that it had similar views to the bible, however it used more harsher words and sounded just as brutal as athe-ists.

In order to show that comparison, I put the two together. I put together a quote from the atheist Quentin Crisp and a quote from

the qu’ran. It worked just as well as the bible, but it was not what I was really look-ing for, so I moved on...

Although my idea was to have contrast as my concept, I also thought to bring togeth-er the qu’ran and the bible, to see what that would bring about.

I took the same topic i.e forgiveness, and looked up verses about it and put them to-gether. Although I did not want to seem like I was thinking for the reader, by having one view up, it seemed to work quite well; hav-ing the same topic, but written differently.

I just thought once I put all my posters in a book, it would show all the different points of view. Christianity vs Atheism, Christianity vs Muslim, Muslim vs Atheism.

Next was to think about how I could make these posters better. Think about how to address the audience better; speak directly to the audience. To think about removing the reference at the bottom of the poster to get poeple thinking even more. To try and use some imagery. To use different text/typography/font. To try different for-mats. The big question was, ‘what do i want to come out of this?, Why am I doing this?’

As my theory was to not use any imagery whatsoever, as I wanted the words to speak for itself. I did not want the audi-ence to lose focus with imagery distract-ing them. However I thought to try and see what it would look like anyway. The idea of the poster, is to get the reader to think about their faith, and to focus on the words only. Ideally, that is what the empty space on the poster symbolises; the read-ers thoughts. The words are quite powerful enough, I did not want to bombard it with

imagery. As for the format, I did not want to make it too complex or complicated. I did not want to lose focus of the reader to a variety of various formats, I wanted to keep it simple. The real challenge was to have a simple formatted poster, which is also powerful.

I used a concept I got from a designer called Gerd Arntz. I took specific words from the quotes, that summarised what the quotes were about, and put a series of the icons at the bottom. e.g the group of peo-ple would symbolis the nation.

I also removed the reference at the bottom of the poster and put “What do you be-lieve?”, addressing the audience directly.

To be honest I did not really see a differ-ence in what I had previously done. It did not work. I needed to think of something else...

The feedback from my tutor and peers, was to play around with the text/type more. To try and play around with the background instead of having block colour. Thoughts were also to have textures as backgrounds. The ideas basically was to do something different in order to capture the audeinces’ eye.

I decided to google in typographic posters, and these posters are what I found. I liked the idea of having the image with the text inside it. I thought I could use the same concept. For example, I would have a pint pr wine glass for the poster on drinking and gambling, with the text inside or as an outline.

I had to think more like a designer, that a Christian.

Next...

After looking at a couple of typographic posters, I started to incorporate it into my own work.I chose the posters on the topics drinking and gambling, adultery and forgiveness( coming away from darkness).

I think the posters came out very well however, I just need to tidy it up, possibly digitally. As long as it looks clear to the audience, I think it is a process I would like to continue working with. I will be await-ing feedabck on this process and see the outcome.

The next step would be to come up with other topics, and continue wit h this proc-ess. The text may need to be bigger to be legible.