On April 24th, 2013 1,134 workers were killed, and around 2,500 with non-fatal injuries, this due to a five-story building collapsing on top of them. This building was called the Rana Plaza and because of its poor structure and careless upkeep the building began to fall apart. This was a sweatshop building located in Savar Upazila, Bangladesh. Unfortunately, this was only one of the many sweatshops still found in Bangladesh today. With a limited amount of jobs available to those living there, many have no option but to continue working 14-16 hours, 7 days a week to earn barely enough income to provide a family with their basic needs, this makes working in these dangerous conditions their only option of survival.
As someone who enjoys the convenience of affordable clothing it came as a shock finding out that my clothing is being made by people captive in these circumstances. I also learned that there are many others who are unaware of the state of this industry, therefor this became an important message I felt I had the responsibility to share.
I started off my design process defining the issue I was trying to convey, this being the cruel conditions these workers are enduring. Through research I constructed a brainstorm web where I was able to establish a few concepts that are unique and stand out. I then sketched out some iterations to find a layout and design that was cohesive with my project objective. After picking out the one that was most successful I did a full page sketch to figure out any minor details and a final layout design before putting it onto my computer.
As a first year university student with limited knowledge of design I had to work with a restricted understanding of the Adobe Suite. I also had no idea how to embroider so within the design process I had to teach myself how to do this.
As for design challenges, there are an extensive amount of campaign advertisements so it is difficult to design a successful poster that stands out.
Using materials from different articles of clothing I sewed together a human heart. I did this to represent the heart of those whose lives depend on working in the garment sweatshops throughout Bangladesh. I added the sewing needle through the center of the heart to indicate that the industry is killing them, I also added a blood-stained tag to add some more detail in the overall storytelling and depict the heart as a product giving it a price, as how these workers are treated as an object; this highlights the idea that it is a life which should in fact be priceless. To help the viewer understand the imagery as much as possible I added a call to action to finish off the poster and pull it together entirely (this including a fictitious website).
