My first project in Apollo is based in American Propaganda. I researched lots of different pieces of propaganda, and wrote small essays about specific posters. After that, I made a propaganda poster. I chose propaganda for my project because of the fact that you can gather lots of information just by looking at the art. It never has to explicitly say anything, even though sometimes it does. You can view propaganda and take it differently depending on personal context. Propaganda can be taken in so many different ways and it all just depends on where you're at in life and where you're mind is. If you look at propaganda from the era, it's a lot more vocal and explicit. The message is clear and direct. Today, propaganda is a lot more subtle. The message is often covered up, you have to think about it, and go through all the layers. But the 40's style propaganda can still be effective. Sometimes it's better if the message is shown plainly, because a clear offense and defense can tear through and achieve what's intended.
When I first started my project, it was going to be about the Manhattan Project. Eventually, I started looking at propaganda, and realized that it interested me more. With that, I switched my focus to American WWII propaganda. I began my research, looking at different pieces, and putting them into different groups, like satire and inspirational. Here is an example of a satirical piece:
After analyzing some propaganda, I set out to make a poster myself. I started out with a hand drawn poster, which looked like this:
Throughout the process though, it was decided that I should make more of a collage, pulling online pictures and fonts. Using an exacto knife, I cut out all of the letters to spell out the description of my poster.
This poster was made with resources entirely from the internet. Taking the resources, I glued them onto a piece of paper. The picture above is the final collage. The description reads, "Don't be a black swan. Join the US military." With a picture of a swan next to it.
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I learned a lot about Apollo from this first project. I learned that you need to think every step through, and that communication is key. For project 2, I intend to do everything I did this time, but even better. Things like talking to the teachers, thinking my processes through, and asking for help when I need it.