Social Advocacy Poster

Challenge: Visually communicate a social issue

effectively through design

Lesson Overview: Teach students to use art as a

tool for social advocacy through digital design.
Students will engage in how artist inform, raise
awareness, and or advocate for issues using color,
font, text, image, and subject matter. As a class
students will discuss different kinds of social issues
ranging from drug addiction, texting and driving, to
environmental issues. They will analyze posters
within a certain issue and discuss the recurring
symbols, color, text, etc. Focusing on one issue
students will design a poster while also thinking
about who their audience is and what they want to
communicate visually.
Social Advocacy Poster LP – Luis Navas-Reyes

Digital Art 2 - Self-initiated project

Challenge: Visually communicate a social issue effectively through design

Lesson Overview: Teach students to use art as a tool for social advocacy through digital design. Students
will engage in how artist inform, raise awareness, and or advocate for issues using color, font, text,
image, and subject matter. As a class students will discuss different kinds of social issues ranging from
drug addiction, texting and driving, to environmental issues. They will analyze posters within a certain
issue and discuss the recurring symbols, color, text, etc. Focusing on one issue students will design a
poster while also thinking about who their audience is and what they want to communicate visually.

Objective: Students will be able to...

 Recognize how artist use design elements to send a message

 Come up with a range of ideas through discussion, writing, and visual communication.
 Discuss the topics at hand and the audience that are most targeted or associated with the issue.
 Use design elements such as color, image, font, text, etc. to send their own message based on a
social issue.

FCPS POS:

Communicate - 1.a The student will investigate and develop a personal voice related to social and
contemporary issues to communicate meaning in artwork.
Create - 2.c - The student will experiment with and refine approaches to applying art fundamentals to
create and enhance original artworks.
Respond - 4.a.1 Investigate and describe how the purpose of art and design can vary.
Connect - 5.a.4 Analyze the role of art and design in historical and contemporary social and political
issues.
Learning sequence
Group discussion outline
Break the class into groups of 4-5 students each. Each group will get posters based on a specific issue for
example (green energy, climate change, bullying, drugs, texting while driving, etc.). On a large sheet of
paper students will write the topic in the center and then branch off based on the word map questions.
Introduction discussion questions?

 What are issues that are important to you in your everyday life?
 How might those issues be different than world issues?
 As a teen are the issues different than adult issues? Bullying, social media, peer pressure vs
climate change, world hunger
 How does social media play a role in issues?
 How have you changed your life to better the issue at hand?

Word map questions?

Students will be put into groups to discuss and interpret a variety of poster based on the same social
issues. In the presentation, there are five slides each with 3 to 5 poster images based on one issue
ranging from drug use, to green energy. Each group will create a word map with extending bubbles
focused on visual elements, function, and audience.

 What theme or social issue do your posters relate to?

 What are common symbols? colors? Text? Font
 How does text interact in the image?
 How is color important in the image?
 What or who is the subject of the image?
 What has the artist done to catch people eye?
 What function do your poster have? advocate? Raise awareness? Inform?
 How might the image make people feel? Or learn?
 Who is the audience?
 How might the audience react?
 What demographic/ generation is the poster targeting?

Class brainstorm list

 As a class come up with a list of issues

Research – time based

 Through the discussion students will hear on a variety of issues. Students will then research a
variety of issues, write them down, and a couple of facts on each issue. Students need to
research a minimum of 2 topics. Students will choose one to focus on. As students find articles,
videos, poster, music, and data online they will upload a minimum of two sources in google
classroom.

Sketching – time based

 Think about composition, ideas visually, and symbols.

Process – worktime
  Students have the options of using photoshop or illustrator
 Students are going to use the accumulation of knowledge they have earned from Digital Design
1 and 2 to create their poster

Daily teaching opportunity

 Present artist who work with social issues, even if its 5 min or less.

Closed Interview critique

 Students will hand their final poster image to a random person across the room who hasn’t
seen the poster. Each student will then anaylize the image for disng elements, function,
audience, and composition. They will then present what they believe their peers intentions
where with the artwork. The student will also be asked to say a positive and constructive
critique about the artwork. The original artworks creator can then talk a about their work and
whether or not it was interrupted the same way as the creator themselves. OR the creator can
take note and makes changes and then do a second critique. When students analyze the
artwork, the same questions used in the group discussion will be used.

Rubric

Criteria Exemplary Proficient Moderate Needs

(A) (B) (C) improvements
Theme: Communicate All aspects of the Most aspects of Some aspects of Final artwork did
a social issue to raise final artwork the final artwork the final artwork not communicate
awareness and cause communicate the communicate the communicate the the theme
change theme theme theme
Composition: Cohesive Some Cohesive Little Cohesive No cohesive
Cohesive composition composition composition composition composition.
through layering, through color, through color, text, through color, text,
proportion, and color text, and font and font and font
Technical All technical Most technical Some technical Meets little or no
Requirements: requirements met. requirements met. requirements met. technical
Poster 8x11 requirements.
Min of 3 combined
images

GRADE:

Arron notes:

More engaged learning

Less talking on my part and more conversation on student side

Time sequence of activates

Full engagement projects

Daily teaching opportunity – even things that may not match but ideas can cross over

Build up student’s ideas building before making, so they have multiple choices

Spark new ideas in students through teaching opportunity

Where have I grown the most- A lot of different areas and different stages

Set routines for engaged learning time

Have classroom policy – image use, images are sources not the artwork

Tell students the expectations for project