When beginning to create my manifesto I had to actually find out what a manifesto was. It’s described as being a declaration of ones aims, policy or intention. This is usually through a movement or governmental policies. For me, my manifesto would be representation of a direction or personal law I want to follow in life in order achieve success, or more importantly, keep the right mindset. This would help me follow my goal or give me the inspiration to keep going.
From here, I started to research others manifestos, many being famous quotes from the likes of Martin Luther King with the ‘I Have A Dream’ speech from 1963 or John.F Kennedys ‘Land a Man on the Moon’ speech.
I wanted my manifesto to be short, with few words to remind me what was most important for me in life.
The next step was to create a mood board based on the type of design I wanted. Before I began searching I already had in mind a design which would consist of bold typography on white background. I didn’t want any other graphical aspects to the design other than the font so that the message stood loud and proud of what it represented.
I decided to go with the quote ‘“Turn Your Wounds Into Wisdom” for me this makes me think no matter what your going through or even if bad situations arise, you can use them to your advantage or even learn something from it, essentially turning something negative into a positive.
I started with creating a paper sketch of my idea, plotting out a grid 16.3cm across 26.5 down so that there was a 2cm boarder around the circumference of the grid. This consisted of 6, 2.7 centimetre boxes across as the biggest words ‘wisdom’ and ‘wounds’ each have 6 letters. The grid had 5, 5.3cm boxes down for the 5 words in the quote. This guideline was to ensure that each of the letters would be the same size in relation to each letter as well as the spacing between each words and the black background I wanted it to fill.
I tried a few different ways to make the letters. I started with drawing my idea on a page to keep as reference, then copied each letter onto a new sheet and cut them out. I found this way some letters where bigger than others even just by a few millimetres but this threw of the whole word, placing parts of letters outside the background. In the end, I cut each 5.3×2.7 rectangle individually and drew the type edge to edge, using the straight lines I had already cut rather than redrawing them to cut again.
I had created the first poster with all white typography glued onto a black background that was then stuck to a white page, so there would be a white border. This idea came from my research where an example had the lettering touching the white border.
I redesigned it so that the words ‘wounds’ and ‘wisdom’ stood out from the other text and broke up the rest of the sentence. I used red card for the word wounds as it connotes pain, blood or danger. For the word wisdom, I used holographic card so that both words stood out in different ways.
The final version of my design was made using Adobe Illustrator, which is a programme I do not have much experience with and because of this found it hard to fully recreate the idea I had in mind, such as having the I in the word ‘Into’ lining up exactly to the border of the black box. Taking this experience, I want to better learn how to use illustrator and recreate this with the knowledge I will have then obtained. Overall, I am happy with the the outcome of the digital version and my design as I like minimalistic posters and messages that inspire me to better my mental health. This phrase for me, is something I have implemented into my life and helps to remind me to make a good thing from a bad situation. 