Delivery
Barbara introduced the unit and brief to the students. In doing so, she was well aware that, the extra freedom students had in choosing their own cause would also present them with greater challenges from the outset. Barbara accommodated this by assigning generous time for the 'investigation' stage of the unit.
The investigation stage
This started with a serious look into the art of visual communication – finding what worked, what didn't, and the reasons why. Barbara keeps a stockpile of relevant news articles and magazines and the class made full use of this resource to study advertising campaigns for their use of language, font, colour and any visual or linguistic gimmicks. The class also did a close analysis of these campaigns to identify target audiences and how the campaign attempted to reach them.
Research was also carried out on the T-shirt campaign phenomenon, to assess why this has been such a popular medium for so many organisations.
Barbara then asked each student to brainstorm potential organisations to champion in their t-shirt design, to find causes that had a strong personal resonance. "Students had to pick an organisation that had an issue they were passionate about that they could express in a visual medium. We had everything from prostate cancer to Starship Hospital, Movember, Dyslexia, Rainbow Youth and Greenpeace. They had complete freedom as long as they were able to justify their choice"
The students then started research on their chosen organisation, identifying the underlying factors that made it a good cause. This research informed the creation and prioritising of key factors to be used in conjunction with themes related to the organisation. The themes created a general message that was specific to each student's cause, while the key factors provided the best methods of getting that message across visually. Barbara explains that a key difference between this project and the previous year's unit was the greater emphasis and time spent on developing these elements in the investigation stage.
The students then began sketching designs, combining different texts, colours, fonts and graphics on templates with a basic t-shirt outline. This proved an excellent resource for the students to trial some of their designs and slogans to get a sense of how their ideas would look in reality.
These designs were then tested on people that the students identified as their target audience. Instead of providing the students with ready-made questionnaires, Barbara's 'plan a test' sheet put the responsibility into the hands of the students. This gave examples and provided a simple structure for creating a questionnaire that would determine whether the students had fulfilled the requirements of three specification areas: 'visual communication', 'chosen cause', and 'functional criteria.'
Design stage
Barbara moved on to the design stage as quickly as possible, adamant that the project not be too heavily focussed on theory or drawing, and to break up the pace of the project to maintain student interest. Unlike the previous year's unit, the students all used the same T-shirt pattern, which Barbara feels, gave more of a focus on workmanship and high quality outcomes.
"Having the same pattern gave the class more time to learn some practical skills and for all to work towards an identified set of success criteria for construction– how to deal with knit fabrics, use the over-locker and follow instructions. Generally it was a case of me demonstrating and students going off and doing it. I didn't have any written instructions - as part of the literacy strategy they had to listen, record their own notes, then go off and sew."
The set T-shirt pattern enabled time for students to explore the two screen printing techniques. Barbara taught them – silkscreen and photographic. "They did tons of sampling and practicing, working out how to build the layers of their print up to create a visual image. While the designs may look simple, there's actually weeks and weeks of work in it. This worked to my advantage as I really wanted students to plan for themselves – how many lessons they would need to make a particular layer, what resources would be needed and what they would do if something went wrong."
Self -Evaluation
It was important for Barbara that the students gained a level of responsibility and ownership of the project. Ongoing self-evaluation was encouraged throughout. Students were asked to reflect on their outcomes as well as their own performance, including aspects such as timekeeping and the finish of their work, and an overall account of what they were pleased with and what they thought needed improvement.
