The mailshot had to be the same size as the envelope provided (approx 16 x 11.5cm).
10 copies had to be made; 1 was sent to the college of art in the post and the other 9 were given recipients but not sent. All recipients also had to be relevant to the message and be designed in a visual way relevant to teh rest of the work.
I had this time decided to stick firmly on the idea that the Russian government is becoming a dictatorship, not a democracy and that it has most recently started doing this by taking away free speech. The most important thing to see here is that I am not focussing on the media side of things at all for this work, just the idea that free speech is gone and that is one way that the government is implementing dictatorship.
I wanted to use the strong imagery from the posters but obviously the TV image was no longer relevant to the project so I had to think of something to represent free speech.
In the evaluations for my posters, someone suggested that I use a microphone to represent free speech instead of a TV. The TV was supposed to represent media, but anyway this was a good starting point for the new imagery.
After exprimenting with the microphone a bit I realised that the shape is pretty ambiguous and resembles things other than a microphone (ice cream for example) so I had to think of something else to represent speech.
I decided to use the image of a megaphone. I think the megaphone is a good image because it is clear and easily recognisable as well as having connotations of protests and political marches, both of which are the ultimate examples of free speech.
I started experimenting with using the megaphone head instead of the TV and I think it worked really well.
The megaphone gives a really robotic feel to the character and took away the mainly human look of the original TV head. I chose to keep this as a main piece of imagery to use in the mail shots.
Now I had to choose what to have as my mailshot. I quickly thought of having a visually appealing envelope with a poster inside and then some other kind of note or interactive leaflet or something. I knew that the envelope and the poster's physical design wouldn't take too long to figure out so I focussed on the extra which I hadn't quite decided on yet.
I first looked at using a flat packed net with instrucions to create something which the recipient could make themselves and that would push the topic into their head and hopefully keep reminding them about the cause of the mailshot.
I decided to try and make a megaphone because I had already come up with this image as a good representation of free speech.
After loads of drawing and making and redrawing the net I actually did come up with two seperate nets to slot together and make a small cubic-styled megaphone, but with the amount of effort it took for me to make I had some thoughts that it could be too difficult.
I also started experimenting with wording to try and make something bold that would interest the recipient enough to make them have to open the envelope and read more rather than just throw it away. I tried a few different approaches and finally settled on the phrase "THIS SENTENCE CAN NOT BE PUBLISHED IN RUSSIA", working with the idea that it is a sentence with two meanings; one explaining that Russia is a censored country where publishing things is controlled but also the sentence itself being anti-russian government would be censored and not published.
I liked this idea at the time and thought it was pretty clever but I was a bit worried that it could be misunderstood and also that it could relate a bit too much to media by saying "publish".
During a group crit it seemed that everybody agreed that the net would be far too difficult and uninteresting and the sentence didn't seem to attract any attention or interest. So I was going in completely the wrong direction and had to seriously think about what to do to make my mailshot interesting, informative and memorable.
I started working on the actual design of the envelope to try and get the project working again and experimented with designing a slightly more interesting net than the basic original envelope used. I came up with the idea of having the envelope more like a little parcel than an envelope to make it less boring.
I think this works pretty well, it's a bit more interesting than a normal envelope and the star sealing it is quite a cool touch.
I then started to work on the front of the envelope and had a few ideas of what to put on it, eventually settling on using an image of Dmitri Medvedev (president of Russia). There is also a speech bubble coming from the president's mouth saying "I'M SORRY, THIS TEXT WAS DEEMED INNAPPROPRIATE AND HAS BEEN REMOVED".
I liked this a lot more than the original sentence because I think it draws the reader in and makes them curious enough to want to open the evelope and find out what the whole thing is about. The image also makes Medvedev look really sinister because of the kind of inverted colours and this just supports the message that i'm trying to show. I used the same colours as before because I think they are good representation of Russia's colours.
Next I worked on the poster which I knew would use the megaphone-headed prisoner image as a representation of free speech being captured and controlled. I chose to use the same kind of headline at the top of the poster just like the original text poster but I changed the words to say "THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT HAS TAKEN FREE SPEECH". I thought that it was simple and explains everything that it needs to to tell the reader what the posters are about. There is the another headline style line a bit further down which says "THIS AFFECTS EVERYBODY", making sure the reader knows that it is directed at them. Under this is a short paragraph explaining in a bit more detail and then a website address for more information.
I think this poster is simple with some memorable imagery and works pretty well in explaining the point of the mailshot.
Now that I had the envelope and the poster inside, I had to come up with the third item to make for the mailshot. I drew down a few ideas for some point-of-sale style items to go inside but they all looked a bit tacky and there wasnt much point in them so eventually I settled for making a thick megaphone shaped flier which simply had some informationon the back and the website for further information.
The idea for the poster and these fliers is that they could just be around at someone's place of work in a busy public place or something and then people would see them and be nterested to know what they were about and hopefully do some more research and visit the website.
I also created this mailing list for the mailshots by choosing places or people that could reach a wide audience.
The first address is for the college of art to check that it can actually survive the mailing process and work properly as an envelope.
The next 2 addresses are for 2 of the top performing schools in the country for A level results. I chose these because these students may be the highest academically and might have a greater interest in the subject or may have more influence in the world of learning.
The next 2 are 2 of the largest mewspaper and magazine publishers in the country. I have added them to the list in the hope that they might learn about the issues and the importance of the subject and could publish more information in newpaper or magazine articles.
The next 4 are the most popular UK celebrities on twitter. I chose these because some people really aspire to celebrities and if the celebrities became interested and decided to talk about it over twitter then they could reach litterally hundreds of thousands of people in the UK.
The last on the list is the most popular library in the UK. I chose this because its a place that people go to learn among other things and it could be read by a lot of different kinds of people in the libray.
Here is the final designed mailing list.
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