Race and Relationships

Research:

Throughout history interracial couples have suffered traumatic experiences regarding their choice to date someone outside of their own ethnicity, this has been an ongoing problem for hundreds of years and still cause turmoil in our society today. In 1967 congress passed a law making it legal for interracial couples to marry, although this still wouldn't stop most people from denying and shaming the idea of interracial marriage it would make it legal.
Despite the objection of many people interracial relations are amongst us and showing a sign of rapid growth, 'looking beyond newlyweds, 6.3% of all marriages were between spouses of different races in 2013, up from less than 1% in 1970' (PewResearch). Although interracial marriages are on the rise, the negative biases surrounding them are still prevalent in society today, despite the the opposition from American's interracial relationships do have hope. 'As more interracial couples marry and have children, the stigmas associated with such relationships will gradually fade away.' predicted Daniel Lichter, a sociology professor. "Mixed-race children have blurred America's color line. They often interact with others on either side of the racial divide and frequently serve as brokers between friends and family members of different racial backgrounds," said Lichter (NationalDesertNews).

"But America still has a long way to go." (NationalDesertNews)

Interracial relationships is known today as a social problem which affects thousands of relationships daily. Although it was once a serious political problem in the United States, it advanced passed those days but still has much more acceptance to gain throughout our community. 'According to the poll, 87% of Americans now approve of marriages between black and white partners, compared to 4% of Americans in 1958.' (MIC) Although these numbers do show signs of improvements, its still not quite 100%. 'The most conservative of opponents argue, "marriage should be between a man and a woman who share the same upbringing, skin color and cultural background. But you know what? We're not buying it. Love should be colorblind and gender blind."' (YourTango).


My stance on the situation is as simple as it gets, LOVE WINS! I am all in favor for the happiness of any individual, these choices of others do not directly affect myself or wellbeing so i'm in no position to disapprove. All in favor for bi-racial babies, please rise!

Design Statement:

Imagery-

For imagery I would like to create something stylish, yet still simple enough to represent the bigger picture here which is LOVE! I researched several different ways to creatively design elegant hearts that represent the focal point, this idea can be found HERE.  I also found cute characters pictures on their wedding day, I thought they would be great to incorporate in, I would make the characters two different ethnicities however this vision may be a bit to advanced for me, click HERE to view the design. I also decided I would take several original photos of my family members who happen to be an interracial couple, in these photos I had the couple place their hands together showing off their wedding ring as a symbol of unity, these photos will be used as a backup. 

Adjectives-  

1. beautiful 
2. blind
3. brave
4. different
5. flawless 
6. true
7. genuine
8. harmless
9. united
10. admirable 

Typeface- 

I did not want to overload on fonts because I plan on relying a lot on imagery to play a big part of the design element. I do wish to achieve a clean, crisp and classic look with the typeface, because my topic is something that has been a conflict for such a long time I wanted to use text that appeared to be more modern to represent the growth it has experienced. After reading the article suggested to us on fonts I realized the importance of text in a design. Although I always knew it was important, It has more impact than one could possibly imagine. I browsed for several different styles of typeface to fit the characteristics that I was searching for and narrowed it down to two: 

1. Blunt
2. Another Shabby

 I found these fonts HERE!

I decided on these two fonts because they both embodied the style I am looking for, I will use the blunt typeface style for the areas that have information and need to be clearly understood. Another Shabby typeface will come in to play for the more artistic elements of type, possibly my poster's headline to create more of a carefree and loving type of feel. 

Theme:

The theme I would like to achieve is clean and weightless, I would like to depict an image that is crisp, bright and elegant. I want it to be bright and refreshing. The colors I want to use are symbolic of the topic. I want to use an elegant red to of course to symbolize love and also the suffering that these couples have tolerated because of their choices. The second color I want to incorporate into the design is an ivory, or light beige I feel that this color is crisp but it also to represent the color of human pigmentation, of course people come in all shapes and colors I feel this color is quite diverse. I plan on using grey as a backup color in place of the ivory if it doesn't work well with the design. I found several helpful poster designs HERE that helped me think of a theme.