The inspiration for my graphic design project was self-love. I wanted to create a magazine advertisement that promoted body positivity which will hopefully encourage all women to love their bodies. Growing up, I rarely saw images of women who looked like me. I’m black, with a really thick natural afro, and a curvy/plus size hourglass figure. I grew up seeing images of petite women with straight blonde hair and blue eyes. These women are just as gorgeous to me now as they were when I was growing up, but there is a standard in our society that this is the only type of beauty that should be accepted. My goal was to show images where you could not see the faces of these women. I feel we as human often create opinions about people on what we see when we see their face. Rather than focusing on the women’s facial beauty, I wanted to pay homage to the beauty that each of their bodies have and appreciate the differences in them. I chose the picture of the woman holding the tape measure up to her waist, because women often feel they have to be a certain size to be considered attractive. I specifically wanted this picture to be in black and white to evoke emotion and bring awareness. I chose the two body positivity pictures to be not only in color, but with added vibrance, to show that all women’s bodies should be respected and appreciated from athletic body types to full figured and every other body type in between. I did run into a challenge when creating my graphic design project. I used a lot of the techniques that we learned in the Photoshop tutorials and I was not happy with the way my project was turning out. I decided to use a new tool which was the Photoshop curve tool. This tool made each of my images pop in a way that inspired me to not scrap the entire project. I’d like to give credit to each of the website where I found the images. Each of these images are licensed to use under a free-to-remix license.
https://pixabay.com/photos/training-rmuscles-back-shoulders-828741/
Kiara Orr's Blog 
Hi Kiara, I absolutely love your concept for this project. I think your topic is important and needs to be talked about more and your message was very clear. You had the great idea of putting the top picture in black and white and the other two in color to create two different tones in your graphic. I would suggest making the text a little bit more vibrant because I think it’s very important to your visual and message and should pop more. You could try using a brighter color, making the words stand out more. You could also box the text in with a colored background behind it to make it stand out even more. Lastly, I suggest centralizing the text because it looks like it is set a little bit to the right. This would make it pop out even more and create balance. Great job!
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Hi Kiara! Your poster has a very powerful message! The imagery definitely portrays feminine strength and beauty, and the text is short and to the point, driving the message home to the viewer. The spacing of the photos is good, and I like the mix of black and white with color. The font compliments the poster overall, and the text is situated nicely within the 3 photos. The concept overall is very strong, and it’s difficult to give suggestions! One thing I could suggest, is the picture with the woman’s back is a little washed out, and maybe experimenting with the color on that could help. One thought I also had was that I like having the crisp borders between the pictures in the center, but maybe you could add some sort of soft border around the outside of the poster. Again, very strong piece, thanks so much for sharing!
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Kiara, I love your concept for your overall blog and as a plus size women myself I really appreciate you helping create content that speaks to this issue of body positivity. First off, I feel the overall graphic is great, it conveys the message you wanted to convey and looks very clean and polished. I would not change a thing about the top photo, I love that it is black and white and contrast of that darkness with the tangled measuring tape to the color positive photos looks great! I also wouldn’t change your text, other than maybe adding an outline to all of the lettering, which you can do by creating two of the same text boxes and overlapping each layer with one text being slightly bigger in a different color. There is just a couple areas where the text starts to get lost in the background due to the color being so similar. The only other recommendation I would give is to try and find another image that incorporates more ethnicities. The only reason I recommend this, is based on your own post you always felt you saw the same images of Caucasian females with straight blond hair, yet that is the exact image you used in the graphic. I like however that this image shows that female strength can be and is beautiful, I think you can convey the same graphic with someone who is not Caucasian. Overall, I love your graphic and it’s message.
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