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Discipline - Anthropology

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Project: Organisation that develops an online national campaign which creates awareness for changing the date of Australia day from the 26th of January

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Project: Organisation that develops an online national campaign which creates awareness for changing the date of Australia day from the 26th of January

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I would be designing, creating and distributing official merchandise for this campaign suitable for our target  audience (as well as a selection acceptable for a wide range of viewers).

Merchandise is kept simple and easy.  We will be distributing pens,  water bottles, caps, fridge magnets and t shirts.

It will be available on the website although we will also distribute it other ways as a way of advertising the campaign.

Maggie and I will work closely together to advertise the campaign with the distribution of merchandise.  We will also include our sponsers on our merchandise to show that we have others behind us and believe in what we are trying to achieve.

I will help Simon with certain aspects of the website as well as being in charge of flyers and brochures about our campaign (work with maggie on this)

Overall goal to create awareness on topic and start a trend with the merchandise to get the word out there.

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My role is the marketer for out online campaign.

This will be done through:

1) Social media (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter)

2) Bus Ads

3) Billboards

4) Flyers at schools and cafes

5) Radio interview about the website

My role also includes being the filmmaker, with the films being available on the website and social media

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Our campaign primarily aims to raise and spread awareness regarding "Changing the Date" for Australia Day. Thus, working closely with our historian, filmmaker and website designer we have come together to create a walk to raise awareness and a website with videos to show why it is an important aspect of what makes us Australian. Our walk will primarily aim to raise awareness, however, it will also be raising funds for aboriginal communities around Australia who are struggling in terms of employment, education and daily nourishments.

We are planning to launch our campaign (website) (towards the end of this year) that can secure enough awareness and funds for our walk/march, which will in turn bring about enough "noise", which will hopefully appeal to policy makers and government officials.

Through the research conducted by the group and myself, we intend to make a difference, a stride forward in "Changing the Date" of Australia, day to a collectively unified day of the month. Together as a team, I believe we cooperated flawlessly, which assisted us to come up with plans and events to slowly but steadily "change the date". Australia should be the pinnacle of unification and we intend to make it "the" pinnacle of unification.

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                                                            Project Research and Plans

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                                                            Project Research and Plans

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Research :

As a cultural anthropologist, my primary area of research enabled me to realise that Australia Day, a day of "celebration and unity " for "all Australians" is more of a slogan piece rather than an actual concept.

Studies have shown that ”Australia Day” should be a day of mourning and reflection, due to the invasion in 1788, to the Aboriginal community it is seen as the “invasion day”.

Australian communities should take into considerations the perspectives of the aboriginal culture, the 1988 march brought about a slogan stating, ”white Australia should have a black history."

Through my research regarding the cultural and spiritual aspects of Australia day and how/why it impacts the native aboriginal community, has led me to believe that the constant celebrations by the on the 26th of January has brought about a division in the larger Australian Society.

The Aboriginal community believe that the 26th of January marks the “Anniversary of the white men’s seizure of our country”, which leads to why the aboriginal community regards Australia Day as a day of mourning.

Furthermore, my research shows that a larger Australian community (consisting of white, Indian and Asian) support the Aboriginal community and stand together in "changing the date" of Australia day.

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Website Design choices;

Research/Idea generation:

I began researching and idea generation by listing various themes and elements of Australia, Australia day, Aboriginal culture and other related subjects I could use to represent our message.

Theme colours;

Blue, red and white: The colours of the Australian flag. Presenting the message as a national patriotic issue that all Australians should carefully consider.

Green and gold: The national colours of Australia. Established by the Governor-General(1984) on advice from Prime Minister Bob Hawke(top bloke).  The gold represents the golden wattle (Acacia pycnantha).

Black, yellow and red: “Black – represents the Aboriginal people of Australia. Yellow circle – represents the Sun, the giver of life and protector. Red – represents the red earth, the red ochre used in ceremonies and Aboriginal peoples' spiritual relation to the land.” (Harold Thomas).

Testing Ideas:

On paper I liked the idea of using more indigenous based imagery and colour however when done in practice applied to website design, it’s extremely difficult to pull off. This is for a few reasons;
Most aboriginal art is done with warm and dark colours such as red, yellow and black. This is because of the pallet available to be made from the Australian landscape. Unfortunately these colours make irritating backgrounds to any form of text, literally straining the eyes to read. It’s easy to see why every popular website such as Youtube, Google and Facebook use white backgrounds when replacing it with an earthier colour.
Additionally, Aboriginal art is usually made out amazing vibrant patterns. Again in the context of an art piece alone it’s beautiful, but does not work well with text. The more detail in the pattern, the more incongruity when trying to read larger texts.
Australia’s green and gold has the same problems as red and black. I could create a white area specifically for the text and only colour the borders however these colours sort of lose their essence when combined with a large amount of blank white.
The red and blue of the Australian flag works perfectly for website backgrounds. For example, bright red is the banner colour of Youtube. And blue is the banner colour of Facebook. I am concerned though of the heavy English connections those colours also bring to the table. An easy and fair argument could be made that those colours do not reflect the aboriginal plight as strongly as red, yellow and black for fairly obvious reasons. But I think I can fairly argue that as the topic is something all Australians should consider which includes everyone regardless of culture, making those colours a unifying force. And I would also suggest they try using red, yellow and black as a website theme for website primarily used for text.

Refinement of selected ideas:

After trying different styles and orientations with different colour schemes I had previously outlined from the research phase, I had established a final design I could refine. The final design actually kept a bit of everything. As I found any one element alone would subtlety not feel quite like the right message. After exploring combing different concepts, I felt that cohesion could be achieved between the different themes elements if done correctly. I tried using the red and blue as header and footer, green and gold as the title and red, yellow and black as the background. The trick was overcoming the outlined issue of red, yellow and black as a background to text. I first tried playing with the opacity to keep the colours but make them lighter and less intense. This was progress but more was needed because I could only lighten the colours so much before they grey too much. I then tried breaking the colours up even more by creating a pattern with the new lightened colours. Aboriginal art usually doesn’t have uniformity to its patterns but I chose to use a grid like structure to make reading easier.

Conclusion:

Overall I tried to keep it simple enough to fit on a phone screen but also penitent enough to fit the subject. I think I achieved those goals. However I think I could also do better in time with more understanding of such a sensitive but important subject. I could have added a shines to the header and footer, or even a wavy animation but I think those would start to be too much exuberant. I think with a more static website that it gets a more humble poster feel.

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Comparison between Federation Day and Australia Day

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Comparison between Federation Day and Australia Day

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Australia Day
•Landing of Captain Artur Phillip

•Beginning of Frontier War

•Became a controversial national holiday

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Comparison between Federation Day and Australia Day

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Comparison between Federation Day and Australia Day

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Federation Day
•Australia becoming a federation

•The six self-governing colonies unite to become the commonwealth of Australia

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Federation Day- January 1st
Anzac Day- April 25th
Constitution Day - July 9th
Opening of the first Federal Parliament - May 9th
The day Indigenous people were allowed constitutional rights- May 27th

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pic of Captain Arthur arriving in Sydney

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pic of Frontier War

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Fridge Magnets

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T shirt

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Water bottles

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Caps

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Been working alongside the ICEA Foundation to come up with a short film, shot in Broome WA, giving the stories of locals and explaining why Australia Day is a day of mourning, not one for celebration