Playing around with YES

 Our country is holding a referendum in October seeking to amend our Constitution to recognise Indigenous Australians; and to create an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, to enable Aboriginal people to provide advice to Parliament on matters that directly affect them.

I will be voting YES and have begun to think about ways to promote the YES vote.

On Sunday I played around with some wood type to see if I could print a few small A4 posters.

Here's a bunch of layouts which haven't really gone anywhere yet.

Like most things I seem to be trying at the moment, after plenty of action and completion of things in readiness for markets in Scotland later in the year, I am tinkering around the edges of things with nothing yet being 'done'. 

I feel fortunate to have the technology on my phone that lets me 'flip' photos so easily; enabling me to see how type would look like if it was printed. Much less messy than inking and proofing. And so much quicker than setting it all, locking it all up and then undoing it.

1. My first thought with this was that a small lead-in on the top left would work. But no.

2. So I moved it over to the right and took it a bit higher and balanced that by moving the 'centre panel' around a bit.

3. Then I thought that the big yet short stumpy YES should be in the middle, with a larger YES to anchor the bottom, which would mean also moving the smaller YES to down to the 'bottom panel' And the top right YES seemed to need to be lower down the page. 

4. Thinking the thinner small YES would be better at the top, and the slightly heavier small YES would work better at the bottom.

5. Because I was less than accurate placing the small thin YES above, I then thought about what happened if I deliberately stepped it? And ran the other small YES top to bottom rather than left to right?

6. Looking back, I probably should have tried to step it upwards, instead I went and got another thinner YES and tucked it in.

7. And then moved it out to the right for better balance.

At this point I sort of gave up and went away to think about it all and come up with a final arrangement to proof. Still waiting for that to happen!

Here are some of the things that are going through my head:

I think I probably need to sort the three large YES blocks into positions I am happy with, then work out how best to fill those smaller spaces that are left.

I am beginning to wonder if I should 'justify' the three large blocks - although I think that would mean the spaces left are too small to work with.

I always prefer to have an uneven number of elements so think I will get rid of the skinny YES and revert back to five. Although it could sit atop the other thin YES like a building block?

I am not sure that the vertical reading of the smaller YES actually works.

I think I should see what it looks like to step the small YES upwards in the top right - it might be the only point of interest/difference that it needs (imagining 4. with a proper step up).

I am thinking of printing in black, red and yellow - the colours of the Indigenous flag - and so maybe there doesn't need to be heaps of variation as the colours may offer that?

It could be said that I sometimes end up overthinking things!

And yes, after staring at all of these images for so long, the S in the bottom large YES is definitely upside down!