Vintage Parody Posters

     Today, in Grade 10 Geography, we began creating “Vintage Parody Posters” about the use of Fossil Fuels. (We are currently working on a unit about Natural Resources and already discussed minerals prior to Spring Break.) Globally, the discovery of oil peaked around the 1950s-1960s and has been in decline ever since. Despite this statistic, the consumption of oil and other fossil fuels has been rising every year.

     To illustrate our learning about Fossil Fuels and this issue we decided to create “Vintage Parody Posters” which are created to look like they belong in the 1950s-1960s (when discovery peaked) but include information and statistics that we know in 2013. We used these vintage-styled social media posters as our inspiration as they mimicked the style of the time period while using modern information.

Everything Ages Fast Vintage Tech Posters. (2011). Uploaded by Moma Propaganda. Available online at:  http://www.thedonutproject.com/inspiration/everything-ages-fast-vintage-technology-ads/

     In partners, students can choose to use their poster to advertise either a specific fossil fuel, fossil fuels in general, suggestions to reduce use or alternative forms of energy. Here is a list of topic options that we came up with as a large group:

- Oil

- Natural Gas

- Coal

- Fossil Fuels (in general)

- Recycling

- Public Transport

- Walking/Bike Riding

- Solar Panels

- Tidal Energy

- Hydro Dams

- Wind Power

     After discussing the time period and looking at examples of advertising we agreed that the 1950s ads were often “very cheesy”, featured overly-enthusiastic characters and made everything seem positive. These were all characteristics that we wanted to maintain in our posters. With me as a facilitator, we came up with the following criteria for our posters by looking at what was included in the social media vintage posters:

1 ) Must include a 1-3 word main title

     (ex) Fantastic Fossil Fuels!

2 ) Must include a subtitle (slogan)

     (ex) Ruin the environment at your leisure!

3 ) Main image

      (ex) Featuring a positive image, overly enthusiastic, cheesy smiles

4 ) 200 word paragraph of information

      - This is where they include their research about the fossil fuel and back

         up the statements made in the subtitle. How are fossil fuels destroying the

         environment? What policies are put in place? What are some examples of

         environmental disasters occurring from fossil fuels.

5 ) Logo

      - This can either be an image logo or a textual logo done in a font that they

         associate with themselves.

            

     As of right now all of my students have chosen their poster topic and are currently working on creating their subtitles and paragraphs before they begin the actual poster creation. After a quick survey, I discovered that almost 90% of them would prefer to create their poster on the computer so I know that tomorrow I will need to spend a few minutes reviewing how to search for images that can be used and modified as well as how to properly reference any images that they use. (Good thing that my group in my Internet forEducators class created a wiki on “How NOT to Steal from the Internet!”)