Semiotics Learning Summary

I chose Factory Farming as my social issue for our lesson in semiotics. Our first assignment was to collect statistics and figure out our representations. This is on another blog post but I will place it again below:

Social Issue: Factory Farms

Iconic Representation: Animals, cages, bars, overcrowding

Statistics:

1. A typical supermarket chicken today contains more than twice the fat, and about a third less protein than 40 years ago

2. Hog, chicken and cattle waste has polluted 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 states and contaminated groundwater in 17 states.

3. Egg-laying hens are sometimes starved for up to 14 days, exposed to changing light patterns and given no water in order to shock their bodies into molting. It’s common for 5% to 10% of hens to die during the forced molting process.

4. According to one study, 65 percent of all hogs tested had pneumonia-like lesions on their lungs. Researchers believe this is due to ammonia and other gases released from the massive amounts of manure that the animals come into contact with every day.

5. In 2009, Mercy For Animals went undercover at a Hy-Line Iowa egg factory and discovered that baby chickens who were of no egg-laying use to the buyers (read: male chicks), were put on a conveyor belt and sent directly to a grinder.

6. Many dairy cows living in factory farms are sent to slaughter before they reach the age of five. Though cows can naturally remain productive for 12-15 years, the intensive conditions of industrial dairies can take a toll on their health.

Next step, we collected images / pre-existing symbols for our social issue which I provided below:

I decided to place these within my notebook and add notes / doodles to get started on the creativity!

(I have to scan these in later)

Then I chose certain ones to "finalize" - this part I wanted to take these into illustrator because I knew I wanted to go with a very graphic look.

From the beginning of collecting my research I found I was more attracted to infographics, so that's the route I wanted to take with my final poster. Final poster was 36in x 48in.

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