Support Our Troops

I chose this design for my t-shirt, because I thought it was an effective way to remind the public what our troops fight for. The terrorist attack on September 11, 2001 will be etched into our minds forever; and for many members of our armed forces, it ultimately changed the path of their lives. Because of this, I chose this image in honor of those who were killed on September 11th, and remind people to support our troops as they continue to preserve our freedom and way of life.

When considering potential ideas for my custom tee-shirt, I kept going back to September 11th. When our country was attacked on 9/11 every American was affected in one way or another. I wasn't immediately sure how I wanted to design my tee-shirt, but then I thought of Elizabeth Daley's essay on the literacy of multimedia.

Although it dealt mostly with the cinema, Daley included a few great concepts regarding images. She wrote, "[l]ike text, multimedia can enable us to develop concepts and abstractions, comparisons and metaphors, while at the same time engaging our emotional and aesthetics sensibilities" (Daley 2). I thought that this excerpt described my design objective quite well. I wanted to engage the minds and hearts of the public through a pathetic appeal. Because of this, I chose to limit the amount of text on the tee-shirt and let the graphics speak for themselves.

Ultimately, I wanted this tee-shirt to convey my message to support our troops through the use of limited words and effective images. I chose the image of the twin towers site with the American flag behind it, because I knew it would not get lost in translation. As Daley pointed out, it's very easy for an audience to misinterpret the author's message, but there are some things that cannot be confused. Also, I wanted to make the shirt with two sides, because people are naturally curious when a line ends with an ellipsis (...). The public will be interested to see what comes next on the shirt, and I wanted to present the message in a simple yet powerful way. I let the images of the design do most of the "talking", and then included a few words to enhance the meaning.