2005.03.06 - Stop Animal Testing Contest

[will]

Hi, Guys. I check from time to time your impresive entries on all of the comunity contests and I dare to place one myself. I don't know if you have seen or not my previous signature but I am a vegetarian, in fact a vegan one. I appreciate the life of all creatures and respect the right to live our own decisions. As a vegan I am in touch with several organizations that care for the environment and the consequences of our ways of acting as a society. It's not an easy thing to avoid hitting a mosquito by mistake but it's a habit that can be learned but as you might deduce I am not the soul of the parties when I start talking about food and veganism. At the beginning is ok and everybody is interested but when I start describing how a chicken lives I found the walls stay in the same place but all the rest is gone :P

Well, let's focus on the contest. I would like to see ideas for a poster related to "ANIMAL TESTING". I know is a hard thing to do mostly because you will have to read a little but I think is something worth the try. For the infomation you can check on PETA (People for ethical threatment of animals). If you are too sensitive don't check the videos because sometimes the truth is too shocking and I don't want you to feel uncomfortable with the subject.

I know that I am risking not receiveing any entry but I would like to give it a try at least to give myself the chance to believe I am not the only one that believe in this cause. All I will ask you to do is to try to make the material as original as posible. If you want to make a drawing but think you are not too good give it a try, I am sure that whatever is truth will always be as Keats says beautiful. If you want to make a collage try to use stock photos, a cool place to download this royalty free pictures is Stock.Xchng.

No matter what you want to design try to do it thinking on the posibility of this helping others to realize of the truth that is "to live a life in every breath" respecting the rights of the other beings to have that "breath of life".

Thanks a lot for reading this and wish you the best of lucks in everything.

The deadline for this contest is Monday 14th 2005.

[will]

I am not a cartoonist as you can see but I wanted to give you the first idea that came to my mind. The purpose is to show others that this is happening only because the many doesn't open their eyes to the few.

[character]

Wow I Think Is A Great Contest Idea...i Ll Be Posting Something Soon

[dudi]

Hi, Will!
I am not a vegetarian myself and I really like fishing (it's true - "catch and release" fishing), but I think that we should be very careful and protective with the natural environment. It's a great theme and I will post an entry soon.
Deadline would be March 14th, right?

[will]

Guys I must thank you in advance for the contribution. I wasn't sure if this would attract the attention of the members and I am glad to see you in.

[character]

hey Willl,,, here is my Entry ,,,
Sicence Without humanity was my concept

[will]

I like the collage a lot but the fonts are hard to read, do you think you can enhance them somehow ? The posibilities are: change of colour, a line around the fonts, a change of fonts. The "humanity" font is pretty interesting and goes perfectly well with the background but need just a little attention so it can be easy to be read. Do you think you can work the canvas on a bigger size, something like the one I posted ? I would like to show these works to peta.org when the contest is over so they can use the winners as postcards, if it is ok with all of you. So if you consider this as an extra incentive I hope your art will help us to create a better world.

Remember that on these contests multiple winners are chosen so don't be afraid of my words when I like a design. I have a wide perspective of the posibilities.

[character]

the fonts are perfectly readable on the actual size of the poster .. the actual size is 12" by 9 " I made a colour print of this work and it came out really good..... ill post a bigger version

[will]

That's great man !! Again I tell you that when I see it more often I start to like a lot more the "without humanity" yet the science font seems too clean. Maybe one of the fonts here: http://www.1001fonts.com/fonts_overv...category_id=10 can be an interesting choice for that matter.

[character]

yea u r rite Will ,,, Ill change the Science font to make it look more intersting

[ch_peters]

Hi Will,

Here is my first entry at designcontest.com. As you can see i'm a designer... not a writer, so if there are any suggestions for a better pay-off, let me know!

[sushi]

I have a dog, i love it more than i ever loved my parents or girls.
Any animal has got his own personality, mind, and feel pain in his body and mind.
See you soon with some works.

[will]

ch_peters, thanx for the idea man. It's really impressive. I like the concept of the morphing of a human animal and an animal. Also I like the text but I would suggest you to use some other fonts. My professor used to say: "There are 2 things a designer must never use: Arial Family and a neon green jacket" Try to explore the posibilities that offer you the freeware fonts. Places like 1001fonts.com have amazing fonts categorized for every need. If you are not familiar with the use of the conceptual fonts always try to look at your creation like it would be done by a third person and ask yourself what feeling is the text producing in you. If your answer is "none", you definitely need to change the font.

Since you took the "vivisection" idea maybe you can use a font for "vivisection" and another font for "don't make you beautiful". If you do so write the word vivisection and try to focus on how you would see it enhanced by the typography... which font would express the meaning to the top ? For this you will have to take a look at as many fonts as posible but I am sure you will find the right one if you take the time.

Again thanx a lot for participating.

[will]

Sushi, I feel the same way and I am glad you will be participating in the contest. Be Welcome.

[will]

ch_peters, I keep looking at your design and I really like the collage you made... a lot. But I don't think the message is contained in the words you used. When I look at your work the first thing that comes to my mind is "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and truly is. You'll see the problem with cosmetic companies is that the testing they do on animals comes from making them swallow the entire cosmetics (to see if they die by asphixia and by these to prove, I don't know, that animals die from asphixia) to test the make-ups in the face of the animals to see if that makes them have an alergic reaction, etc. All in the sake of a beauty that cannot be found there but on the "things" they torture.

So what do you think if we change the message a little guiding it to the make-up industry. Maybe the slogan "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" or "what do you see when you look into her eyes,... because that is all that matters" or "beauty is not an industry that tortures and kills animals, right ?" or "Animal suffering... doesn't make you beautiful"... Maybe the last one goes more with your concept and doesn't change your words too much.

Thanx for the patience.

[character]

hi Will here is another enty

[will]

Hard but nice use of the colours to guide the viewer. Thanx Character your participation is always appreciated.

Guys if it is ok with you I will extend the contest until friday 18 (the deadline won't be extended more than that) to allow some other members to participate. Plz. know that the art presented by now is great and I have not much to change on your presentations because of the uniqueness of your vision that I appreciate a lot.

Thanx a lot,

[will]

I was requested to provide you with more information on the subject to guide future presentations so let's begin:

Animal testing is used in the world for many things, from the very cosmetics the girls use to the drugs used to fight cancer. Eventhough some of these uses might sound more altruist the fact is that the suffering caused to the animals on the process goes far beyond the limit. For example, the following was taken from http://www.uncaged.co.uk/news/2002/iams.htm and talks about how cruel these actions can be.

Iams is a well known company that produces food for cats and dogs, but these are the atrocities they comit right now:

• Force-feeding dogs which resulted in muscle tremors, vomiting and frothing around the mouth.
• Six week old English Pointer puppies were fed a zinc deficient diet resulting in lesions, hair loss, frothing at the mouth, eye discharge, ulcerations and blisters.
• Mice, hamsters, rabbits, dogs and pigs were involved in a lethal poisoning experiment to establish how quickly they would die. The animals suffered from bloody diarrhoea, kidney and liver damage and were seen vomiting and shaking before dying. Tissue samples were also obtained from healthy animals for comparison. Pointer dogs were shot in the head and then had their blood drained. Mice, hamsters and rabbits were killed by a blow to the head.
• Twenty-four female beagle dogs were overfed and starved respectively to estimate body fat. All were killed and their bodies were drained of blood and passed through a carcass grinder.
• Sixteen kittens were fed a deficient diet resulting in eye damage. Blood was then drawn by puncturing the heart. They were then gassed.
• Domestic kittens were subjected to ammonia intoxication. They began to vomit and displayed severe lethargy within 4 hours.

These are warnings about procter & gamble actions:

• The secretly filmed video shows P&G killing 48 monkeys to test a nasal decongestant already in human use.
• Over 500 companies produce like-for-like products which are safe for consumers, that are no longer or have never been tested on animals.
• Physiological differences between species means animal testing can be dangerously misleading as an accurate indication of human reactions, hence dangerous drugs like eraldin, suprofen, opren, thalidomide, troglitazone, and many more are inflicted on human patients.
• Animal tests have failed to show the dangerous effects that P&G's own commercial products have caused, e.g. Oil of Ulay New Skin Discovery and Max Factor Active Response Cream which caused high eye and skin irritation, despite the fact that, as Dr White a consultant at St. John's Institute of Dermatology at St. Thomas's Hospital, London pointed out: "They did every test they could have done. They tested it on animals and every other way they could think of.....but none of the tests predicted the problems."
• Medical staff use information gained from human experience in deciding how to treat cases of accidental poisoning.
• Procter & Gamble spends more on advertising in 7 days than it has done in 11 years on developing humane testing methods.

These are simply 2 cases of the many that exist nowadays. For science animals are good enough to provide acurate information about human physiology but never good enough to be treated with respect and with equal rights. The question is always simpler that it might sound. Would anybody authorize science to kill humans for the sake of new methods to provide money ? Would anybody sacrifice their sons/daughters/fathers/mothers on experimentation that leads only to placebos ? Have we forgot that when we say "all men are equal" we are refering to our "humanity" and that "humanity" is a concept that applies also to the other animals we live with in this world. Often I read "we are alone in the universe". Silly words from silly men that haven't understood that we are not alone in these world. But if we continue with the predation of these planet soon we will find ourselves alone with our sins, a solitude that will be whispered by the wind at the sound of "murderers". We need to open our eyes to the world around or we will lose the chances to meet our neightbors and to speak a language long forgotten by the sound of our machines, our pride and our infinite stupidity.

[will]

This is an interesting article you should read: http://www.allforanimals.com/alternatives1.htm. It shows some alternatives used to replace the vivisection and the animal testing proving this is posible.

[DirectorSpence]