This poster is inspired by the Panorama report on BBC1 showing children making
clothes for Primark in India. The programme aired in June 2008 and at the time
hundreds of people protested outside the Primark head office on Oxford Street
in London.
The response from Primark was completely expected, they denied any knowledge of
any wrong doing. They then sacked three of their clothing suppliers in India after being told that Panorama had evidence that
they were subcontracting to companies that were using child workers. In the
Panorama expose an 11-year-old Tamil girl from the Bhavani Sagar refugee camp
was shown sewing sequins onto a shirt from the Secret Possessions range of
Primark clothing.
George Weston, chief executive of Associated British Foods, which owns Primark,
said the company’s Indian contractors were guilty of “wholesale deception”. He said he would cancel million of pounds’ worth of orders.
Unfortunately even this damning programme had little or no effect on how Primark
continues to run its affairs overseas. Nor did it have any effect on the
millions of people that continue to shop for ultra cheap disposable fashion
clothing.
With my poster I wanted to sarcastically show Primark advertising the fact that
they were advocating child labour and using it as a way of promoting their new
clothing range. The posters message is clear - because we are using child
labour our clothes are cheaper and more affordable for you to buy.
I used pastel colours to make the advert seem more comforting and easier to
swallow its dark message. I used pink and blue to represent men and women along
with male and female models to back up the idea that everyone is to blame, we
all want cheap clothing.
I wanted the Sweat Shop logo to be playful and memorable whilst retaining its
bleakness.
I used a very modern floral theme to the background again to counteract the
actual message. I also deliberately put the image of the actual child labour
sweat shop in black and white to distract emphasise away from it with the other
more prominent colours
around it.
As for the Primark logo I made this prominent in the bottom right hand corner
but I made the under header less obvious to read. Finally I added a spray paint
effect over the faces of the male and female models. This was to signify their
embarrassment of being associated with this campaign. It was also to show that
even though people are happy to continue buying Primarks cheap clothing, they
don’t want to be noticed for doing so and want to remain faceless.
