Kevin: T-Shirt Deisgn

I set out to design a t-shirt with a political message. I chose the issue of electronic waste (a.k.a. e-waste). The danger in e-waste is that electronics contain a lot of toxic chemicals (the average computer monitor has 3-4 pounds of lead). At the end of their life e-waste is often exported to the third world where they are stripped of all of their valuable components and dumped. Lax environmental and worker protection laws basically ensure that people in these countries are exposed to dangerously high levels of these toxicants and it wreaks havoc on local ecologies.

Anyway, I searched the web for images of e-waste dumping and found this classic photo of a child in China sitting on top of a pile of dumped computer parts. I cut out the image and found that its sitting position reminded me of a religious icon. Inspired by this idea, I then searched for an image of Buddha and juxtaposed the image of the child over the image of Buddha. I had to use the clone tool to get the two images lined up exactly. Continuing with the religious theme I thought it would be appropriate to have three electronics (a cell phone, a computer, and a iPod) floating around the image of the figure. Lastly, I applied a fresco filter to the image of the child. Realizing that the connection to e-waste was not immediately apparent, I thought some text would be appropriate. I am not quite happy with how the text flows with the image (hence the three different attempts). I am open to any suggestions on a way to maintain the political message, but make it a little more subtle.

Yes...I realize that is says "Unied States." I changed it in the psd file. [sigh]