Growing up, I always felt that I was different from the other Bosnian kids, especially the Bosnian girls in my school. I feel as though a Bosnian girl pursuing art and design is unheard of, and rather looked down upon, in a community that expects nurses and lawyers from their daughters. Often, I got isolated from my own people due to my obvious different trajectory in life; we rarely shared the same interests and goals. The stereotypes pushed onto me, the ones that expected me to go to school for some high-earning career, made me start to stereotype my own people. I began to avoid the Bosnian kids, as I always had anxiety that I would get judged or struggle “fitting in” to the stereotypical, Bosnian girl look.
By my senior year in high school, I realize there is no guideline to being Bosnian or how a Bosnian should look or act. I can decide what that means for me, create my own identity outside of the box I was put in. In the end, my negative experience of being stereotyped turned into a positive moment of growth.
I designed this poster to represent my story and journey. I used Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator in my process.
Sketches
For this project, I knew I wanted to do some sort of collage with a lot of layering to represent all the layers of my identity. I wanted to combine texture, typography, and repetitive visual elements to capture that layered and energetic feel that I was going for. I came up with three directions, but I ultimately chose the first one since it had that “stepping outside of the box” quality that I needed in order to accurately portray my “stereotype” and my story.
