December 1st was fast approaching. And Staff Association Chennai decided to increase awareness and more involvement with a one of a kind poster competition. Chart papers were given to all the teams, and were asked to come up with innovative ideas to depict the theme “Getting to Zero”. We had one week’s time to complete this.
This is when Vibha decided, “Anisha, Akshaya & Pavithra are very enthusiastic and are quite jobless (??) too at this point. If they can exercise their mouths non-stop, they should be able to put their brains to some creative use as well, surely? Why not involve them so that they are kept occupied?” That’s like a true Team Leader!
And so… here we were, the three of us sitting down together…. giving some work to our tiny little brains while our mouths rested! Now that we had to do some constructive talking and productive thinking, the brain was working at a slower pace. So it took us almost 15 minutes to come up with three different ideas. (Yes. We were quite slow)
The next step involved putting those ideas onto paper. Responsibilities for bringing paints, brushes, print outs, cutters, slogans were assigned to each of us. However, we promptly forgot more than one item in our list, and it finally took us almost a day to get started on the poster. There was no looking back from there….
The first Poster was meant to depict a tug of war between elements that caused AIDS versus elements which help avoid AIDS. So, with a great zeal coupled with constant encouragement from all quarters (only the house-keeping staff seemed to grumble about the idea of messing up the place with papers, scissors, glue, brush and paints inside the office), we decided this poster was going to be in 3D. In about 4 hours we had completed almost 15% of the chart. Trust us… it was quite a tedious work! If creating 3D in paper was so tough, we can imagine the effort it takes for making 3D movies (since it’s sinful to compare our presentation with movies like avatar, we move on…) So we roped in more help and finally completed one chart within a single day. Improvisations, touch ups, ideas & suggestions kept pouring in and the poster was finally ready. This called for a celebration and we decided to finally call it a day!
Now, you must be thinking, “Didn’t they say 3 posters”??? You would have assumed that we did it the next day right? Haha, You’re wrong!
We forgot all about it. (we are kidding…. actually not… or maybe we are… but again, maybe not!!)
And so we ended up having only half a day to finish up the other 2 posters!!
Creative thinking, excessive brilliance and lack of time are great friends indeed. With just 4 hours in hand, the three of us sat down and created a poster in the form of a flier that was meant to induce more people to sign up for a world where “Getting to (Size) Zero” is the new fashion! With the latest craze for Size Zero, this poster created ripples instantly. And with just 2 hours remaining, we created the poster with banners,ribbons,and slogans that supported:
1. ZERO new AIDS cases
2. ZERO discrimination
3. ZERO AIDs related deaths.
Isn’t it amazing how lack of time spurs the best creativity?? No wonder this poster was finally adjudged third best in the competition from among 17 other entries. The 1st and 2nd places were awarded to HRSSC & CTRLC/LG respectively.
We are sure you must be scratching your brains about the third poster.. blame it on the time, who knows may be for next year..haha!!!
Pictures of the posters are attached for your pleasure viewing.
