U.S. Citizenship Test Web Banner

Simple web banner image for website display.

One of our branch libraries helps community members study for their U.S. Citizenship test. They wanted a web banner for our website to let people know such a service was offered, so I whipped up a simple graphic that could be supported by a caption line underneath with all the additional details.


 It took a while to find, but I eventually located a straight-on image of an American flag to use as a background. Next, I used a second piece of clip art that showed a selection of people standing together, and imported it overtop the flag. 


Originally, I was going to keep the silhouette people the solid black they were found as, but after placing it over the flag, I was intrigued with the idea of knocking back the translucency of it to be 50% opaque. To me, this could be interpreted as as a visual message of "being 50% here...living in the U.S., but not fully citizens, somewhat a demographic in the shadows, and yet emerging out of it to become fully recognized as citizens." It was simple, yet could have a message intertwined into it, if one was so inclined to assign it one. 


Either way, I was happy to have done it. Within the past year I've had two friends take their U.S. Citizenship test and pass...one from Thailand, and one from China. The Chinese friend I actually spent about eight weeks helping him to study by drilling him twice a week and giving him whatever backstory to the answers I could. He said it helped him a lot and along the way, I re-learned many things myself. Once he was ready, my wife and I drove with him an hour and a half to the testing center to support him as he received his certificate. We were all very happy for him and proud of his efforts, so doing a little web banner--simple as it was--had a special meaning to me.