Conveying Meaning Though Advertisements

Browsing the web for effective advertising and I found this.  The way they display the font conveys meaning because of the ice cream.  It shows you the texture of the ice cream, giving it meaning.  Plus the color choices are super pretty!

MAMMA MIA!

For my project I was assigned ITS also known as the International Typographic Style and was assigned Theater. I decided to use Mamma Mia! as my theme. Since the international typographic style is very organized I used the buildings as a way of breaking up what the poster would say. Helvetica is the major font of ITS and so I followed that and used it to make the unity and style clear. I had trouble with following ITS and tried to do so by breaking up the background with many different colors. I painted the image of Greece and created a difference between the roughness and picture like foreground with theh basic color blocks of the background.

Emotion + Inspiration (Poster project redesign)

I was dissatisfied with my poster project because I had this great idea towards the end with little time to expand and finish it in time to turn it in. It was inspired by a bad day and my trip to the indian comic art show. So here was what happened so far.

Plant a Tree

For my poster, I drew the style 70s/Conceptualism and the subject of Politics from the jar. 70s and Conceptualism can be highlighted by the work of Milton Glaser, Seymor Chwast, and Wes Wilson. The style used elements from older styles such as Art Nouveau and mixed them with a strong color palette. Wes Wilson, for example, used some of the same guidelines and shapes from Art Nouveau in his work but added a distinct style of bubble type that filled space.

Most political issues I brainstormed seemed dry or cliche. Healthcare, one of the largest political issues right now, just seemed like something I did not want to wade into as there is so much being said about it at the moment. Instead, I went for something not cliche... or not. I chose the environment as a topic because it seemed to lend itself to the style. Many of my sketches dealt with pollution and featured imagery like smokestacks. The catchy slogan was what held back many of my sketches. While I had some that I liked, none of them were catchy enough. In the end I settled on this poster, with the phrase, "Plant a tree. Save the world one breath at a time." I wish that I would have developed one of my stronger visual ideas instead, but I committed to this.

I intended to structure the overall layout of the poster to resemble a tree, but to be true to the style, I incorporated some of the curves and shapes found in Art Nouveau. In a nod to Wes Wilson, I used a font that filled these shapes. The poster could have greatly benefited from a greater finesse with the text. Much of the text is far too loose and predictable. It is missing the dynamism of Wilson's text.

I also tried a variety of color schemes but many of them made the poster look too much like something produced in the 70s rather than a modern take on the style. For that reason, I decided to go with the wooden texture for a background to emphasize the treeness of the poster. I also put the graphic in a predictable green to blue-green gradient which came out much less powerful in the print. The poster needed more color, though, as it looks a little dull right now.

In terms of improving the poster, I would of course tighten up the text and expand the color palette. The actual method of production also contributed to the failure of the poster. While the method of making the poster in Photoshop may have worked for a mock-up, it created a very stale poster. A much more interesting poster could be made by actual making the print with ink onto wood.

Poster 3

My poster was for a book with an art nouveau style. I chose to do Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. I created this poster by first drawing out Alice and then scanning it into Illustrator. I also used a picture to create the tree and made the ears and pocket watch myself. I tried to imitate the Beggarstaffs' style while adding some traditional art nouveau elements such as the border and the type. I had trouble making Alice look less awkward. I think the face is a little off, as well as the hair. In retrospect, I think that I should have attached the ears to the "A" in Alice to incorporated it into the title more. Also, I would adjust where things are placed so that the text is not as hard to see and I would take out the leaves in the border. Lastly, I think I would have adjusted the colors so that they were a little more bright.

Poster Project, Again!

So this is my poster! I was given the topic 'public service' and the theme '70s conceptualism'. The problem is, 70s conceptualism doesn't go too well with public service - pre-eminent conceptualists like Seymour Chwast and Wes Wilson were really more interested in doing drugs than in supporting their local police station, I guess?

So I went for an anti-war poster, and that was a lot of fun! Being able to go for a trippy, 1970s feel made the poster a ton of fun.

Surprisingly, one of the hardest parts of making this poster - by FAR - was the color choice. This is all created digitally, and I probably spent 4 hours just using different color swatches to see how they looked. I really love the final light green - orange - pink color scheme you can see here... I actually stole the color scheme from a series of drawings Seymour Chwast did for a magazine in the 70s; I'm glad I did because they look great.

I have 2 issues with the final project though, none of which I saw coming until it got printed:

1- the whole thing looks too computer-generated! It was very sad, but the second I looked at it on paper it just seemed a little too removed from reality. This is something that's hard to pick up on in Photoshop - I think I need just a better 'sense' at picking this sort of thing up.

2- KINKO'S. They printed all the colors way wrong! Oh my god, Kinko's, for the obscene amounts of money you charge you'd think you could at least calibrate your printer. Everything came out too dark, and that awesome lime green color that makes up the big bomb just became too dark and sad. Awful!

Poster Project

For my poster project, I created a poster advertising The Great Reno Balloon Race that takes place in Reno, Nevada. I was assigned the general topic of Sports and the style of Art Deco. I was inspired to make the poster long and narrow to emphasize the element of height in a balloon race, and I also added mountains in the scene to make the balloon appear as flying high up into the air. After critiques and feedback from others, I realized that this simple cropping decision for my poster was actually one of its major strengths. I went through many typefaces and felt that since the poster was supposed to evoke simplicity and beauty, it would be best to choose the Broadway font. I thought it really represented the Art Deco style well. The major issue with this poster that I could have fixed easily would be, perhaps, the balloon's coloring. I spent a great deal of time trying to make the mountains look realistic and underestimated the balloon's importance. If I emphasized its highlights and shadows more, the balloon would not look as out of place as it does. Overall, I was reasonably satisfied with this poster because I spent a lot of time debating its different elements and its composition until I made well-thought out choices about the poster.

Poster Project

For my assignment I was given the the theme of sports and the style of postmodernism. So I decided to create a poster for the LA Marathon. I tried to capture the essence of LA, including the grungy yet shiny cityscape, its beaches, the Pacific Coast Highway, and neighborhoods downtown. I had it so it looked like the city was literally running. I was inspired by postmodern artists such as Paula Scher and Neville Brody. While my design was not as busy as theirs, I tried to take the freeflowing, daring style of postmodernism. My font choice was also inspired by postmodernism. Though people in the class took issues with the lowercase a, I did that to imitate the style, but perhaps I shouldn't have. Overall, I'm happy with my project. If I could change a few things it would be to rearrange the fonts and maybe change the font. I would also put a couple more saturated colors in, maybe in the font. And the other place would be to make the shoes more saturated and brighter.

Bringing Back Broadway

For this project, my design style was Constructivism and my topic was theater. I tried to incorporate Constructivism into my poster through the composition, by making the diagonal lines bold. However, because this style's color palette is very limited, I decided to use contemporary colors (thank you Ikea Catalogue 2009). As for the topic, I didn't want to use a film, so I decided to literally take a theater (or several in this case) as the subject of my poster. The first picture was when my poster was still in the works (and when my kitchen floor was covered with yellow paint). I had just cut out all the windows in my buildings and taped my color swatches to the Bristol paper. I then used two coats of gesso and then two coats of acrylic paint. At first, I wasn't sure how I would make the two lines, but then I found my dad's electric tape so it was all good. The second picture is the finished poster, where I had to cut out the letters and make stencils for the film reels. I then sponge-painted them so that it would be somewhat transparent, allowing the buildings behind to be somewhat visible. I had some trouble making the film reels look like film reels, because adding any more detail seemed to clutter up the space. As for the type, I wish I had exaggerated the size of "Broadway" so that it would be distinct from "Bringing Back". All I can say is, I need to learn to use Photoshop.

Poster Project, or: Why people pay money for the legitimate versions of software

For my poster, I had to combine the theme of Art Nouveau with a Theatre theme, so I picked a mentalist who does stage shows.
What I like about it: it's a cool idea, that represents 'something wicked' with a menacing man. The face peering back from the man's head is sort of emblematic of the idea of having eyes in the back of your head. Though the idea of the handbill means that half the composition is taken up with text, it leaves a more interesting shape for me to play around in.
What I would change: I needed a legitimate font, because it got blocky at large sizes. That's the risk you run with free fonts. The free online photoshop clone I used was also adequate, but more effects would have been lovely.
Composition could have been made better by having that art nouveau thing circle his head. Also, the hand needed to be lightened up, because in the way it got printed, it became too dark to make out the knife.

Poster Project

For my poster project, I was given the assignment of Book along with the style of 50's/high modern. I chose to do a play made into a novel published around the early 1950's entitled "Death of a Salesman," which is a very pensive and sort of melancholy filled novel about the troubles of surviving as a family and as an individual in the harsh world. I used photoshop for the poster, I decided to use two colors, white and a neutral grey blue.  I decided that this blue would fit the sort of "depressing" aspect of the novel. The image of a cutout is in white and it is a cutout of the salesman, walking away holding briefcases. The typeface runs in the interior of the cutout and is spaced for a stylistic 50's modernist effect. The "salesman" is intentionally the smallest of the words because it is the most important word of the poster--sort of an ironic emphasis. There is a very slim horizon line on the bottom to give the figure some sort of place within the scene, as well as one on the top (both do not continue toward the end of the page.) The cutout is clearly a salesman, and the three words that are most easily read  because of their size are "DEATH OF A" so even from a distance it is pretty effective to have the "Salesman" in a smaller font--it makes for dramatic tension.