Visual Hierarchy: Communications Studio Project 2

Caroline Song
Nov 5 · 12 min read

The Prompt

Visual hierarchy can be achieved through multiple variables, such as color and contrast. There are many different ways to achieve contrast by using factors like stroke weight, indents, spacing, and scale. For this project, our objective is to explore visual hierarchy through the context of creating a poster for a local performance company in Pittsburgh. My specific company is PICT Classic Theater.

Exploring Hierarchy Part 1

To start exploring hierarchy and really begin to understand how different visual effects add to the effectiveness of a hierarchal design, we began with some exercises. These exercises were very simple, involving us finding new ways to test out stroke weights, linespacing, and horizontal shifts with set restrictions. This was in order to allow us to focus on only the three ways of contrasts we were assigned with no distractions.

Examples from hierarchy exercise 1

The examples shown above were some of the most successful exercises I had. As I played with these different types of contrast, I found myself to be drawn to line spacing as one of the most effective ways for me to show hierarchy. However, I also found myself wanting to be able to combine different contrasts together, even though for this exercise, we were not able to. For example, being able to utilize hierarchy through both stroke weight and line spacing would give more emphasis and clarity in the lines of text that are the most important.

I noticed a couple of ‘hierarchal rules’ that emerged during this exercise.

  1. Too much of one type of contrast will render the contrast ineffective and muddle the content. Select the lines of contrast sparingly and thoughtfully.
  2. Grouping plays a big part in contrast, shown by the line spacing and horizontal shifts exercises. Groups based on related content are commonly together.

Exploring Hierarchy Part Two

With the other members in my class who are also creating a poster for PICT Theatre, we were to create a list of adjectives and other descriptive words we thought were fitting to the tone/mood that PICT Classic Theatre gives off to its audience.

The list we came up with

Looking among these adjectives, I was most intrigued with ones such as emotional, provocative, and powerful. I think these words show the amount of creativity and artistic expression that lives in this theatre and now, as we start to explore colors, I wanted my color palette to play with warm/cool contrast, with complimentary contrast coming out within.

Looking at the different plays PICT is putting on for the 2019–2020 season, I was able to notice a commonality in the plots of the three plays. All three happen to have some sort of supernatural/fantasy element to them. Both Da and The Woman in Black utilize supernatural characters in order to advance their plot and create this sense of mystery and suspense. Midsummer Night’s Dream also utilizes the feelings of mystery with all the character switching and mistakes that is incorporated into this Shakespearean play.

To begin familiarizing myself with the plethora of different colors there are in our space, I started to find my color palette by ripping up the magazines we used for the first project (it was so satisfying by the way) and using colors we found inside them to inspire us.

Magazine inspired color palettes

The next step I took was to digitalize these palettes. Refining them a bit more and narrowing down my color field a bit, I ended up with two palettes I wanted to explore with some more.

My two final palettes
Example posters from palette

Some thoughts in my mind when applying the colors to the posters were how colors affect the viewers perception of the words. To be more specific, a lot of my classmates thought I had used two stroke weights, when in fact, I had only used one. It seemed that the higher contrast a colored word had against the background, the higher stroke weight the words seemed to have. Furthermore, though I was experimenting with a range of different colors, I found myself following a pattern at the same time. The information I deemed most important, such as the titles of the plays and the company’s name, were the items that I made have the highest contrast against the background. I would achieve this with using different kinds of contrast, such as warm/cool, contrast of extension, and hue. I also played around with analogous colors and monochromatic, changing the saturation on the colors slightly to achieve this.

Regarding my poster, the biggest question in my mind is still whether or not to allow the warm tones to shine while having pops of cool colors come out, or vice versa. Because I have yet to go see a play at the PICT Theatre and experience what it is like there, hopefully my visit tomorrow will be informative as to what balance of warm/cool colors I want to continue on with.

Next, I looked at shifts in scaling and how that can affect hierarchy. As I did when experimenting with color, I first played around with scaling physically with cut paper to get a sense of the range of styles I can achieve.

Experimenting with scale

Now that we can play around with 2 stroke weights and re-ordering the information at the same time as scaling, I was able to move the content around in different ways to experiment with how the eyes of the viewer moves around the page. I also wanted to be dramatic with the stroke weights and scales in order to allow a clear hierarchy of information for the viewer to take in.

I used these paper drafts as inspiration as I translated these cut paper versions into digital forms.

Examples of scale exercise

Adding Images onto the Poster

On Thursday, November 7th, PICT opened their previews for their first show of the 2019–2020 season, The Woman in Black. Going to this show that day, I was struck immediately by the staging and the dramatic purple/blue lighting that covered the stage, as shown in the picture below.

Picture of PICT stage

The one thing that constantly got my attention throughout the play was once again, the lighting. More specifically, the color of the lighting. It was a great amount of blue and orange spotlights.

I wanted to find a way to incorporate the colors I saw on stage onto my poster and so, I decided to go with my color scheme of complementary hues of blue and orange, the tints and shades changing to indicate different levels of hierarchy.

From last class’ critique on scale and color, I knew I wanted to keep the largest scaled line on the page to be the title of the company, however, I knew that perhaps the thing that will end up actually drawing people into the poster are the titles of the plays since that was a big point in our critique.

I wanted to recognize the importance of the play titles in my poster, but I did not want to achieve that with scale, but rather with color. I chose to create a more dramatic mood with my poster in order to emphasize the adjectives I wanted to focus on: artistic, provocative, and powerful. I strove to create a powerful dynamic in my poster through the boldness of the color contrast between the orange titles of my plays and the blue shade that colors every other piece of information.

Further exploration of color and scale

Therefore, even though the title of the company is the largest line on the poster, its blue shade being close to the background color allows it to be de-emphasized a bit and draw back. I try to achieve this in varying degrees with the rest of the information I have. The titles of the plays, even though they are done in a small scale, I tried to emphasize their importance through bolding the titles and using a complimentary color to allow the titles to pop out of the page and draw the viewer’s eyes.

Furthermore, to talk specifically about the images I experimented with, I wanted to bring in images to my poster that would emphasize the theatre’s dramatic feel, as well as evoke a sense of seriousness and power, as well as a sense of mystery that is so prominent in specifically the 2019–2020 season.

I also paid attention to the movement within the images. Both the spotlight and the smoke create a natural path that viewer’s eyes tend to follow. I wanted to take advantage of that path and move around my content accordingly depending on the specific order I wanted the viewer to take in my information. And so, I experimented with the different trails viewers can digest the information in order to figure out which order will be the most effective and experiment with this way of manipulating hierarchy.

Examples from image exercise

I continued to explore with different images, while generally keeping the color scheme to be a mix of blue/greens and yellows/oranges. I wanted to continue playing with placement of images, as well as how those images are interacting with the placement of the words.

A few more examples of images

Taking a step back, I felt that I still hadn’t found an image that I loved to complement that information that I am trying to convey. The poster on the far right was the one I ended up bringing to Tuesday’s critique. However, A lot of people found the image to remind them of musical theatre/singing/dancing. That not being the feel that I wanted, since that is not representational of PICT, I knew I needed to change my image.

New images

I wanted to go back and look for images that had a human element in them, because I found that to be compelling in other posters that I was able to look at. The one things that I definitely knew I wanted to bring in from my previous poster with the blue and pink, was the interaction that was beginning to happen between the type and image (the overlap between “Pittsburgh” and the door). I wanted to play around more with how I can achieve that interaction in different ways.

First, I started exploring these images and how I can use them by cropping them in different angles. As I worked these images further, I found the image on the left to be more compelling and decided to use that one as I delved deeper in how I can use this image in my final poster. As I cropped, I wanted to obscure the figure’s face in such a way that the viewer would have to work a little bit in order to discover that it is a face, in order to add a sense of mystery and possibly help the viewers be compelled by the poster for a while longer.

Next, I brought back the type in the poster and wanted to make it interact in different ways. I overlaid the PICT logo on two of them and on the last one on the right, I cut out the letters to make it seem like “PICT” and “Pittsburgh’s Classical Theatre” was coming out of the figure.

Bringing back type to image

However, the orange I used in the “PICT” logo was too attention grabbing. “PICT” is not the main line I wanted the audience to see and so, having it be the biggest line of text on the screen AND having it colored boldly seemed to be too much. I wanted to continue experimenting with the poster on the left. I enjoyed the receding “PICT” in that poster to make a subtle but strong appearance. However, I also quickly experimented with the line of text that got that treatment. Furthermore, I also moved my colors from using a warm orange/yellow to an even hotter color that was red/pink-ish. The contrast between the image and the red seemed to be the strongest:

Further experiments

I did not find myself drawn to these posters as much as I did when “PICT” was the largest line of text on the page, and so I decided to continue going that path. I was also challenged to move text out of the rigid structure that I had set for myself in way that still maintained structure but was allowed for more movement on the page.

Two options

Getting some feedback from my classmates on the composition and placement of colors on text, I was able to make some final decisions. A lot of them felt that the placement of the figure on the right made them uncomfortable because of how much of the eyes were on the page. The color also seemed to fit more in the titles because having the color in the “Pittsburgh’s Classical Theatre” seemed to be an unnecessary barrier between the logo and the titles. Also, the “Classics to Raise the Spirit” seemed to fit more underneath with the rest of the text instead of floating above. Finally, I made sure to look at the micro scale of my text as well, bolding the dates and putting them above the authors because the viewers who are drawn in by the titles of the plays will probably want to know the dates of them next.

The last thing I did was change the color of the image slightly to make it less green and let the tone be a bit warmer than before.

Final Poster

Coming into this project, I was not sure of the direction I wanted to go in, and to be completely honest, I was not sure of this until we got closer to the end of the project. Although my process for this project is very expansive and consists of my poster changing directions so many times, I am fairly happy with the end result and through all of this, I got to experiment with hierarchy and colors in so many different ways. I was also able to experiment with the relationship between type and the background image, which I had never gotten to explore so much before. Overall, I appreciated being able to explore a broad range of elements in order to establish hierarchy and learning how that best allows designers to communicate their desired message.

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