Project 4
March 26 — Brainstorming/ Initial sketches
04/10/20 — First draft of the posters on Adobe Illustrator
My first electronic drafts of my poster were very different from what I brainstormed initially. Although, at first, I was going to make a KPOP festival and create posters for different KPOP artists, I was unsure how exactly I could unite all three posters with one theme. I felt as though the KPOP artists that I chose all had different styles.. With this in mind, I decided to do a Spring Festival. To come up with the events within the festival, I thought about what kind of events people want to attend that would make them feel like they are actually enjoying spring. The events that I came up with, at the end, were Spring Concert, Theatre Production, and Nature Walk.
To start with Theatre production, I was actually quite unsure how I could make up shapes using the Illustrator tool to express theatre production and spring at the same time. So, to be quite honest, I decided to play around with shapes for this particular event. However, for nature walk, I decided to put three circular/ oval — looking shapes into the poster. I thought that they abstractly look like lotus or foot trails. Adding the green color to the poster, I thought that I had expressed spring in some sense. Lastly, for the music performances one, I tried to utilize similar shapes as the ones used for Nature walk. Then, I added yellow, wavy shapes to express the musical flow that music performances give to the audience.
However, after finishing the draft, I felt as though these posters were not eye catching enough. Through the feedback I gained from class, I realized that I should play around with the colors more and think about how texts could possibly express spring.
In this second iteration of my work, I first played around with the shapes for theatre production in addition with colors. I thought that the two lines that are shown on two sides of the poster made it seem like a script.
As for Nature Walk, I started to play around with the typefaces that we learnt in class. As the typeface I used previously made me feel as though the poster was too simple or boring, I wanted to add a special feeling to it using a unique type face.
Lastly, for music performances, I decided to add some color shapes within the green oval. I initially started this as I wanted to express the amplification of sound, as if the sound is popping out. However, I have received some feedback that it kind of looks like an avocado. Thus, I plan to change this poster a bit to ensure that I do not get out the wrong message to the audience.
04/15/ 20
While creating my iterations of events that are under Spring Festival, I was kind of stuck on expressing spring feeling in my posters. So, I decided to play around with a different theme within spring festival. To do so, I decided to create events that are intended for young children to attend.
Playing around with the shapes I created, such as a piano and music notes, I noticed that my work started to become more literal. In addition, the typeface that I incorporated emphasized that these events were meant for children. However, exploring this theme, I did not like that they were too literal as I felt that no “fun” was really incorporated in my poster. There was really no meaning to these iterations.
04/22/20
While I have explored other themes previously, I decided to come back to the Spring Festival that I originally intended. However, this time I decided to change some colours and add them as well along with actual texts that described each event. Placing these texts helped me to decide where I wanted to locate different shapes in my poster.
Working on these posters, I started to feel like I was really expressing not only spring but also the events. For the theatre production, I played around with the pen tool to create curtains to symbolize theatre production. To emphasize the spring portion, I used a green color as the background. As for nature walk, I added pink petals to express flowers that people can see as they go on for a nature walk. With a pink background, I made sure to express the flowery feeling that people get in spring. Lastly, for spring concert, I added wavy lines at the top and the bottom to express the musical flow. In order to emphasize the relaxation that many people can gain by attending this event, I used yellow.
After making this iteration, I got some feedback that they can see spring being expressed in my posters. However, The curtain did seem to heavy compared to other posters and the thickness of the wavy lines in the spring concert poster also made it too heavy. Thus, I would need to fix those elements to make my posters more united into one theme.
04/29/20
For these iterations, I wanted to make them look less heavy compared to the ones I previously made.
To start, I got some feedback from Alice and she had suggested that I use the circular shapes to show lighting that is used in a theatrical setting. So, taking that recommendation, I overlapped two oval shapes to create lighting. Then, because I wanted to express a calming feeling at night watching a theatre production, I create stars with the same yellow that I used on my other posters. I thought that this would show a night, relaxing feeling to the audience. By making sure that I used either the same or similar colors as other posters, I was putting putting in the effort them to increase the unity.
As for the spring concert poster, I experimented with different wavy lines, starting from either the top of the poster or the side. Then, I tried different background colors to see which combination would suit best for the event. This iteration was again a experimentation period for me to see how colors could look well together along with the shapes that I wanted to incorporate into the posters.
05/05/20
For this iteration of spring concert, I wanted to see what would happen if I don’t use actual lines but rather replace it with words. I thought that following through the words made the wavy line look wavier, clearly expressing the musical flow that I always wanted to make.
An different element that I added this time to this poster is the rectangle behind the texts. I thought that adding this rectangle can emphasize the simplicity of nature and how nature is never artificial. While my rectangle has this message, I also thought that the different color that I used here on the rectangle can help me to pull the audience to read the texts and make them look more stand out
05/07/20
These are my last iterations of my project. As I experimented before, I thought that adding rectangles behind each text will be useful in uniting all three posters together. Thus, I added different colors of rectangles behind the texts.
While Nature walk has been very consistent with my earlier iteration, I made some more changes to the other two posters.
For Spring Concert Poster, I decided to add flower vines that are dropping from the top. The addition of this made the poster seem more relaxing and can also feel the music flow. Because the lines were not exactly straight but rater wavy, I think that I was able to express that feeling more easily.
As fro my Theatre Production poster, I decided to use the oval shapes just like I did in other posters. However, this time, I decided to overlap them to make them look like spotlights. By having this representation in my poster, I thought that I have expressed the event in more detail visually. In addition, I put yellow lights at the top. These are tied to black strings to make them feel like a theatre. Since there are a lot of made up sets for theatre production, I used strings to express that. At the same time, the shining lights were used to express the relaxation that people can get when they attend this event at night and enjoy the productions.
I think that working on this project overall has helped me to see different elements of the poster with more detail. Rather than focusing on just the colors or just the shapes, I had a chance to work with different typefaces and think about the intention for selecting a specific one. While my main intention was readability for the main description, I think that Helvetica does a good job in ensuring that happens. Overall, I am satisfied with the progress I have made.
