Typographic Hierarchy 2
Next step in our poster design project was incorporating images. I started out with simple illustrations, exploring colors and shapes at a basic level.
I tried to avoid creating images that were too obviously related to my subject, Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures, but still wished to convey its character. The illustration above is an abstraction of the main entrances of the Carnegie Music Hall, where the lectures are held.
Books and fountain pens have obvious relationship with my subject as it is a lecture series given by well established authors. I eventually ended up veering away from the book illustrations.
Adding text started to change the entire dynamic of the page. It gave me a better understanding of where the images should be placed.
Exploring the images first allowed me to place the text with high flexibility. I explored placing texts that worked around the images.
I then moved away from illustrations to photographs. I took several photographs of the Carnegie Music Hall, and applied color overlays to bring out the color combinations I was looking for.
I moved from working on letter size to tabloid size. The longer dimensions allowed me to better explore the use of tall photographs.
I made a decision to stick with the light stroke weight for the headers. I liked the way it used the space, and it grabbed my attention without obscuring the image behind it. I also moved away from using flashy colors, as I discovered that my subject was a lecture series given by well respected and established authors, whose audience is people who have deep appreciation for literature masterpieces.
Tabloid size also opened up for more experimental layouts for illustrations.
Looking back at the work I had so far, I realized that a lot of the colors had disappeared. So I went back to the color assignments and looked at the color vibrant color combinations I had previously created. I then came back and added layers of vibrant colors, and explored different ways to organize the content in colored layers.
At this point, I was receiving a lot more positive feedback on the photographs over illustrations. This drove me to create several iterations of the photograph, experimenting with cropping and orientation.
Another crucial feedback I received was the lack of negative space. I was too occupied with trying to fill up the empty space and creating squares of vibrant colors, that the message that my posters were supposed to convey was becoming obscure. These were my three last attempts at the fountain pen illustrations, with the negative space in mind, and the following were the photograph versions.
Nearing the end, I decided to choose the most simple poster design. The building had a grand quality to it that I thought connected well to the prestigious lecture series. I let the photograph and the architecture of the building do most of the layout for me, and I also pulled highlight colors from the photo to the text to tie in the images together.
Some of the final feedback I received was the overall monotonous color scheme of my design. The Arts and Lectures series is not just a cold and rigid lecture series, but a lively storytelling with social interaction. The closed doors of the original photo also gave off a sense of abandoned building, which contradicted the mood of the Arts and Lectures series. I was also suggested to look at flipping the order of the texts, with the lecturers moving to the top and the title bottom.
I tried extending the photograph upwards, extending the skies and cropping out the dark closed doors of the building. The clear blue skies acted as a canvas for me to experiment with overlaying various colors, adding the bit of liveliness my previous designs lacked. I also explored different ways to lay out the text, breaking away from the rigidness of the architecture behind it.
For my final poster, I was a bit conservative with the layout of the text and its placement. I kept most of the text in line with others, giving it a sense of structure. Instead, I made vivid color choices and made bold decisions with the color of both the type and the photo.
I also looked into constructing typographic hierarchy using colors, scales and stroke weight with the final poster. I personally felt that the authors names were the most important aspect of the poster, next to the name of the series itself. I used a bold typeface for the authors, and scaled it up to stand out in the empty skies, using that negative space to draw attention. I used plain white for the title to make it pop out from the background and its large scale clearly claims the high ground in terms of visual hierarchy. The white also cleaned up the color palette that was a bit too fuzzy and confusing.