Project 2: Poster Design + Visual Communication

3 min readMar 9, 2019

Week 1

We have now moved into the second project of this course, where we will be examining ways to group objects based on their hierarchy. The class has been tasked with grouping lines of text using different stroke weights, linings, and flush columns to effectively show hierarchy in the information given. I personally look forward to this assignment. It’s easy for the designer to know which parts of an object is more important than other parts, but the reader/user does not know that, unless it is effectively communicated to them. Below is the content we were given.

Our first guidelines for creating hierarchy was through the use of linespacing, by either creating one extra line of spacing, or two. I found line spacing made it easy to group content that are similar, creating blocks of content that readers can easily distinguish to be similar.

Next, we were tasked with creating hierarchy using different stroke weights. To effectively use stroke weights to emphasize hierarchy, it is better to use weights that are twice as heavy (regular to bold, with semibold in between).

Finally, we were asked to create hierarchy using two-flush and three-flush columns. I found this to be was the most effective way of creating titles, with everything indented in below as seen as subsections under that title.

Week 2

The following week we focused on using a combination of linespacing, horizontal shift, and stroke weights to create a visual hierarchy and to demonstrate through emphasis the relative importance of the information.

This week, we were additionally given the task of creating hierarchy with the use of color, by changing text color or adding color behind text. Color can bring out very nice contrast in posters with the use of different coloring techniques. We started with only using one color, but moved on to use complimentary colors, tertiary colors, warm/cool colors, and so on.

Images

After playing around with color, we were asked to incorporate images to better help communicate the information presented on the poster. The images should be relevant, not distracting, and help improve the content being presented. I was particularly drawn to the images of children’s toys to represent Emotional Archaeology. Below are some of my final drafts.