Assignment 4: Poster Series (10/31)

Nicole Chu
Nov 5 · 13 min read

Introduction

For this assignment, we were to create a series of 3 posters for 3 different events in an arts festival. The arts festival and the events could be fictional and could be any type of event; we had the freedom to be as creative as we wanted!

The only requirements were the types of information that we needed about each event, no photographs allowed, only 2–3 hues (plus black and white) can be used across all 3 posters, and max 2 typefaces can be used.

Here is the required information that we needed about each event:

  • The Name of the Arts Festival (this should be on all three posters and may be fictional)
  • The Title of the Event
  • The name(s) of the artist(s)
  • One (short) paragraph about the artist(s) or the event itself
  • The date, time, and location of the event (fictional)
  • Relevant ticket information including price, how to purchase, etc. (fictional)

Initial Research, Sketches, & Feedback

Right off the bat, I knew I wanted to look at a food festival. Food festival events are usually fun, unique, and centered around 1 or 2 specific foods, which would be easy to visualize. After looking up popular food festivals around the country, I narrowed down my focus onto two different ones: the LA Food Fest and the LA Times Food Bowl.

The LA Food Fest is a one-day long food tasting event in LA, with multiple local food and drink vendors showcasing their goods to the public. For this year’s Food Fest, vendors were split up into groups by food/drink category. For my poster series, I considered looking at 3 of these vendor groups: #StretchyPants Worthy Eats, Bevs, Bars + Brews, and Ice Cream Social.

Rough sketches for the LA Food Fest

The LA Times Food Bowl is another food festival in LA, but it spans the entire month of May for 31 days of unique food events/experiences. Events include night markets in downtown LA, food-making courses, and exclusive dining experiences with popular chefs. This festival seemed a little more compelling than the LA Food Fest, because of the wide variety and depth of events, so I decided to make some sketches for this as well. I chose the events Tacos & Tequila, the Sushi Course, and Pasta Masters, as they highlighted 3 different types of food and cultures.

For these sketches, I went in 2 different directions. The first was a more abstract approach, focusing on curved lines to guide the viewer’s eye across the poster and to tie the 3 posters together. The second direction was more literal, showing the different foods being deconstructed/pulled apart.

I brought these sketches to class for some feedback. Our TA Anna looked over them and we agreed that I should go with the LA Times Food Bowl posters, and focus on the more abstract ones, with lines as my main connecting theme between the 3 posters.

Initial Digital Iterations

After I decided to go with the LA Times Food Bowl, I moved to Illustrator to determine my color palette and get some digital iterations down.

I already knew I wanted to use red, yellow, and green for my posters, as they worked with the foods I chose (tacos = red tomatoes, yellow tortillas, and green vegetables; sushi = red fish, yellow egg, green vegetables; pasta = red sauce and yellow noodles). After playing around with different hues, I settled on the third row below:

I chose the last row of hues, because the yellow is the lightest, which wouldn’t be too harsh in printing, the red is more pink, which could work for fish sushi, and the green is also the lightest.

Then, I moved on to transferring my rough sketches to Illustrator:

After drawing in the squiggly lines using the pen tool, I realized I had no idea how to actually digitally illustrate things. Making tacos and sushi seemed a little daunting, so I decided to start with the pasta poster first.

After thickening the yellow lines to look more like spaghetti, I added some bits of the required info content to help bring the poster together. For all 3 posters, I copied the descriptive paragraphs from the LA Food Bowl website. I chose the typeface Optima, because I liked how bold it looked in the titles, yet it remained readable and clean in the body text.

When I looked at the poster on the left, I felt like something was lacking, or there just wasn’t enough depth in the poster. Randomly, I decided to add one green strand of spaghetti, just to see how it looked and maybe if more variety in the noodles would help. Then, I played around with the position of the text, added a subheading for the descriptive paragraph, and again randomly added another black spaghetti, for experimentation. I decided to print the poster on the left for our interim in-class critique, just to see what my classmates thought about variety in the spaghetti.

Three variations of my pasta poster

Then, I moved onto the sushi, as I had a vague idea of how to start illustrating. After playing around with the pen tool, I eventually created some objects that I thought could resemble abstract sushi. Below are 2 iterations of the sushi poster, before and after refining some small details. I also attempted to keep the theme of squiggly lines by added a squiggly line of sauce on one piece of sushi.

Two variations of my sushi poster

Then, I moved onto the tacos poster, which was the one I was dreading the most, as I really had no idea how to illustrate abstract tacos. Below is my awful illustration of a taco, with some variation in the background color, because I wasn’t sure which color to choose. For our interim in-class critique, I ended up printing the one on the right, with a blank white background, and asking my classmates for their thoughts on how I should move forward with this poster.

Three variations of my tacos poster

In-Class Critiques

Below are the 3 posters that I printed for the interim in-class critique.

When I hung up my posters on the whiteboard in the classroom, I also added a note for my classmates that the taco poster is very unfinished and that I would appreciate their feedback on it. My classmates’ comments were super helpful in showing me what elements were/weren’t working and giving me overall direction in how and where to move forward.

Some main comments were that, although the color palette I used was effective for my food graphics, the colors themselves were a little too strong/overwhelming. Side note: I actually didn’t know that we were allowed to use multiple values/shades of a color, so this was helpful in making me realize this! I also received multiple comments that it wasn’t outwardly clear that the yellow squiggly lines on my pasta poster were spaghetti, other than the fact that it said “PASTA”. So, I had to make the pasta more obvious. Also, the variation in spaghetti color (the green and black ones) wasn’t really working, but I’m glad I experimented with that anyway. I also needed to improve my hierarchy, specifically with the date/time information. And, I need to keep my posters consistent with the overlapping title/food graphic.

As for my taco poster, I think in general people were just very confused by it, and I wasn’t really receiving any clear suggestions on how to move forward with it. Therefore, I decided to give up on Tacos & Tequila and choose a different event from the LA Food Bowl that could be better represented by a simple graphic.

Further Digital Iterations

After receiving feedback from my classmates, I began making changes to my posters. I started with the pasta poster again: I lightened the red background color so it was less saturated/bright, and I changed the title font size to be smaller, to be consistent with the other posters. I also attempted to add hierarchy to the date/time information for the event. Then, I added more noodles, in hopes that it would make it look more like spaghetti. Again, I still felt like this poster was too flat/a little boring, but I decided to hold off and see what my instructor Julia and our TA Anna had to say during our upcoming desk crits.

As for the sushi poster, I also lightened the background yellow color to be less bright and overwhelming. I also made the same changes to the date/time information for the event as I had made in the pasta poster above. Other than that, I wasn’t sure what else to change in this poster. Most of my classmates seemed to like the sushi, so again, I decided to wait for the desk crit in class.

For my third poster, I decided to pursue another event from the LA Food Bowl called Sancerre & Shellfish. I considered illustrating a glass of white wine along with some shellfish, but I decided to keep my posters simple with just one food item, mussels, as they are essentially only black and yellow and have a pretty distinct shape. Below are some iterations of this new poster. Again, I attempted to keep the theme of lines by adding line details to the shells of the mussels.

Desk Crit Feedback

During desk crits in class, our instructor Julia was able to look over my posters and give really helpful feedback in my progress.

Overall, Julia commented that currently my posters were really close to being finished — I just had to change small details to improve readability, tie the posters together, and make them feel more like actual event posters.

To improve readability, Julia first suggested I should change the right-aligned text as it was difficult to read. My illustrations were also a little too big — because the poster will already be large, it’s unnecessary and overwhelming to have huge mussels or sushi, especially when I also have large titles. Downsizing the mussels and sushi will also increase negative space, which is something I was lacking, and decrease clutter in my posters (I realized I think I’m scared of negative space!)

Julia also commented that I needed to tie in the pasta poster more. Currently, because the spaghetti wasn’t a distinctive food shape, it’s just squiggly lines, it didn’t necessarily relate to the mussels or sushi. Perhaps I could try illustrating different types of noodles?

Finally, to make my posters feel more like event posters, the date/time information should have even better hierarchy, perhaps with line spacing or font size changes.

In general, Julia also mentioned that food posters are difficult, because you really have to focus on making the food look good. So I should definitely work more on making my food look delicious in order to interest the viewer.

Further Digital Iterations

Per Julia’s feedback, I changed the spaghetti to pasta noodles to make it more obvious that it’s pasta. I was actually pretty pleased with how the little noodles turned out; after I illustrated them I actually got super hungry and had to make pasta for myself for dinner!

After I changed the type of noodles, I then received feedback from one of my friends in Design. She agreed with Julia that in general, right-aligned text should be avoided, and she advised that I flip the elements in my posters to make the body text left-aligned and easier to read. I followed her advice and moved elements around to make the text left-aligned, and that definitely improved readability. This also improved the flow of my pasta poster, as now, the text wasn’t rigid and linear down the right side of the poster. The iterations below show changes I made to the pasta placement, the date/time information hierarchy, and making “the LA Food Bowl” festival name clearer.

Following the changes I made to my pasta poster, I revised my sushi poster as well. First, I flipped the elements to make the body text left-aligned. Then, I downsized the sushi to increase negative space, and attempted to add more details to the sushi to make them look more delicious and sushi-like, such as lines to the fish and sesame seeds. I wasn’t really sure I was succeeding with that though, but I decided to explore these changes nonetheless.

Similarly, I flipped the mussels and body text, and made the mussels smaller.

After revising my posters, I decided to play around a bit. I still kind of felt like my posters were a bit empty, in that it still lacked some kind of depth. I decided to add some detail lines in the background of the mussels and sushi posters, to see if that would fill negative space and improve the flow of my posters:

It definitely added something, and when I showed Julia this to ask for her thoughts, she also agreed that something was happening, but she wasn’t quite sure if this added element was exactly what I needed. I also wasn’t sure how to add this to my pasta poster, so I decided to not incorporate these lines and move on.

Below is my final grid, with the final posters that I printed out for our final critique.

Final Critique, Feedback, & Changes

For our in-class final critique, we all hung up our posters around the room, and we each got 3 sticky notes of blue, green, and yellow to give to each poster series. I believe blue represented “these posters feel like event posters”, green represented “these posters feel like a series”, and yellow represented “good craftsmanship”. I received a lot more sticky notes than I expected, and the comments I received were also very positive!

Overall, I received comments that the hierarchy of my posters was good and that I implemented the 50–5–5 rule really well. Also, the movement of text and illustration work well for each poster, which helps tie them together as a series. However, my body paragraphs were a little too long, which made them difficult to read. This could be improved if I shortened the text or increased the leading of the paragraphs. Also, I still needed to lighten/desaturate my colors, especially the red background of my pasta poster.

Specifically, my classmates really liked my pasta poster! They thought the pasta illustrations were really good and made them hungry, which was definitely my intention. However, one of my classmates thought that my sushi poster could be improved more. The sushi illustrations didn’t quite match with the pasta and mussels, as the squiggly, mushy-ness of the sushi was too abstract. Perhaps with more details such as rice texture or shading, I could make the sushi look more realistic. Also, there was a comment that the white text on the yellow background was difficult to read.

Reflection

Although I was initially hesitant about this assignment due to my lack of digital illustration experience, I think so far this one has been my favorite in the class! I really enjoyed the creative freedom we had in making posters about anything, and I enjoyed the chance to explore many options and hone my communication design skills.

From this assignment, I also realized that although illustrations on a poster are important to initially catch the viewer’s eye, the text on the poster is equally important in keeping the viewer’s attention and helping them understand the information being shown. I feel like I may have focused too much on my illustrations, and not enough on the text and apply some of the principles we’ve learned in this class so far. To me, the text was an afterthought, but it should’ve had equal importance.

I also realized that along the way, I forgot about my original theme connecting my posters: abstract illustrations principally defined by lines. Though I generally kept that theme for my sushi illustrations, I had unintentionally diverged from that for my mussels and pasta; they became more detailed/less abstract illustrations, which contrasted the sushi. I realized this inconsistency when one of my classmates pointed out how mushy/messy the sushi looked. I think I had overlooked this issue, because I was so set on my sushi graphics and unwilling to change them, as I thought they were good enough. But I believe I should have been more open to change and willing to explore new options with this.

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