Refining Sketches and Building a Symposium Identity
What I learned when I refined my sketches and started working in Adobe programs.
After a desk crit last week I was pretty content in my content-first design approach. While I had looked at artwork from other backgrounds in design and had an idea of where my palette might go, I continued to put color on the back burner.
Some Inspiration
In addition to working on my sketches, I watched the letterpress film Pressing On, and there were a lot of points in that film that really hit home. One thing I took away from this, in particular, was the endurance of letterpress machines.
It got me thinking about a sewing machine I’ve had for two decades that I took in for repair and they told me that I should never get rid of it because it was made entirely of metal works. It also got me thinking about the care that printers take with type and design and how they really break everything down.
So with that in mind, my goal for this week was to lay out my content as much as possible with the caveat that I didn’t have to stick to a particular design if it didn’t feel right after this week.
I was still playing with the mood board I made last week. This time I added more cultures including Asian and Latin American as well as some BIPOC graphic designers.
I also added some layout examples that I thought did a great job of using type as texture, which I seem to be drawn to.
I did know that I wanted to do the following:
- High contrast in all areas of the design (large and small fonts)
- High contrast colors (both in values and intensities)
- Interconnected elements and spreads
- Most likely some type of linework
These basic ideas gave me enough to start sketching and playing with how this content should look on the page. Still, my focus was on the grid, not on the designs and graphic elements.
Poster
I decided to start with my poster first. I created a three-row, five-column grid in Adobe Illustrator to start, but decided that I needed more rows given how I wanted to ultimately lay out all the detailed text.
On my second attempt, I created a five-column grid with 17 rows and kept the gutters to work with. I then decided that I wanted to play with a darker substrate so I made my
I started designing my poster first because I have always found that there’s more freedom in a printed object. On the web, I am constrained by how a responsive framework will reorient my materials for smaller screens, but with this, I can take more risks and play with movement.
Going in, I tried to keep in mind a use case of someone walking down a New York Street and seeing the flier. I wanted there to be movement within the content so I tried to break up whatever I could. I also assigned priority to the following areas:
- Symposium Name
- Date and Location
- Keynote Speaker
- Website
- Other Presentations
After playing with placement and a little bit with some type as texture, I ended up with the following structure.
To make sure I was happy with this setup I decided to print several copies of my design and hang them on my door, where I tried to critically look at how the information was conveyed over the course of a day.
I made the following observations that I hope to change in the coming week:
- The date looks jumbled. While I knew that going in I made some notes for how I might clean it up.
- It wasn’t so important that I knew there was a keynote talk as who was giving the talk and what it was about. I am challenging myself to switch up the weights and keep in mind that color will be a factor starting next week.
- There was a lot of focus on time and interval, and this is where my editor brain kicked in to see where I could clean it up and bring some focus onto the speakers and their topics.
- If this was going to be up in the public sphere, I would take into consideration that everyone has a phone at hand and incorporate a QR code. I would advocate for the use of one if it was a client project.
I copied the artboard and made those changes so I could see my work side by side. I am overall happy with the second version of the poster but I am not sure if the presentations take up too much space.
- I initially wanted to work with a different color substrate and I still want to, but I don’t have different colored copy paper to print on so I may stick with what and try to work in blocks of reverse text as I add additional graphic elements.
- I want to incorporate color, and I plan on incorporating color, and it will probably be bright high contrast colors, but I want the content to be the focus, so I am working with that now
Currently, both versions are on my door for further analysis.
Magazine Spreads
Similar to the poster design I felt I had a little more freedom with the spreads than I did with the website so I did those next.
I started by imposing a one-column structure since the page space I had to work in was so narrow I didn’t want to overwhelm a reader with multiple short columns.
I gave myself a bleed anticipating that I would want some images to extend to the edge of the page and began laying out essential elements. One issue I had was that the text from the article transferred with all the hard returns attached. So a part of my time working this week was making sure this would read without those awkward breaks.
For my main spread, I know that I am going to have a one-page intro featuring Marjane Satrapi that evokes her work Persepolis but I haven’t decided what style that is going to take just yet, so There’s currently placeholder text.
For the interior spread, I do want to include some design elements that will connect the pages, but I also knew that I wanted to use a pull-out quote at least one photo. I had previously considered putting in a panel of other graphic novels mentioned in the article, but given the size, I felt like for these two spreads it would have been too crowded.
Website
Designing websites for me always seems to involve more constraints because I start thinking about accessibility and responsive formats.
Knowing that this could be viewed on a variety of devices I wanted to try to make sure that I paid attention to the grid.
I did the first draft in Illustrator but I hope to move it to Figma or XD in the next week.
This is the final product, for now, my screenshot would not import into this correctly so you can’t see the guides, but I also know that this probably needs the most work out of all of it.
Where Do I Go From Here
I want to start with the poster. Once I lock one I feel like I’ll have a handle for the rest of them and then I can apply the same framework. I want to test different color palettes and get that nailed down as well.
