Hierarchy
The Warhol Sound Series Poster Design
09–07 project kickoff
Chosen event: Warhol Sound Series Block Party
Part I. Weights & Spacing
09–09 worksession i
Bolding less is more impactful than bolding more.
Effective in creating clusters of information. More than visual impact, I think I thought a lot about which information should be grouped together content-wise. Individually, I thought each line of information carried significance in itself.
I initially used this exercise to spatially distinguish titles and content(left), but from a distance, I realized that this confuses the eye as it constantly has to shift from left to right.
This exercise reminded me a lot of how tabs shift in word processors when you use bullet points or lists. I think I could have used wider tabs to divide information visually more clearly.
In combining the linespace and line weight, I wanted to try using a lot of white space to distinctly separate the primary (name, date, place) and secondary (what the event is about, tickets) information.
Part II. Scale & Color
09–12 work session ii
Cutting out different sizes of texts to build scale was really effective, because I could achieve many diverse lay outs quickly. Although I mainly focused a lot on putting emphasis to the title, Sound Series, I also attempted iterations that have relatively equal hierarchy. However, from a far away view, the titles just disappeared because of the lack of emphasis.
I liked the boldness and bluntness of the left layout, how Sound Series Block Party gets all the attention from the viewer. However, I also thought that the slant in the right creates a more fun dynamic and rhythm that reflects a music concert.
09–13 work session iii
I thought having at least one strong or bright color would be effective as my event is a concert, to show the rhythmical nature of music. I picked out orange, pink, blue, and purple to keep exploring, because they were not too strong or too bland.
I thought that using one color as the point color could retain the simplicity and the impact together, but I thought that the white background may not embody the dynamics of the event.
Adding gradients added a gradual change to the mood of the posters, and I enjoyed how the color doesn’t work as a big block but rather shows a subtle change in different areas that makes it more interesting. In using these vibrant colors as the background, I changed the color of “sound series” to white to distinguish it from the rest of the bolded text and put emphasis on its hierarchy.
Part III. Image
In experimenting with various images, I first wanted to start with a layout that has a lot of whitespace to work with, because I felt more comfortable to begin with that. I was either going for an abstract painting (center) or a geometric shape (right), because I was a little bit intimidated to use a strong image that it might take away focus from the poster.
I found an image of a turntable that I thought could work well, and photoshopped it so that the colors aren’t too loud.
I like to play with shapes and metaphors a lot, so I started to explore the poster with the concept of “turntables”, but I carried on with the style of using geometric shapes.
- Feedback: the color scheme of teal and orange works well, but try more things than the layout on the left so that the poster would not look too crowded.
- Feedback: the approach doesn’t seem bad, but the alignment of circles and the scaling of the turntable could be adjusted.
I personally wasn’t too fond of this design because it didn’t seem to add depth to the poster at all, and it also didn’t match the old-school, retro personality of the music being played at the show.
Using the same image of the turntable adjusted differently, I created the above layout. I thought that the simplicity was working better here, with more negative space and space to breathe.
- overall feedback: the curvatures in the heading leads the eyes to leave the page at the upper right corner, and it’s hard to lead it back to the bottom left of the pages to read. also, the white space looks like an egg.
I felt a little stuck at this stage because I really liked the image, and my brain tended to ignore the constructive feedback because I really wanted this design to work.
Visiting The Warhol Sound Series Block Party — 0918
I visited the Warhol block party event on September 18, to actually feel what the atmosphere is like and to be more refreshed from my previous obsession with that particular layout.
I continued to explore 2 different styles — the geometric approach and the image-dominant one. In both approaches, I wanted to incorporate the images that I took at the event.
However, adding the image and also adding a vibrant point color did not seem to appear stylisitcally pleasing or coherent.
I put down my desire to use a turntable for a moment and created a version with the images that I took at the concert. I thought that the purple tint and the overall black background captured the ambience of the event pretty accurately, but at the same time I thought it was also a too literal portrayal of the event as well. I began thinking that I may not need a snapshot from the event to create a poster about it. I wanted to take a more subtle and abstract approach about it.
I enjoyed the clean aesthetic of the b/w poster, but because I hadn’t laid out the text and the title design for this particular image, everything looked a little bit out of place and not cohesive.
Further image search
I continued my search for turntable images, and found two that could work well with my previous layout.
I edited the image with color half tones to recreate the warhol aesthetic, but the yellow tone in the image was a little bit distracting and the grain also didn’t appear as intentional aesthetic choice. However, I liked the position of the image that allows the eye to follow through the direction of where the text was pointing to.
My peers and I unanimously agreed that this image was much more clear and fitting for a poster with its clarity. Although the leading lines point to the right and leave the page, I decided to work with this image and explore how I can adjust the position of different texts to be more readable. I also brought back the colors from the previous iteration.
- feedback: the wave in the heading feels a little unnecessary, and it might be a better positioning of the date to put it in the circular area on the top right corner.
- feedback: the current tilt is a bit too much, using a staggered positioning for the text aligned to the leading line may be a hierarchically more appropriate approach.
Because I am using the original size of the image without cropping, I decided to rotate it a little bit and photoshop the empty spaces.
critique
feedback:
- From across the room, “sound series” disappears completely
- The title, date, and subtexts are not very cohesive, appearing like different pieces of information
- Aligning the artists and performance time horizontally unintentionally creates hierarchy among them because of the length of the text.
- Layout could be less polite and more dynamic, especially the title.
- I decided to rearrange the artist information vertically, and move it into the disc, because I thought that it was more relevant to be in the disc, as the disc is a metaphor for the music playing in the event.
- I tried center alignment of the title, but I also received feedback that I could blow it up a little more to make the audience feel a little bit less comfortable with it.
Reflection
This is probably the project that I created the most iterations and struggled the most with, but had a lot of fun with too. I really learned a lot of about creating a coherent design, and also towards the end I started to grasp what it is to break the rule and be more experimental. Looking back at the iterations I made before, I understand why I got the feedback that I got. When I look at this poster at the end of the semester, I would probably be able to point out many more areas that could have been treated differently.
