Project 3: Poster Series Final Documentation
Introduction
New York Fashion Week is one of the most exciting weeks of the year, with fashion-obsessed consumers tuning in from all around the world to watch every carefully crafted show. I decided to do an elegant but modern poster series to advertise for New York Fashion week. The intent is to remind fashion fans of the dates and times of these shows so that they can tune in at that time. Since most of these events are invite only, the focus isn’t really trying to get people to buy tickets, but rather get people excited about the designer’s new work.
Inspiration
I took my inspiration from these sketch-like images. I liked the wispy quality all of these images have. I absolutely love fashion drawings. Also I think they immediately bring to mind high-fashion and elegance.
Initial Sketches
I liked the idea of taking iconic pieces from the three fashion shows I am advertising for in order to represent the brand. I thought this would allow me to highlight the name a little bit less. NYFW is sort of a niche sort of art, so people who know it would recognize certain patterns or details (but not make it too subtle.)
In choosing which of these ideas I liked best, I decided I wasn’t a fan of the dresses because that was a bit overused. In googling “NYFW posters” a lot of them had similar fashion sketches of ball gowns since they are easy to put patterns on. It was tough to choose between the shoes and the girls wearing the hats, but I thought the hats were a little more original, and they stray slightly away from your typical fashion sketch.
Digital Iterations
Color Pallets
As my original color pallets I chose these muted versions of pink, purple, and green. I liked how greyed out all of these colors are because they suggest elegance.
Sketches and Brush Stroke
I sketched out the woman wearing an iconic Chanel, Dior and Balenciaga headpiece. I then tried different types of strokes in order to make it look like a sketch. It took a bit of trial and error with different colors to find a brush and stroke weight that made it look like a fashion drawing and not a digitally created image.
I landed on this at first:
The stroke weight was thick enough to be seen from far away, but thin enough to look like a drawing. Separating the illustrator drawing into small enough segments so that the “wispy” end of the brush appeared enough times was something I had to play with too.
Breadth
The woman with her headwear alone was not enough, so I tried adding different accents. I tried adding a bit of “new york” by putting in a subway. It seemed a bit unnecessary.
Then I tried playing with the “NYFW” title, making that a focus of the piece as well. I wasn’t really satisfied with how small the logo was on the right, and the one on the left seemed a little overpowering for the elegant look I was going for.
The other thing that I wanted to try to fix, is that the headpiece was a bit too subtle to look like a significant difference. I needed to do something with the headwear. I really liked what I settled on next, a splotchy “fill” to the headpieces. I liked this because it didn’t take away from the “an artist sketched this casually” feeling of the drawing. I also brightened the colors a bit, because even though I wanted the posters to be elegant, the greyed out colors were a bit too muted to be seen from a distance.
Depth
Placing the text was the hardest part of this assignment for me. The drawing took up so much of the page, that the text seemed misplaced no matter where I put it. I decided to make sort of a little drawing out of the text. The cluster of horizontal and vertical text made it seem a bit more interesting than words on a page — more like a puzzle.
Final Piece
Critique Response
The first feedback I got from the critique was that the letters of the NYFW logo were too close together and hard to read, which I agree with looking at it now. Second, people were uncomfortable with how the word Balenciaga was centered so differently on the page than Dior and Chanel because it is so much longer. I did struggle with the text, so hearing that feedback was certainly useful. It taught me that even if I like how something looks on one poster, if it doesn’t work with another it’s important to find another solution rather than try and make it work. I really appreciated my improvement from the mini-critique to the final critique. I think it is because I asked Kaylee a lot of questions after the mini-crit in order to find the best solutions to my problems. I definitely see myself noticing more what the “problems” are in my designs. Really listening to people during crits is super helpful. Also, I really like the sticky note mini-crit. It helps to be able to take the crit home with you.
