Project Three | Typographic Poster
Documentation
In this project, we were asked to design a poster about a typeface and assemble the following content for the poster:
- Name of the typeface
- Name of the typeface designer
- Year it was designed
- Max 100 words about the typeface and purpose of the form
- Full character set
- A quote (optional)
The typeface that I was assigned is Gill Sans.
I. Sketching and Brainstorming
Below are the five sketches I did for the possible poster layouts:
When I did my sketches, a lot of the inspirations came from the geometric touches in the structures of Gill Sans, its cheerfulness in design, British traditions.
Poster Design 1
For my first draft, I decided to play with the larger “g” idea in my 4th sketch. I experimented with different size of the “g”, arrangement of “gill sans”, and color of the text.
I chose this baby pink as the background of my poster to show the “cheerflly idiosyncratic” part of Gill Sans. I experimented with differnt colors of the text, and eventually chose the lemon yellow (the bottom right sketch) which would give the best color contrast.
However, when I was trying to add in the text, character set, and designer’s name, I realized that there was not enough space in my poster to fit them all. So I changed the design of the “gill sans’ in the poster.
I enlarged the “g” and let it bleed of the page so that the character set could fit into the two circles of “g”. Gill Sans has its renowned eyeglass “g”. Putting the character set inside the two circles of “g” would show the idea of seeing all the characters through the eyeglass.
I experimented with a few different orientations of the designer’s name. I first tried putting “Eric Gill” horizontally beside the text, but the negative space on the right seemed a bit awkward. So I eventually chose to arraged the name vertically. Although vertical words maybe hard to read, I thought it would fill up the space and align with the text when I was doing the first draft.
When I was doing the first draft, I had a misunderstanding of the use of negative space. I was simply trying to fill up the space. I rearranged the orientation of “gill sans” and “1928” by putting the “sans” vertically below the “1928” to fill up the negative space at the bottom.
Above are the feedbacks for my first poster design draft during the mini critique session. Here are some of the main conclusions:
- Low constrast especially between white text and pink background
- Confusing hierarchy
- The character set inside the “g” is hard to read
- Vertical texts are hard to read
- Wrong spelling of Eric Gill
In addition, during the crit session, Kaylee and Julia also emphazied a few things that I felt very relevant to my case:
- Use of space: negative space is OK and I do not have to fill the space for no good reason.
- Body text is too big. 12 pt and below is OK.
- Be strategic about alignment.
- Body text too close to the margin
Bearing these useful comments and takeaways in mind, I made some changes to my first draft.
First, I changed the color of the body text to green, which has a better contrast with pink than white. I adjusted the size of the text to 12 pt and had it aligned with right edge of the big “g”. To resolve the issue of confusing hierarchy, I changed the color, and the weight of the designer’s name to green and semi-bold. The “gill sans” is also displayed horizontally and aligned. I distorted and extended the “i” of the “gill” so that it separated the body text from the designer name and year designed. The character set was placed beside the “g” rather than inside. It was also flush right, and aligned with the round bottom part of “g”. Overall, the poster now had more negative space and more clear hierarchy (gill sans first; name and year as the second).
However, during the work session, Kaylee pointed out that the inverted “i” looked like exclamation mark rather than “i”, and as a result, the word did not read like “gill sans”. The green of the text did not match the pink background very well. I also felt that the green looked a bit abrupt given that the yellow and pink combination looked rather pleasing. For further improvements, I would try other colors for the text that would match the pink and yellow harmoniously. I would also experiment with the orientations of “i” or “gill sans” to retain the readability and hierarchy of “gill sans”.
Poster Design 2
The second draft is basically an extension of the first draft in that I sticked to using large and exaggerated lowercase “g” as a key element in my design. Instead of using the usual “g”, I displayed the “g” horizontally to showcase the “signature eyeglass lowercase g” of Gill Sans.
I first experimented with the alignment and orientation of “Gill Sans” in the poster, which is of the top hierarchy in my design. Initially I had the “Gill Sans” aligned with the curve of the horizontal “g”. However, the horizontal “g” is not symmetric and the two circles are not of the same size. The “Gill” and “Sans” looked a little unbalanced and did not read like one word/phrase if I placed them on top of the “g”. Therefore, I decided to placed them right above the ‘g” on top of the poster. I felt that the position (top) and the weight (bold) of the “Gill Sans” would ensure it is of the top hierarchy in the poster.
I also tried different places to put the character set. Initially, I wanted to adjust the shape of the text body of the character set, and the place the character set inside “g” so that the “g” would look like eyeglass. Yet, I thought of the feedbacks I got for my first design. Having the character set inside the eyeglass “g” would make it hard to read. I also felt taht such arrangement did not enhance the overall design but made the poster look disorganizaed. Given that the character set is of the lowest hierarchy to me, I gave up this attempt and decided to think of the orientation of the character set when the overall design was almost done.
In addition, I also experimented with the color and size of the “g”. I found out the orange looked more lively and showed better color contrast with the green. Having the orange “g” layered over the transparent white “g” further gave it a 3D look. I also made the dot of the “i” the same orange as the “g”so that the white “Gill Sans” did not look too abrupt above the orange horitontal “g”.
The body text, the designer’s name, and year designed were centered. The designer name and year were in dark blue to make them stand out. The character set was in plae green and placed on top and bottom of the poster.
During the work session, Kaylee suggeted me trying different sizes of the orange “g” to figure out the optimal size. She also recommended that I align the body text, character set with other elements on the poster. I will show more of the working process later.
Poster Design 3
The third poster design was based on my first sketch. I used the capitalized “g” and experimented with different arrangements of “Gill Sans”. The inspiration for the color choice (blue and red) is that Gill Sans “has a distinctly British feel” and Gill Sans has also been widely used by transport operators in Britain.
At first, the designer’s name and body text were both in white. However, drawing inspiration from the transport signage, I added a red background to the designer’s name so that it would look like a road sign. The new design also more effectively distinguished the designer’s name from the body text, increasing its hierarchy in the poster.
In this design, I also included a quote relevant to Gill Sans. I put both the quote and character set above the “Gill Sans”. The character set was transparent so that it would not compete with the body text and designer’s name for attention. Initially, the quote was in white. But I adjusted the transparency of the quote to the same as the character set so that it would not look too abrupt. I also experimented with different arrangements of the quote and the character set to make them more aligned to each other.
The above are the drafts (digital and printed) of the third design. Although the color combination looked appropriate on the screen, the poster looked a little greyish and dark when printed. Therefore, I decided to work on the second design for my final deliverable.
Final Poster
I experimented with the size of the horizontal “g”, and figured out that having “Gill Sans” aligned with the horizontal “g” made the overall design more pleasing. If the horizontal “g” was too closed to the margin, the viewers may feel more tension especially after the poster was trimmed.
I also adjusted the positions and alignment of the body text, year, designer’s name, and character set. The “Gill Sans”, horizontal “g”, the character set, and the designer’s name are all aligned on the right. The body text is also aligned with the name of designer.
To make the horizontal “g” more stereoscopic, I also added a shadow for it. I felt that the shadow was not very obvious and distracting, but it enhanced the stereoscopy of the horizontal “g”.
The above is my final poster design. The actual color is slightly brighter and has better contrast.
During the critique session, I received many useful feedback for my poster.
- The space between two paragraphs of the body text is too large. If viewing from a distance, some people may regard the first short paragraph as a quote. The large space weakens the unity/continuity of the body text.
- Some orange (the same color as the horizontal “g”) at the bottom part would enhance the overall coherence in the design. Perhaps I could try making the character set orange to see the effect first.
