Poster Series

Context:

The fourth project for cdf is to design a series of three posters that visually introduce three different arts events (e.g. musical concerts, plays, film festivals, dance performances, etc.) held within a single arts festival. The three posters will be distinctive, yet use some common design elements, like grids, to unite the collection to communicate that the events relate to each other. The key to this project is “striking balance between form and function”.

Each poster must contain certain details: the name of the arts festival, the title of the event, the name(s) of the artist(s), a short paragraph about the artist(s) or the event itself, the date time and location of the event, and relevant ticket information.

It is important to keep a couple restrictions in mind. Firstly, no photographic imagery is allowed- any visual elements must be created on our own. Furthermore, the same color palette of 2–3 hues plus black and/or white must be employed across all 3 posters. Lastly, no more than two type families for the entire series.

Successful students will be able to interpret and visually represent content that has an expressive nature for informational communication using typography, form, and color. After a design direction is identified, they will also be able to create a design system that can be used to implement multiple design solutions.

Process:

The Plan:

Right off the bat, I knew the event I wanted to create was a three-day long music festival, featuring my favorite artists. Because I was going through some rough patches with relationships at the time, I was listening to more chill/feels music, naturally inspiring me to mainly feature that kind of music at this festival- I wanted the festival to revolve around using music as a way to deal with heartache. At this point, I had a strong idea of what kind of “vibe” I wanted my festival to have, and it was just a matter of creating a poster series that portrays that feeling, and has design elements that would appeal to and attract people that enjoy chill/feels music.

As a result, I wanted to keep the poster series leaning towards less as opposed to more, and strongly focused on portraying emotion, just like the music that would be featured at the festival. Furthermore, I felt a clean and minimal design that seems stripped back and raw would be most appealing to individuals that listen to the kind of music at the festival, assuming that they enjoy the music for its minimalist and vulnerable approach to expressing emotional turmoil. Grids would help keep things minimal while also creating consistency/continuity throughout my series. All in all, I wanted my poster to be clean, and to strongly communicate a feeling viewers can sympathize with.

Initial Sketches:

Initially, I wanted to get as many ideas down onto paper as possible, sketching whatever would come to mind. Personally, I felt that it would be much easier to explore through AdobeIllustrator as opposed to sketching, because Illustrator gives you the ability to copy and paste mass amounts of texts, or to very easily resize and manipulate elements of the poster. As a result, I did not write out all of the content in my sketches, but instead, drew lines as placeholders, and focused my sketching on exploring general layouts and concepts. I felt it was best to use sketching to simply experiment with putting different elements in different places, and to start focusing intricacies and details later in Illustrator.

Illustrator:

Moving into Illustrator, I created three digital iterations, most of them carrying over ideas from my sketches. Again, I wanted to go with a very minimal and clean style, inspiring the initial color choice with the simple off-white background, black text, and relatively low-key/muted implementation of color.

Already, I found myself most fond of the last iteration I made- I felt that the inclusion of vertical text creates an interesting factor that would also help establish a grid, and decided to dive deeper into exploring that iteration specifically. Upon doing so, I experimented with adding more negative space into my poster, which not only gave elements of my poster more room to breathe, but more effectively translated the grid as well. Furthermore, I felt that having each element be a manipulable “block” of content was an idea that had a great deal of potential and could be explored deeply. Lastly, I felt that the last iteration was the most effective in satisfying the “50 5 5 Rule”, as it offers an interesting element at each distance. Thus, I felt this was the best design to move forward with.

After choosing to focus on this specific base design, I dove into a lengthy exploration process to create the best poster series I could.

Depth of Exploration:

To illustrate depth of exploration, I felt it was best to show the entirety of the process, and explain the changes made from iteration to iteration.

1. First Iterations: General concepts with a focus on establishing grids using “blocks” of content. Continuity is established through the broken heart/silhouette motif, similar “blocks” of content, and strong grid usage. Diversity is established through differing layouts/arrangements of content.
2. Experimentation with Scale: In response to feedback and critique, increased spacing between letters in Ticket Information (the 90degrees-rotated text) to make the info more easily readable without needing to tilt your head.
3. Experimentation with Specific Elements: According to feedback and critique, the spacing in the bottom-left paragraph are distracting, and creating a rectangular box of text is not worth it in this case. Rearranged the paragraph so that it is more “poetry” styled, and fills up more space vertically.
4. Experimentation with Color: According to feedback and critique, each poster in the poster series generally felt too similar to each other. Introduced a unique color to each poster to help set them apart, specifically within the broken heart. Diversity is now not just established through differing layouts/arrangements of content, but also through color.
5. Experimentation with Color: Added color to the background behind each artists’ silhouette to create more diversity between posters, and more effectively establish identity for each poster. Colors in the background were purposefully made lighter and “softer” so that the broken heart motif is what stands out the most in terms of color.
6. Experimentation with Specific Elements: According to feedback and critique, it was hard for some to differentiate the name of the festival, “heartache”, from the rest of the information. Added a colored line, separating the name of the festival from everything else, effectively emphasizing it. The colored line also somewhat serves as an underline, creating more emphasis. Furthermore, Added a space in “bryantpark”, spreading text more evenly across that specific line. Keeping “bryantpark” as a single word was more less meaningless, and only distracted viewers, making it reasonable to fix it. (Lesson learned: don’t implement something unless it has specific purpose/intention)
7. Experimentation with Specific Elements: According to feedback and critique, similar to the lack of a space in “bryantpark” the poetic style of the paragraph didn’t really serve a purpose, and ended being more distracting over anything else. In response, changed paragraph into a basic, left-justified block of text.
8. Experimentation with Specific Elements and Scale: Bolded “heartache” to further differentiate it from the rest of the content on the posters and to emphasize its importance. Furthermore, according to feedback and critique, inconsistent spacing between words and letters in the name of the artist and event details were distracting. In response, made the spacing between letters and words consistent throughout, and instead, altered the scale of text to make the content create the rectangular “block”.

Final Iterations:

In this section, I’ll break down the reasons why I felt that these iterations work the best as standalone pieces, and together as a series as well.

1. Visual Hierarchy: Throughout all three posters, information is highlighted based on importance, and the way viewers progress through the content is logical. The name of the festival, “heartache”, is bolded and separated from the rest of the content with a line, making it stand out as the most prominent text on the posters. In contrast, the least important information in this case, the description of the festival, is small and can only be read at a close distance- from afar, it more serves to occupy space and further establish grid than to inform viewers. On the other hand, in terms of color, the strongest color on the poster is within the broken heart motif, drawing the viewers’ attention to the most important visual element.
2. Meaningful Illustration: While the three artists create somewhat different music, they relate to one another in the feelings that they experience- heartache. The artists are silhouetted, as they each have their own unique musical footprint or “outline”. However, their individuality is “shadowed” by this shared feeling of heartache, as it is a emotion that unites people and is relatable to people across all walks of life, regardless of who they are. The feeling of heartache, portrayed through the broken heart, is highlighted the most through color and contrast. Each artist has a different colored heart, representing the uniqueness of their own respective heartache experience. However, at the end of the day, everyone is left, more or less, with the same broken heart.
3. Balance Between Diversity and Consistency: The posters are clearly part of a series due to similarities in type choice, reoccurring visual elements, similar “blocks” of content, and consistent grid usage. However, diverse color and layout sets them apart from each other just the right amount.
4. Cleanliness, Minimalism, and Simplicity: Even with a decent amount of information on each poster, because of the spacing between elements, consistent grid structure, and negative space, the posters feel clean and minimal- it feels uncluttered, and all elements have space to breathe. This simplicity is an aesthetic that I feel would appeal to those who listen to these kinds of artists.

Concluding Thoughts:

This fourth project was very informative and helpful in multiple aspects. However, out of all of the things I’ve learned, two of the most significant concepts would be creating an effective and cohesive series of items, and attention to detail. Firstly, I realized just how different creating a series of pieces is from creating a stand-alone piece. It took me a very long time to find a balance between diversity and likeness across my poster series- learning how to make pieces look like a series together but still different from another primarily through color, grids, and layouts was definitely a process that required a great deal of exploration, as observable above. However, this project has taught me the fundamentals of series creation, and I am very excited to work on other series projects in the future to further practice my skills. Through this project, I also learned the importance of attention to detail. In my final critique, I realized that, while I was overall very satisfied with my poster series, there were multiple, minor things (like the positioning of the “day x” label, or how the ticket pricing doesn’t exactly make a straight line) that hold back my work, making it almost really good, but not quite 100% there. With this in mind, I plan to go through a much more thorough and critical reviewing process when I go over my “final” iterations before officially submitting.

Overall, I’m very satisfied with the way the posters turned out, and very excited to get them back and give them to my friends. This project has taught me a great deal of new design knowledge, and I’m extremely eager to learn more down the road.

Thank you for reading!