Project 4: Poster Series
Final Poster Series
Introduction
Summer Fridays at the Frick is a Summer event series hosted at The Frick in Pittsburgh each year.
For this project, we’ll be developing a set of two promotional images for “2021 Summer Fridays at the Frick.” The first will be a poster for the overall event series, and the second will be a Facebook event banner for one specific day of the Fridays at the Frick series.
First, we conducted some preliminary exercises as well as moodboarding. We then progressed to sketching, and eventually to digital iterations using the tools we learned in the exercises and with the design inspiration we took from our moodboards.
Exercises
Pathfinder Exercise
Pentool Exercise
Moodboards
Main Poster
Subevent: Summer Solstice Celebration
In my main poster moodboard, I focused on composition as well as some images of the setting to contextualize my work. The actual aesthetic of my poster is defined by the second moodboard, as I’ll be basing my work around the theme of a Summer Solstice Celebration and its visual theme.
Drafting and Establishing a Brand Identity
During the design process, I kept in mind the fact that this was a series for an ongoing event. I wanted to create a continuous brand identity for the event in my posters, as I feel that a recognizable logo and branding would make my posters and therefore the event itself more memorable and easily recognizable. The branding could be incorporated into day-of-event signs and posters as well, to create an aesthetic experience for patrons of the Frick that would compliment the event experience.
For my event poster, I chose the Summer Solstice Celebration. This event will be focused on health and wellbeing, both with respect to the physical body and to the spirit. As such, I took design inspiration for my poster series from traditional celebrations of the summer solstice that involve rituals with flowers and candles.
I initially wanted to incorporate the candle element as a sun in the middle of my poster, in which I wanted to use the circular shape of the sun to place my text. I hoped to make the curvy text resemble smoke or the movement of the breeze, and the sun to resemble the fire of a candle and the warm Summer sunlight.
However, when I drafted a full poster with this element I found it challenging to create a strong hierarchy around the shape, and felt that the poster’s aesthetic at this point was a bit too bright and cartoonish given my aim of promoting feelings of health and peacefulness though my designs.
I then switched gears to focus on the floral aesthetic that is common in the photos I chose in my moodboard. I wanted to push myself to try drawing in illustrator, as I didn’t have experience doing so, so I created some orchid-inspired flowers that I planned to use to frame my poster.
I decided to keep the central text from my original design and use that as my logo/brand identity element throughout my poster series due to its visual movement, flow and shape. I felt like this would give my posters some continuity as well as give the typeface some intrigue. I’m not skilled at calligraphy or handwriting, so playing with the circular shape seemed like a great alternative!
I found this aesthetic to be more successful and more in line with how I wanted my final series to look, so I continued to refine my work in this direction.
Iterating and Refining
My next move was to create some yellow flowers to compliment the pink flowers I’d already designed. I used the same shapes with different gradients to do so. I also changed the stems to solid color lines and added more flowers around my text elements. Finally, I raised the location information to a higher position in the hierarchy to make it more easily discernable:
At this point I was happy with my design elements, but continued to work to create a better hierarchy and increase legibility among the text and illustrated elements. I changed the paragraph font to a better body text, reconfigured the other elements and changed their size and alignment to be as organized as possible. I scaled back the floral elements to reflect my new composition’s shape:
I was happy with the results of this iteration- my text has a clear hierarchy and is allgned and justified in an organized manner that lends itself well to the illustrated elements and their shapes.
Next, I consulted with Anna regarding how to best propagate this design into a Facebook ad. We decided another floral illustration of a lotus in the same style as the orchids would be a fun and effective element for this poster. I sketched a preliminary design first:
I digitized the lotus and started with a composition that included some of my yellow flowers from before, as well as some petals blowing in the wind:
I liked the lotus element and my logo which I kept for continuity, but felt that this iteration was too busy visually, so I refined it:
This ended up being my final FB ad, and I felt that it was a good combination of elements and wasn’t too busy. I also felt that the hierarchy was clear here and it was clearly a part of the rest of my series.
Final Template Work & Conclusions
This project went very well for me! I felt like I created unique work based on a well-defined aesthetic, and gained a bunch of skills in Illustrator. If I saw these posters hanging up on campus, I would definitely be interested in what they were for! It took time to develop and refine my ideas, and there is still a lot I could learn about sketching both on paper and in Illustrator, but this was a great first experience with some of those skills.
