Summer Fridays at the Frick: Promotional Communication Series
Design: Print & Illustration
Spring 2021
About the Project
Through this project for Communication Design Fundamentals, we created two marketing materials that visually introduce Summer Fridays at the Frick 2021. The two promotional communication materials (a poster and Fackebook event banner) will be distinctive, yet use some common design elements to unite the collection to communicate the event.
Carried over from previous assignment, we will continue experimenting with Gestalt principles, hierarchy (typographic, color, and spacial), and expression. Using typographic voice and effective communication, we will evoke emotions and abstractions. An additional element to explore will be the use of shapes to balance form and function.
Exercise 1: PenTool and Pathfinder Practice
March 24, 2021
In these two exercises, we practiced using Illustrator tools for PenTool and Pathfinder. This will be useful for creating shapes in the promotional communication materials.
Pathfinder Practice
In the Pathfinder practice, we were given several type of circles, squares and rectangles and asked to use the pathfinder tool with unite, minus front, intersect, exclude. I found that I mostly use minus front. My robot isn’t an exact copy (see mouth), but I definitely learned how to use the Pathfinder tool.
PenTool Practice
I had a lot more trouble with learning to use the PenTool and ended up using the Bézier Game to practice. It took me a while to get a handle (pun ha) on using the handles and splitting handles using ‘alt’ key. I look forward to practicing using the PenTool in the rest of project.
Research & Moodboards
March 24, 2021
Main Poster
The first poster will include the following information:
Title: Summer Fridays at the Frick
Date: Fridays July 2 — September 3, 2021
Time: Fridays from 10 a.m. until 9:00 p.m. (Performances begin at 6:30 pm)
Location: 7227 Reynolds St. Pittsburgh, PA 15208 — North Lawn on The Frick Grounds
Ticket information: Admission-free performances are held on the North Lawn on the Frick grounds beginning at 6:30 p.m. — Tickets presented upon entry
- Admission to the Frick grounds for everyone — FREE
- Admission to the Car and Carriage Museum — FREE
- All admissions and tours for Frick members — FREE
The description of the event is as follows:
Hypothetically with Covid restrictions lifting at this time, this summer every Friday from July 2 through Sept 3, 2021, the Frick will offer an exciting and diverse lineup of entertaining performances. The 10-week, outdoor-focused series features a variety of musical performances, activities for children and families, and other entertainment appealing to all ages.
After reading the links below, I began to develop an idea of the direction I wanted to go.
Summer Fridays at the Frick 2019
The Frick Website
Press — Pittsburgh NEXT
I created a mood board on Pinterest for this project: link. I split my moodboard into two sections: layout style, form elements.
The first one was poster layout style. I picked a bunch of different posters that have different layouts. Where the form is and where the text is very varied; for instance, the text in the center and form around or the form in the middle and the text around, or even the form in the upper two-thirds and the text in the lower third.
Some of the posters were from a search about “fête de la musique” which is a festival celebrated in France which is a day of celebration of music and has some really fun and vibrant posters.
The second section was form elements. I wanted to incorporate the parts of the description so the poster shows: a park, musical performances, activities/entertain for children and families, and food celebrations. THus, this board has some nice images of elements I would want to include in the poster.
Facebook Banner
The Facebook banner will be associated with a specific summer event. The event I chose was the Supercalifragilisticeexpialidocious. I’m not quite sure how this might effect the color scheme that is used to connect the two promotional materials.
The materials in this poster will be:
Title: Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Date: July 23
Food Vendors: Wood Fired Flatbreads, Parrot Bay Café, PGH Crepes, Sugar and Spice, and Stickler’s food trucks
Description: Fairytale Princess Visits brings us the Enchanted Nanny and Chimney Sweep as they engage our young visitors with storytelling, silly songs, and photo ops. Local musicians Scott and Rosanna perform music from their new children’s album, Happy Dance. Enjoy additional interactive enchantment around the grounds, make a kite or grab some chalk and let your imagination bring our pathways to life in bursting color.
I also created a small section on the reference of Mary Poppins in my Pinterest board to express the whimsical feeling that the word brings. In particular, i think the kite one plays nicely into the theme of summer series really well.
Sketch Iteration
March 29, 2021
I really wanted to use green and blues to evoke the natural scenery of Fridays at the Frick. To pick the third color, I thought triadic colors would work nicely so I ended up with a red color when using this website to help me pick the third color. It’s not super exciting, so I may decide to change this later.
I sketched on my iPad some basic elements layouts as part of breadth of exploration.
Components
First, I drew out the different kinds of components I wanted in the poster. Based on the description, I came up with a couple categories of things I wanted in the poster: nature/trees, music, families, and food (represented by food trucks mostly). I also included elements such as the Frick and Mary Poppins to give the events more context (since that happen at the Frick and my Facebook banner is inspired from Mary Poppins). I found that having the Frick was a good grounding point of the context of the event; in one poster I did use the Pittsburgh skyline for the same purpose.
I just used the outlines, but in the actual posters I would probably pick one solid color for the shapes.
Poster Sketches
I did tried three diferent layouts for the large poster. For each I have also shown the image inspiration. I blocked out the areas in a similar layout to the poster. The backgrounds/colors of backgrounds is definitely not set.
I like this one because it is like you are in the park and the text is like path ways and it’s fully immersed in the nature. I used the Pittsburgh skyline to give the poster context.
This second one has more of a center focus and is less cluttered. I realized as I inserted the image, but I would probably put the different food trucks at the bottom of the page instead at the top. I also really liked how the text color/size really created heirachy even though the text is right next to each other.
This one is similar as the first one as it seems all the images form a sort of organized garden/park. but the text is seperated from the actual park.
Two other poster layouts I really liked were these two that incoporporate the text into the scene cleanly as well as having some sort of masking where the shape shows something but the inside is formed to give even more context.
Banner Sketches
For the banner sketches, I used the same components and tried to layout the banner so it seemed contiguous from the posters. I liked adding some curves for the title to add to the whimsical nature of the word.
Block Sketch Iteration
March 31, 2021
I ended up going back one step to block out areas of the composition to really focus on the layout and hierachy. So I took my three sketches from before and blocked out areas for both the poster and the banner.
Digital Iteration I
April 2, 2021
I decided to start with sketch 3 for the poster and F2 for the banner. I downloaded Procreate on my iPad and did line drawings of some of the components from the first sketch iteration. This was quite time-consuming so I ended up simplifying and only creating the Frick museum and several different food trucks.
This was a quick sketch of the line drawing direction I wanted to take. Based on feedback from Anna, I decided to not add more elements for the more finished version of is first digital iteration, to add color scheme, and to centering the food trucks.
Based on the feedback, I came up with the following designs. I find that there is too much white space in 3.1 and the color scheme of 3.2 is very Scooby-Doo. It doesn’t show up well in these images but ther is a faint outline of the lines on the frick museum as well. The abstract blobs look a bit out of place in my opinion as well.
Feedback on Digital Iteration 1
Thank you to Anna and Ji for giving feedback over the weekend! They suggested that I try different layouts and using the line drawing in a more dynamic way that I would like to try out in my next iteration. I particular I really like the second example where there are a lot of different trucks in a pattern and I will iterate on that in the next iteration.
Digital Iteration 2
April 7, 2021
Based on the feedback, I explore the second design. I created a guitar and music notes, a family and some trees to have some more variation in the pattern of alternating objects.
3.30 has a light blue, yellow, and dark blue color scheme. 3.31 uses a green, yellow, and dark blue color palette so that it would have that green summery feeling. 3.32 changes the bottom right corner from the Frick Museum to continuing the pattern through the corner. I tried to try out a different layout as well with 3.40 more similar to my original 3.
Using the same color scheme and the same form elements really brings together the two designs to make it cohesive.
Feedback on Digital Iteration 2
Based on my peer review, I will be playing more with the color scheme. I didn’t realize how shockingly green this gree was when I was just working with it. I will also be changing the font so that it bolder, especially the “Summer Fridays @ the Frick”
Digital Iteration 3
April 9, 2021
In this iteration, I mostly focused on trying to get a nice color green for the background with complementary colors. I took the feedback of my peers and made the title more visible. Also using the tool that Ji introduced (Color contrast checker) to check for readability. With Anna’s help in the last color scheme, I made the title pop even more by using white. I also got rid for the filled shapes on the yellow shapes, using just a yellow outline so that there is more interesting textures and there isn’t too much which which would take away from the title.
Feedback on Digital Iteration 3
The feedback I got on this iteration was to use not pure black text for the non-white text, instead using a color like navy. Additionally, I can pay more attention to the placement/sizing of the location, paragraph and “Free Admission” (which should also include “Tickets presented upon entry”). I also need to be careful of the rag and try a san-serif font for the paragraph.
For the Facebook banner, the feedback (based on iteration 2) was to increase the size of the Frick illustration, only have the tree illustration, and make the text elements bigger so the space is better filled.
Digital Iteration 4
April 12, 2021
In this iteration, I focused on improving the color scheme 4 from iteration 3 and incorporating the feedback.
I played with the text elements a bit more with the color and size/shape so they fit better. Additionally, I took time to make sure all the shape elements are lined up proper, while not distinctly visible, I wanted to make sure it was uniform. I also tried out a couple different color schemes that aren’t the green background as well. For the Facebook banner, I made the suggested changes as well.
Feedback on Digital Iteration 3
Color scheme 1 was still the way to go. However, changing the color of the yellow/orange to a brighter yellow like in color schemes 2 and 3 to give the poster more pop. I was also advised to change/play with the hierarchy and where the information of the Facebook banner is.
Digital Iteration 5
April 13, 2021
In this iteration I mostly focused on the Facebook banner. I moved the text about the tile/time. I gave it more grounding by trying to add background shapes with rolling hills and clouds in the background. While this did fill up the white space and give more context, I felt that it became somewhat busy and the consistency of the series was lost a bit.
Feedback on Iteration 5
The feedback was to stick with the simplistic background and try to shift the textual information more.
Final Promotional Poster Series
Here is my final poster. I had some trouble with the color exporting correctly. Inspired by the nature and lush green of summer, I wanted to go with a green-centric color scheme. To further play into the description of the even, I wanted to represent the food, music, family, nature present on the Frick grounds during the Summer Fridays at the Frick, which is how I decided what elements to draw. The overall style of line drawing was inspired by my initial sketches that were line drawings. I really liked the patterned effect that has a pop-esque vibe. The shadows on half of the pattern is meant to add more depth and dimension to the poster and to add contrast with the different color and flatter food truck elements.
In terms of hierarchy, I wanted the title and free admission to be the elements that first popped out to the viewer. I achieved this with high color contrast and large font size. The other eye-catching element I used was the patterned effect to draw the viewers attention and make them want to look more closely at the poster.
For the Facebook banner, to keep consistency of the promotional series, I used the same color palette as well as common elements such as the Frick and the tree element. To evoke the whimsical nature of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, I made the title of the event have a topsy-turny path. I also wanted it to come from the chimney and end with the silhouette of Mary Poppins, who is the inspiration for the event. In terms of hierarchy I wanted the overall event title “Summer Fridays @ the Frick” and then the title of this even “Super….” to be the first two elements.
Reflection
Throughout this project, I was really able to focus on adding illustrations and how forms add to a poster. At first, I struggled with the magnitude of the project and trying to sketch out elements without spending too much time in case the element wasn’t what I wanted. What I want to do next time is starting with the block sketch iteration and not worrying to much about the elements but rather the layout and hierarchy of the text/form.
I learned a lot about using Illustrator and the different modes. I slowly learned how to use the keyboard short cuts to switch between modes and how to edit using the pen tool. Additionally, I learned how to use the layers to separate out different element pieces (text, guidelines, and shapes).
I struggled a lot with the color and huge shout out to Anna for helping with the colors and overall design of the poster throughout the entire process. I would like to continue to work on my color design skills in the future.
Overall, I learned a lot about using form as a function and integrating it into text to evoke certain aspects.
