Doing Chicago: A Promotion
For my pop-up museum composition idea, I wanted to create a poster that is both informative but not an overload of information. Creating a poster that you think a viewer will take the time to engage with requires finding a balance between text and imagery. Providing too much text makes a poster look daunting and requires too much time from the reader, who usually encounters the composition casually and in passing. However, including too little text creates a sense of ambiguity for the reader that might deter them from following up with the event out of anxiety or lack of understanding.
As for my choice of text and imagery, I wanted to draw the reader in by asking questions that pertain directly to them as members of the Chicago community. In this sense, anyone who has an affinity for the Chicago should feel like they have a stake in reading further. I didn’t want my font to look too formal, since I imagine this wont be that kind of event, but I did want it to look refined enough that the poster felt more like an invitation compared to a mere advertisement. By referring to the pop-up museum as an “exclusive pop-up exhibit” I intended to portray the event as a unique experience on display for students and anyone else interested.
As for the images, I went with a cooler color scheme and the white gutters to compliment the blue and white theme of the text. I personally see the images as interchangeable, and ideally I would have wanted to maybe include three images that were relevant to some of our classmates ideas for their pop-up museum exhibit. For now, I included some photographs I’ve taken myself of the city skyline and a photo relevant to what I tentatively plan on working on in relation to public art murals in my local neighborhood of Lakeview.
While I think a poster like this could get some good spotlight in locations like the SAC pit or the second floor of the Student Center, I also crafted this composition keeping in mind other ways that it might circulate to reach a wider audience. Because the file for the poster is in PNG format, this layout could also be pasted into an email and sent out to WRD students and faculty by email. I also considered whether there would be a way to get the event and a composition like mine onto DePaul’s new daily email newsletter that goes out to all students daily, the Newsline Daily. These considerations were also accounted for in my choice of text usage, since longer text would be more digestible to a reader if they viewed it over email, which traditionally contains longer and larger amounts of text than physical advertising. I hope that these aspects of my composition would make it both appealing and effective.
Also, I figured it was worth suggesting that we bring some food and beverages to the event to bait a wider audience into coming to see what we have. It might be a bit of a cheap trick, but I can tell from experience that most students who aren’t WRD majors have little incentive to ever travel to the third floor of the SAC unless there’s some kind of benefit in the form of free food or merchandise. Maybe we can get some high end Chartwells catered or have everyone pitch in like ten dollars and buy the fixings for a comprehensive charcuterie board from Aldi or something. Just throwing some ideas out there.
