CDF Project 4: Poster Series
Introduction:
(Preface added 10/27/2020: I really hate JKR. She is a transmisogynist. I am not doing this project with her works in mind.)
10/21/2020:
I’m going to create a poster, a Facebook event banner, and an Instagram advertisement for an event. The three obviously have different dimensions and different needs, but they should be visually cohesive. Balancing form and function is the primary goal of the project.
I’m excited for this one because it feels less abstract to me. My instructors also said we can illustrate these posters, which is cool — I like drawing. We aren’t allowed to use photography or external clipart or stock images.
To ensure we’re familiar with using Illustrator for graphics, the project begins with two short exercises to demonstrate our understanding of the Pathfinder tool and the Pen tool.
Exercises:
10/21/2020:
Pathfinder Exercise:
Pen Tool Exercise:
Event Materials:
I have two concepts in mind. One will almost certainly be rejected, because designing that would make me look like an insane person. The other is still weird but sane enough by comparison that I bet I can get away with it.
Event Idea 1: Funeral for 40 Clowns
As soon as they said we needed to design for an event that could be fictional, my mind (unfortunately) jumped to a dark comedy podcast I like called Wooden Overcoats. It’s about a funeral home. At one point, a minor character gets into a fatal car accident. Unfortunately, she and her passengers were clowns from a local circus, and thus there were 40 clowns in the car. I’m not entirely sure if my instructors find the idea of a mass clown funeral especially funny, but it does sound like an interesting event to design for, doesn’t it?
Event Title: In Memoriam of Bijou the Clown et Al
Event Host: Funn Funerals
Informational Paragraph: Join us as we mourn the passing of beloved Piffling-Vale resident Bijou (and 39 of her companions) in a heartfelt ceremony.
Date, Time, Location: December 16, 2015 9:00 AM at the Piffling-Vale cemetery
Ticket Price: memorial service is free, circus performance after is $15/person.
Event 2: Demonstration of Minor Magic Ritual
I like fantasy stories, and I especially like modern fantasy. I like magic as being both sinister and arbitrary, and only to be tampered with if you know exactly what you’re doing or are doing it with a specific purpose in mind. Thus, I think it’s a cool idea to have a practical demonstration of a magical ritual for public viewing, with an almost concerning/humorous number of safeguards in place.
Event Title: Impractical Demonstrations Series
Event Name: Minor Summoning Rituals with Professor Jang
Event Host: Carnegie Mellon University Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Informational Paragraph: As part of our Impractical Practices lecture series, join Professor Yeong-Seun Jang of the European Arcane Studies department for an informative lecture on summoning theory, followed by a short practical demonstration. !! MAGIC, EVEN WHEN PERFORMED BY A PROFESSIONAL, CAN STILL BE HIGHLY DANGEROUS. PPE IS REQUIRED AND PROVIDED FOR THIS EVENT. !!
Date, Time, Location: UC McConomy, 3:15 PM, April 23rd
Admission: FREE. Register online at events.cmu.edu/imprac2018/jang-summon
10/22/2020 and 10/27/2020:
Moodboard/Design Inspiration
I started to make an initial moodboard for the poster, but I’m afraid it provided more insight as to the design problem than an actual point of reference.
Posters for lecture series tend to have a very specific look and feel — they tend to be brightly colored, with big, simplified shapes. Conversely, the aesthetic I normally associate with weird magic is more muted in color, with inked lines and intricate details. This lead to a pretty confusing moodboard.
Note the weird medieval beekeepers! They’re so foreboding. I love it.
I intend to compromise between these two ideas by using the aesthetic from the more modern lecture series posters — bright colors, lineless graphics, playing with shapes — and the symbols and elements I typically associate with magic stuff, including books, rabbits, celestial bodies, and magic circles.
I generally prefer to sketch digitally. It’s easier to iterate when you can copy-paste. I began toying with illustration ideas.
Concept Sketches
I started with the smaller version on the upper left, but decided to move the hands in a new position for the sake of visual interest. I think this concept is pretty, and it has a lot of potential to translate nicely to a bold, clean finish, but I’m concerned I’m veering away from design and into illustration. I’d probably just be cramming text in wherever the leftover spaces are.
This idea definitely leaves more room for the text —the rightmost sketch follows from the left, and I’d put the text in those bubbles on the spell circle.
This concept brings back the hands. With regards to composition, I first tried to let the positioning of the hands loosely echo the line of the circle, but looking at it again, it might be better as an opposing line or as a means of filling out the negative space more neatly.
I’m not actually sure which I prefer. I’ll ask Anna or Jiyoung about it and come back to it later. (The lower hand is holding a writing implement; sorry for the messy sketch.)
Color Palettes, Typefaces
I’m keeping the bright nature of lecture series posters in mind, so the color palettes I’m considering are high-contrast.
I don’t know why, but I tend to associate purple with magic in a way that I don’t with most other colors, which is why 3/4 of these have purple. I’m also drawn to a pinkish red color because it reminds me of the color of a white rabbit’s eyes. Yellow and cyan are here because they contrast purple and red nicely, and I also associate yellow with celestial bodies. I like 3 best at this time.
I’m a little torn about the typeface; I’m honestly not particularly fond of mixing fonts if I can avoid it, so I’d prefer to make it all in one. I wavered as to what kind of message I wanted to convey with this font: do I want a distinguished vibe befitting the idea of magical academia, or do I want something that better suits the modern, bold vibe most universities actually go for in their posters? I leaned more towards the latter. I’m thinking Minion Pro, with Avenir coming in a close second. They’re both very clean fonts without a lot of bells and whistles.
10/29/2020:
Anna and Jiyoung offered a lot of good advice. Jiyoung recommended I go back and give a moodboard another shot, because what I had was so slapdash, to really give my work more direction. I did try again, this time with an emphasis on aesthetic over what elements I wanted to incorporate.
I realized that what I’m looking for are bold colors and simple silhouettes. As per Anna’s recommendation, I began digitizing Concept 2 from before, the one with the half rabbit head and the spell circle.
11/03/2020:
I didn’t do anything this day. Too stressed about the election.
11/05/2020:
I finished digitizing v1 of the poster. I liked the concept itself, but I realized I was kind of cramming the text wherever I could fit it.
The colors ended up leaning less purple, more pink — one of my classmates actually called me out and said she could tell I’m really into pink, lol.
The critique this design drew was mainly that my attempts to make the slapped-together information neater by varying the alignment to echo the shape of the illustration was actually compromising legibility. Moreover, the eye doesn’t know where to go. The circles look nice, but it doesn’t help people find information when everything’s about the same size and same font. Anna also commented in passing that she liked the pop of red, but wish I’d use it more, and suggested making at least one of the bubbles red.
11/10/2020:
I reorganized the color palette in hopes of improving hierarchy, and condensed some of the information paragraphs.
By splitting the informational paragraph and shaping them like I did (a bit tapered), I’m hoping to direct the eye to the title of the event foremost, smack dab in the center of the screen.
Here are my drafts for the Facebook event banner and the Instagram ad. I thought I’d play around with variations on the theme; the spell circle is quite distinctive, but I can arrange it different ways to suit the different dimensions. I was running into some trouble with the sizing, though —my drawings, made in SAI 2, kept coming up really small in Illustrator, and so the quality is a little poorer than I want.
I like the way this looks, but I’m a little worried that the flow of information, following the arc of the circle, is unnatural since it’s not linearly top to bottom.
I don’t really like this one; the text feels really crammed to me, so it may be back to the drawing board.
11/12/2020:
I received critique from Anna and Ji, but I can’t recall whether I hit all the desired points — looks like I’ll have to hound them again.
For the poster, they remarked that they missed the title in the corner, remarked that they would prefer to see the registration information conferred to the corner again, and suggested flipping the image to make it more natural for the eye to flow over the image. I ended up playing around with a few different configurations, but actually put the lecture series title in the corner.
They also advised I bring the title back into this one as a grounding element. The design at the center of the spell circle likewise felt too dissimilar from the other two posters, so I switched it back to the bunny head.
Something’s gone funny with the colors on this one. I’ll have to ask about that. I think probably it has to do with the conversion between CMYK and RGB. Anyways, they missed the red eyes on the bunny and advised against flipping the colors, since it made this version of the ad seem too disparate. The title was also a little too big.
Finally, here are the three ads in context:
11/17/2020:
According to the critique from last Thursday, I was *almost* there:
- the spell circle and the rabbit in the Facebook banner were slightly misaligned/asymmetric
- the two informational blocks of text on the poster were too close together and caused confusion
- the red circles on the Instagram ad would have looked better as symmetric crops (half circles)
- the Facebook ad banner contained information better relegated to the description of the event
- the weights of the words in the red bubbles, aside from the title, were a tiny bit too light
Here are the final products with those tweaks:
Up until now, in my projects, I’ve been feeling really aware of how much I need to change my mindset from seeking a feeling of “rightness” to deliberately organizing my work to balance legibility and conveying a message abstractly using familiar elements. This time, though, I finally felt like my visual art hobby actually blended with my design work; my work was complimented for how cute the bunny is and how suitable the colors are. It’s appropriate that I’m finally reaching a place where I’m starting to understand not only how these disciplines differ, but converge, just in time for the final project. I’ve never been good with abstract art, but using slightly abstract elements (a rabbit head, a simplified summoning circle) to convey a certain vibe really helped it click for me. It’s not about interpreting from nothing: it’s about finding the familiar in the strange.
Onward to the next project!