Poster Project

Design Strategy:
For this project, I chose to make a poster for The Dougy Center, a non-profit organization from my hometown. The Dougy Center hosts group sessions where children, teens and adults can speak openly about their experiences with death. Personally, I attended groups at the center and I wanted to incorporate my personal experience in order to help the organization.

I started by brainstorming ideas and finally settled on the idea of fading photographs. To connect the visual to the headline, I partially grayscaled a picture of my father and myself when I was younger and placed the photo at a thirds point to create the most impact. I then framed the photo using strokes from Illustrator. I pulled the color of the drapes in the photo and used it as the background color. Overall, I wanted it to be simple with direct text.


Choice of typefaces:
The typeface family I chose was Century Schoolbook. I wanted a serif font with a level “e” and an interesting “i.” In the word memories, I transformed the letter “i” into a candle by creating a teardrop-shaped flame for the dot. Candles are used at the end of every program meeting to represent the thoughts, prayers and wishes of the participants. I chose to put “The Dougy Center” in small caps to differentiate between it and the headline.


Color:
I pulled the background color from the drapes. It is C- 3.14%, M- 5.49%, Y- 14.9% and K- 0%. The only other color used in the poster is the photograph and the flame of the candle, which has a lower tint.

poster project

Design Strategy:
I wanted to create a poster that was clean and simple. I didn’t want a lot of background and so I decided to use one image with my text. I wanted the image to portray the idea that by giving blood, people would really help others. The idea for the superhero just came to me and I felt it matched this idea nicely. I decided to add the blood droplet on their uniforms to bring the blood drive into play. I wanted to still have some of the drawn aspect to make it seem like comic book heroes and so I drew it on a separate piece of paper and scanned it in.
The audience I was targeting was the campus community. I wanted a design that transferred well between the different schools and majors. I felt that a superhero was a concept that many people would be able to relate to.

Choice of typefaces:
I wanted a typeface that was versatile so that I could keep the fonts consistent throughout the poster, providing a uniform look but I wanted the option to present contrast by using different styles of the font family. This is why I chose Kepling Std.
I did the headlines in caps lock because I wanted a comic book, superhero type font. I also felt the caps lock made it more powerful and in your face, which is something I wanted to portray because giving blood is important. I did the headlines in italics because it made the words appear to be flying with the superheroes. Also, it’s a style that comic books usually use. I know that people don’t just read the word, but take in the shape of the word and the difference between caps and lc. Because of this I did the first letter of the words in the headline bigger than the rest of the word to give the illusion of capitalizing the word. Since the whole word was already in caps, this was the only way I could do it.
I did the information at the bottom of the page in black font and in caps/lc because it’s easier to read and this is the important information so there shouldn’t be confusion on that part.

Color:
I wanted to add color to my poster to attract people’s attention but I only wanted to do one color because it would be cheaper. I want these posters to be used and I didn’t want to deplete all of Crouse’s resources or money in the process.
I chose to use red (C=0, M=100, Y=100, K=0) as my one color because red is a warm color and it attracts people’s attention. Also red is the color associated with blood and this is a poster for a blood drive.

Paper:
I wanted to do it on white paper because white is easier to acquire and so it would be easier to make many copies. Also I think white looks best with my black and red color choices.

Poster Project

Design Strategy:
I designed my poster for the American Cancer Society’s Great American Smokeout. My event was being held at Augustana College in Illinois so I assumed that it would target college students. I wanted a close up picture of a cigarette burning in an ashtray and the smoke to form the words “NO ifs, ands or butts”. The letters are meant to look smoky and I dragged the smoke using the smudge tool and the Gaussian blur to create that effect. The event information is not meant to overwhelm the viewer, but since it is obviously important, I lined it up with the right margin and lined the American Cancer Society’s logo up with the left margin. I used the smudge tool again to get rid of the Marlboro on the cigarette, because I did not want the label to distract from the poster’s message. I wanted the ashtray to pop, creating depth and making the poster more appealing to the eye. Originally, I wanted my poster to bleed, but in the end decided not to cut off the edge because the white border makes my white text stand out.

Choice of Typefaces:
I chose to use two different typefaces for my poster. I wanted my slogan font to look smoky, so I pictured cursive and I wanted it to flow, which is why I chose Bickham Script Pro. I made it size 76, but stretched it with a scale. I blurred the text with Gaussian blur. For my informational text, I wanted a typeface that was really easy to read and very simple, which is why I chose Calisto MT. I tried a variety of different simple fonts, but Calisto was the perfect blend of simplicity and slight boldness.

Color:
I wanted my slogan to look somewhat blurry and like smoke, which is why I chose a color that matched the actual smoke coming from the cigarette. The CYMK percentages are: C-38%, M-0%, Y-13%, 0%-K. I used pure white for my informational text so that it would stand out and be easy to read, contrasting the fuzzy look of the slogan. For the overall look of the poster, I wanted a natural glow, which is why I took the photo outside and did not change the colors.