Poster Design
Posters are a great way to express an idea or advertise a product or service. The compilation of the text and visuals create an eye catching piece of work that grabs the attention of the audience for a while or sometimes only for a second. It is all about the hierarchy of the elements on the page and creating harmony within the space.
Project 1 - Festival of Senses Typography Poster
For this brief I was given a sense, mine being smell. At the beginning I had some initial ideas about how I wanted to work the sense smell into a festival. I wanted to go in the direction of using smell to stimulate the other senses and then I also looked at the underlying feeling that some certain smells may give you. I settled on the idea that smell is connected to feelings and memories from the past. I really connected with this idea because sometimes when I smell a certain food or am in a certain place that has a smell, and I am transported back to certain times in my life that I remember through that
smell, which I love. Research shows that the brain region for smell is closely connected with the brain regions involved with memory. That is why strong memories are made through the sense of smell. This had me thinking about how I could create a festival and name it that coordinated with this whole level of memory and smell. I went through names like 'consciousness', 'flashback', 'hallucination' and 'remember', but none of them seemed to have a ring to them. Then I thought about the word 'Nostalgia' meaning a sentimental longing or wistful affection for a period in the past, which really portrays the feeling I want my audience to have when they are walking through the festival. So, I decided to name my festival Nostalgia the festival of memories, which was a very mysterious name and brings a lot of intrigue to viewers.
I really wanted to evoke a sense of mystery in my festival poster which is sort of like the way that memories can be a mystery to us until we remember them and fully experience them again. That’s why when I was looking at layouts and inspiration, I wanted to create some sort of disconnected, jumbled, scattered effect much like memories themselves, to allow the viewer to appreciate the sense of the festival in a literal but not so obvious way. The poster that I came up with was very much what I wanted to portray allowing the festival heading to appear out of the black background and overlap, in a jumbled/scattered sort of way like the word 'Nostalgia' was trying to protrude off the page, like the memories in our heads. I'm very happy with the way that the final poster turned out and I believe that I have used the negative space well and created an interesting layout.
Project 2 - Zine and Poster Design
This brief looked at the creation of a Zine, building upon experiences in Concepts and Narratives , we were required to develop a narrative for our chosen animal and communicate the narrative through the design of a Zine and an accompanying poster. Zine: A small self published or underground magazine that is produced cheaply by one person or a small group of people. Zines also known as Fanzines, are usually highly individualised and unconventional, dedicated to a specialised subject matter. The Zine will function as a 6 page booklet with a cover and back, that opens into an A3 poster format.
I decided to base my zine on the cruel act of poaching and how this is affecting our world’s elephant species. I wanted to create the zine to be an informative awareness booklet that would draw readers attention to the insatiable and illegal ivory trade. I wanted it to send a serious message as it is a very serious topic, but I didn’t want it to be too graphic. So, I decided to use an African style theme as well as pattern and create a sort of infographic that allowed the important information and graphics to stand out from the rest of the zine and interest the reader, also making it an easy read.
