Brief
“Posters generally, have an image and one main line of text, most often the title, followed
by additional essential information.
Look around locally and identify a coming event – it could be a jumble sale, a local gig,
concert or play, an exhibition or sporting fixture – and design two posters to promote it.
Make the first poster full of details and descriptions about the event, when and where it’s
taking place, what’s going on, how long it lasts, how much it costs and what to expect.
Include all the details that you think your audience might need.
For the second poster apply Occam’s Razor to pare back the information to a bare
minimum – be extreme: how little information can you get away with and how few words
can you use? Challenge yourself to be as simple as possible, but don’t forget the
essentials or the poster won’t do the job it is intended for.
Now ask yourself and other people if you can, which of the designs works best. What is the key information you need to include?
How did the feedback help you with your final design? Make notes in your learning log. Redesign your poster using the feedback to guide you, creating a new poster that utilises the best points of both designs”.
Research/ Inspiration
https://www.flickr.com/photos/linzie/5052197798/in/photostream
https://bashooka.com/inspiration/flyer-poster-designs/
https://brightoncraftaganza.wordpress.com/2012/05/02/ways-to-stay-creative/
https://www.fastcompany.com/3040779/infographic-would-you-make-a-good-superhero
https://www.marcbessant.com/portfolio/invada-invasion/
https://blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/articles/30-creative-examples-of-typography-poster-designs
https://www.canva.com/posters/templates/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironman_Triathlon
https://www.ironman.com/im-wales
https://pixabay.com/vectors/silhouette-running-run-fast-3199472/
https://www.google.com/search?q=bike+silhouette+png&rlz=1C1CHBF_enGB894GB894&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjtmu7zpMvrAhUResAKHXj3CUgQ_AUoAXoECAwQAw&biw=1422&bih=642#imgrc=4lcsFROFUPWMMM
Sketchbook Brainstorm
Critique/ Feedback
Okay so for my critique audience I chose the OCA Core Concepts community and emailed over a display of my ideas. I will paste below the conversation –
Hey everyone!
I was wondering if you could please help me decide what poster works best?
I was asked to come up with 2 posters based on an event of my choice. One of the posters was to include, in as much detail as possible, all of the information about the event.
The second poster was to display as little information as possible but still include the essentials of what the event is about.
I chose the race event Iron Man that puts people through a gruesome 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride and a 26.22-mile run.
For the first poster, I added as much information as possible about the event, but still wanted to make it visually appealing, so I attempted to keep a similar colour scheme across the poster and kept the text nicely spread out so the poster is easy to read and easy to understand. I had fun designing this poster as I felt like there was no wrong answer to the problem as the brief was to get as much information as possible and spread it across the poster, whereas for the second poster I felt more challenged as I was asked to break down the information, and use bare minimum but still get the message across what the event was about, so I took away all of the information but kept the event title, the event website and vector images of what the event portrays.
Have a look below at my brainstorming workflow where I went through several ideas before finding the one I liked the most.
I look forward to receiving your feedback so I can take the necessary steps to improve my designs!
All the best,
Stephen
Feedback
Hi Stephen,
Nice work, lots of ideas.
Too much – The colours go well together, though the black writing is harder to read on the dark blue/grey background. I noted that the dark blue/grey box along the bottom had temp. in and the red one had the swim, it might be more visually intuitive to have the temp. in the red and the swim in the blue perhaps.
Not enough – I like how you have taken everything but the essentials out. I would suggest that it gives more space for what you have left to breathe a bit more i.e. you could increase the size of the cycling, running, swimming icons if you wanted. I would also say you had some nicely contrasting colours in the ‘too much’ which haven’t come over to the ‘not enough’ – does the Iron Man title need to be the same colour as the background for instance.
Other – The running figure looks good in some of your drawings (bottom most right in both pages are good examples) but he looks like he is crouched over in the posters (and not having much fun).In one of your drawings you do swim, bike, run (left to right) which I believe (not being an iron man) is the correct sequence and therefore is probably the best way to advertise it.
I hope this helps,
John
Re-design
Next I re-designed my posters based on the feedback I received from the OCA community –
Reflection
I enjoyed the idea of this assignment straight from the start as I was given the opportunity to share some of my work with the world. I have always been quite aware of the power of constructive criticism and have used it a lot through of my adult life. To do something and allow someone to criticize me without holding a negative judgement against their comments or feedback. I thought I could bring this value into this exercise and use it to better my work by focusing on the solution rather than the problem.
So I started this exercise by first breaking down the project in my sketchbook so I knew exactly what I was doing come the design and critique stage. I carried out a brainstorm and noted down the key points and important parts of the project and exercise and turned them into questions to better understand what was asked of me. I then created a spider diagram to figure out what steps I would take from start to finish, I did this to organise my work better in order of high priority tasks first and ticked them off one by one as I completed them. I found this method gave me structure and allowed me to stay on track with my work because what I learned from previous exercises is that If I didn’t have a structure I would easily get confused and lost in what steps were priority and what steps were not as important.
Next after breaking down the project and exercise, I chose the event that I wanted to promote and carried out some research to find as much information as possible about the event for my ‘too much information’ poster. The event I decided to promote was Iron Man, an extremely difficult fitness event where people would swim first for 2.4 miles, cycle for 112 miles and then run for 26.22 miles. I thought it would be a fun event to promote as I am passionate about fitness and one day I would also love to sign up to this event.
After gathering ‘too much’ information, It was time to start looking at some poster designs online so I searched the internet and also made a mood board on pinterest with designs that inspired me for my too much poster and not enough poster –
https://www.pinterest.co.uk/GIANTSFOREST/iron-man-poster-too-much/
https://www.pinterest.co.uk/GIANTSFOREST/iron-man-poster-minimal/
I liked this one in particular for my ‘too much’ poster –
https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/825425437946586174/https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/825425437946586174/
I liked this one in particular for my ‘not enough’ poster –
https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/825425437946585937/
The reason I like the ‘too much’ poster is because there a mixture of information and images, this poster is almost like an infographic with percentages and diagrams, which I think is visually appealing because a poster with text on it’s own can make the viewer feel quite overwhelmed and lead to information overload but a poster with text and images can be quite pleasing to the eye.
I carried this idea over to my design work keeping in mind text and images. I thought my ‘too much’ poster fit the bill quite nicely, I liked the colour theme, text placement and images, I thought it gave all the essential information for the event without making the viewer feel overwhelmed and the feedback from John extended my feelings about this but John helped me out a lot and brought a few things to my attention. He first mentioned the colours go well together but the black writing was hard to read so with this I decided to go for a lighter shade of blue. John also pointed out that that In my ‘what to expect’ section I placed ‘swim’ in a red box and ‘temp’ in a blue box and if I was to swap them around would be more visually appealing. I agree with this and glad it was pointed out because it is right in saying that blue would be more suited to swim and red more suited to heat. John also pointed out that the images in my design are in the wrong order, in the actual Iron Man event we would swim first, followed by cycling and then completing the event with a run. In my first design, I placed an image of a bicycle, followed by a figure running and then an image of someone swimming. Again I’m glad this was brought to my attention as this slight change makes the poster more visually appealing and the language of the information makes more sense. My critique also commented on the image of my runner looking quite flat and unhappy whereas in my thumbnails looking more lifted and happy. I created the designs myself using illustrator but thought for my final design I would keep my own design of a person swimming but for the runner and cycling image I would download from a free open source on the internet to make sure I end up with some great looking material because my skills on Illustrator aren’t quite up to that standard but to fix that problem I have recently enrolled in an online course to learn Illustrator, so hopefully with that, I will be able to go forward and create my own uplifted and happy people. I took my final design to a friend for a different perspective and we compared my first design with the design I created from the feedback I received, and we both decided that the changes were beneficial and we would keep my final design for the ‘too much’ poster.
Moving to the next poster I had to keep in mind that I was to remove most of the information but keep the essentials that informed the viewer what the event was about in a minimal way. I thought I could do this by keeping the images because they explain what the event is about and a website for more information, the website address includes Wales so hopefully this will give the viewer an understanding of where the event is being held. I thought about adding the welsh flag to the poster but ideally, I wanted to keep the poster as minimal as possible so the viewer doesn’t become overwhelmed with ‘too much’ information.
I received my feedback for this poster. John, my critique mentioned a couple of things that I may want to change. He pointed out that taking out most of the information left me with a lot of space to utilize so with this I could increase the size of my images, I took this advice on board and had a look what it looked like with bigger images. Straight away I was happy with this advice because this simple change made the poster pop and become more vibrant with larger images of the essential items for the event, I saw that the smaller images left the poster feeling quite flat and deflated with not much energy compared to the larger images. I also took Johns advice on bringing the black objects to life in the poster by using a lighter blue again making the poster look more visually appealing. The final bit of advice I received from my critique was the fact that I had some nice contrasting colours in my ‘too much’ poster and didn’t bring them over to my ‘not enough’ poster so John my critique suggested that I could give some colour to the title so it isn’t the same colour as my background. At first, I didn’t agree with John because I liked the colour blocking in my poster and thought it gave more of a minimalist appearance. To clarify what one looked better I came up with another design and shared it with the same friend who also critiqued my first poster. After discussing what poster looked better, we both agreed that John was right and that the poster that had colour in the title looked better, again we agreed that adding some colour brought the poster to life and gave it more energy. Something else my critique friend mentioned was that Ironman is a lifetime pinnacle in some peoples sporting life, so in what way could I make the poster stand out even more? So with this, my answer to that problem was to add a border around the title with a bold outline and then fill the box with colour and place it behind the title using the layer function in illustrator. I know John mentioned me bringing more colour over from my ‘too much’ poster but my friend and I agreed to keep just 2 colours to keep the minimal theme that I was trying to achieve.
See below for my final poster for ‘not enough’.
Mock Ups
Tools Used
Sketchbook – Ideas
Illustrator – Design work
Printful – Mock up images
https://pixabay.com/vectors/silhouette-running-run-fast-3199472/ – Running image
https://www.google.com/searchq=bike+silhouette+png&rlz=1C1CHBF_enGB894GB894&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjtmu7zpMvrAhUResAKHXj3CUgQ_AUoAXoECAwQAw&biw=1422&bih=642#imgrc=4lcsFROFUPWMMM – Bicycle image
Tutor Feedback
The critique is the process of being self-critical about your work in order to
achieve the aims of a brief. You were asked to put this into practice by
designing two posters and reflecting on whether they had too much or not
enough information.
Getting a good understanding of poster design is essential – it is good to see
that you are looking at lots of design to inspire and inform your understanding.
I strongly suggest that you include key visual images onto your blog so that it
is clear which pieces particularly interest you. Try making a few notes on the
amount of information and the way it is laid out alongside each image.
I can see that you have a strong interest in visual type. Context is important
here: some pieces are info graphics or charts so they will work differently to a
traditional poster. A chart is designed to be referred to by the reader, they will
have longer to ‘read’ it. Whilst a traditional poster that is promoting an event
has to be eye catching and communicate quickly as people are usually in
transit so will not have time to read lots of text.
Tip: Try to summarise your thoughts and insights from looking at your visual
research as this will really help you to critique your work later on. Find out
what makes a good poster and then you will be able to reflect on this when
working out if you have used to much or too little information.
Good visualising of ideas in your sketchbook. I can see how your ideas are
developing. Playful experimentation with icons and text. Good use of
feedback from others to help you to improve communication. Good to see you
exploring scale of images as a result of peer feedback. Build these feedback
loops into your practice as they have helped you to develop the designs.
As a side project – you could have fun with displaced “N’ on your ‘not enough’
information poster, the letters look really heavy so perhaps one of your figures
can be showing their strength by pushing it?
Stephen Furber 