Project 4: Poster Series
10/22/2020
Project Introduction
In this project, I was tasked with creating a poster series for an event of choice. The event that I chose was BENEEs Tour. I will have to create three posters: one poster, one Facebook banner, and one Instagram Ad.
Illustrator Exercises
Before starting the posters and the events, I completed two exercises on illustrator. The first was using the pen tool and I traced a penguin creating multiple straight and curved lines using anchor points.
The second exercise I did was using the pathfinder tool. Using various merges and minus front operations, I was able to create the robot as shown below.
Event Information
Title of Event: Fire On Marzz: Pittsburgh Concert
The name(s) of the speaker(s), artist(s), musician(s): BENEE
One (short) paragraph about the speaker(s), artist(s), musician(s) or the event itself: Join BENEE as she performs her hit singles ‘Glitter’ and ‘Supalonely’ and many other songs off of her recent EP ‘Fire on Marzz’
The date, time, and location of the event: November 14, 2020, 9:00pm at Stage AE in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Relevant ticket information including price, how to purchase, etc: Tickets are $30 dollars each, exclusively on Ticketmaster
The name of the event or festival: Fire On Marzz Tour
Moodboard
In order to prepare for creating my poster, I have chosen some images that emulate the direction I would like to go. First, I would like to show the cover art for the Fire on Marzz EP since this would be the headliner.
Overall, I would like to follow this theme of outerspace alien type characters with a very dark background (probably black). I would also like to use hues of red, orange, and purple since the title of the album refers to fire.
This album cover was actually created by the artist Ricardo Cavolo, whose artwork is the next image shown. I would overall like to mimic these types of vibes.
As shown here, there is good contrast between the red and orange and the dark purple black background which is the overall color scheme I would like to use. Almost reminiscent of a Hi-C orange drink juice box.
Another direction that I am looking at is the poster for the movie ‘Space Jam.’ Although I wouldn’t follow this exact color scheme, I like the way that the title is shown and would like to emulate that style of font and poster. Overall, I would like to go for a very whimsical yet vivid vibe which Space Jam does very well.
10/27/2020
After brainstorming with Ji and Anna and looking at the general direction, I created a poster sketch for what one of my posters would look like. I haven’t necessarily gotten the designs digitized or the color scheme chosen but I have chosen the general direction. I would like there to be an orange/red planet on the bottom that goes up in a big plume of flame and within that plume would be the main text. I would like for the font to be not very rounded and kind of sharp as I have drawn below.
The critique on my overall poster design from Ji was as follows:
- she recommends collecting more moodboard images
- creating a color palette and overall font choices
- think about the visual metaphors you want to send out
- start creating hierarchy within the smaller information boxes
10/29/2020
After my critique with Ji, I created a pinterest moodboard of some images I would like to follow. Overall the color scheme that I want to follow is a bright sunset color vibe but I also want to look at a larger choice of directions.
This is the pinterest board I created with a general grouping of ideas and color schemes.
Because of the way I interpret and listen to BENEE’s music, I find that she has very funky, interesting music vibes. It is leaning alternative pop music with very interesting sounds that seem a lot older and more retro, so I tried to go with the very bright neon 80s/90s vibes. Thus, I would like to choose hues of orange, yellow, and purple that lean more on the brighter side but not too overwhelming.
In addition to creating more of a moodboard, I wanted to look at some possible color palettes and hues that I could get used to. I used the app coolors.co which I used back in high school when I was doing web design in order to create some color palettes that I wouldn’t mind.
Overall, I think I am most partial to color palette 4,6, and 3. Although I feel like the overall harmony of the color palettes could continue to be improved by mixing and matching, I think I like the general direction that I am going with.
In terms of fonts, I am not really sure of the direction I want to go. I feel like I need to find the general vibe of the poster first before I can apply the correct fonts because depending on what vibe I want to go with, the font I choose will change. Overall, though, I think that I am looking for a ‘rock band’ type font that looks like slashes and isn’t super round. I think that this could change very easily however.
I have created two general overall sketches of what the poster might look like:
Anna’s Critique
Overall, Anna looked at my color schemes and the color palettes I have along with two of my sketches. When Anna looked at my color palettes, she and I both agreed that color palette 4 was the strongest one, although it might look good if the purple from color palette 3 was switched into to make the color palette brighter since I am going for the neon 80s 90s theme.
In terms of my poster designs, Anna mentioned that I might not have a lot of space for the event info as shown in the square annotated with the green, so she suggested that I might want to move some of the information into the planet.
In addition, Anna mentioned that I should play with the text more and try to get the hierarchy, even within the event information paragraph box. In terms of typography, Anna said to go back to my moodboard and try looking around for fonts I might like. She says she liked my handwritten font as shown in the artist and stage name but for the other smaller information, it might make sense to use a sans serif font that is much less characterized and easier to read.
First Digital Iteration
11/5/2020
After looking through the previous discussions and critiques with Anna and Ji, I created the following poster.
This was a group critique session, and the critique I got was as follows
- Some rough edges around the lines — clean up the composition a bit
- the colors seem a little flat and two-dimensional
- choose a different font for the bottom of the poster since it clashes a little with the top
- make the stars different sizes to add dimensions
- add a description paragraph because it is hard to understand what the event is about
Second Digital Iteration
11/10/2020
After getting my feedback on the poster, I created the following posters (along with rough sketches of my instagram ad and facebook ad as follows).
Since before I hand drew in the font, it was hard to get the text to be very uniform so I had to do a lot of digging to find a font that I liked for the main title. I chose Synthemesc from Adobe because I thought it fit the fun, colorful vibe of the poster more. I also changed the overall design of the poster because I realized in order to add more information, I would need a bit more space so I made the planet on fire smaller and in the center of the poster. In order to make the poster more vibrant and 3D, I added a thick stroke around the fire that surrounds the planet because I thought it added more of a comic effect. Finally, I made the stars different sizes and added comets and rockets in the background to make the poster a little less bland.
From the second iteration, I got critique from Anna and Ji as follows:
- Lessen the contrast in the poster: there are a lot of clashing colors and the stars in the background are a bit distracting. Maybe make them a bit darker or lower the opacity
- Change the font in the middle of the planet on fire because it is a bit harder to read
- Watch the margins in all of the posters because they are very close to the edge
The critiques for the individual items are as follows:
Poster
- Watch the edges of your design and refine it because some parts of the poster are rounded and some parts are sharp
- Try shortening the information in the planet so that it is easier to read and move some of the other information elsewhere
- Maybe change the format of the poster as shown below to make it more legible and use hierarchy within the information in the planet in the center
Instagram Ad
- maybe modify the fire on mars to look like it does on the picture below
- Only include Nov 14, 2020 in the planet so the ad is much more simplified
- Make the title bigger and the rest of the things smaller so there is more emphasis on the title
Facebook Ad
- Change the letting because the spacing between the title words is a bit weird
- Make the margins bigger
- Refine the image by taking out ticket info
- The yellow space is taking a big part of the poster so reduce that and move the planet a bit closer to the center
Third Digital Iteration
11/12/2020
After receiving the following feedback, I changed the overall posters of all three of them to make the flaming planet smaller and employed more hierarchy, especially within the poster. In addition, I made the stars in the back darker and reduced the contrast and made the margins bigger.
Final Iteration
11/17/2020
After submitting the previous 3 pieces for critique, the general critique that I got from Anna and Ji were:
- To watch overall margins and make sure that all of the elements lined up well, as if on a grid
- Make sure that all of the information necessary was on each ad and template
- Make the purple color on ‘Marzz’ a little bit brighter because it blends in with the background a little
- Possibly do a sunspot like idea for the poster to make it more 3-D
After getting the previous feedback, I edited my overall posters to look as so:
I made the margins on all of the posters more even and edited all the info so that the necessary information was on each template without looking messy. For the purple in “Marzz,” I found that I when I made the purple color lighter, the word looked more washed out in comparison to the other colors and the black background. Thus, in order to make the title pop out more, I made the outline of the words be in yellow and made “Fire” be outlined in orange to make more of the fiery theme match. In addition, when I tried to add the sunspot-esque effect on the sun type illustration, I found that due to the sharp edges of the fire sun, it made it harder to do a sunspot and make it look natural thus I omitted the idea and instead reshaped and resized all of the elements to make the poster fit better. In addition, for each of the posters, I added more background images in order to make it seem like there was a little less empty space and increase the overall cohesion of each design.
Final Critique and Reflection
11/18/2020
Overall from this project, I learned a lot about how color plays a role in creating posters and ads. Thinking about how color schemes work and also how colors interact with one another will now always play a role in when I design pieces. In addition, I relearned how to use hierarchy within compositions while also focusing on other aspects. I struggled a lot with this poster series a lot, not only because I had a heavy workload these past 2 weeks but also because I struggled a lot with using Illustrator in a satisfying way. It took a lot of googling and watching a lot of youtube videos, but after I got the basics of Illustrator more down, I was able to create works that I was satisfied with. Although there are parts of the poster that I am still not satisfied with — I wish I included more depth in the poster in other ways and made the illustrations look a little less childish — I am happy with the output that I have.
