Category: Unit 5

Once I started putting my final poster ideas together I started to look for royalty free backgrounds on Pixabay.com. I wanted to find something relating to my initial research and ideas. My tutor thought that it would be better if I took my own pictures.

I tried to find a place where I could take a picture of some trees or just a relaxing area. I thought that the area around the Blackburn cathedral was nice and it would allow the text to stand out well. I got a few photos which I thought I could use for my final poster.

My tutor suggested that I go out and take some pictures of some real life typography that I could find around the college. I walked to the town and took some pictures on the way of any typography that caught my eye or that I thought could give me some inspiration when creating my posters.

I felt as if I had enough research and ideas to start creating my posters and trying different ideas for each poster.

The first poster I started to design was a simple, solid colour background, with the word TYPE in the middle. I wanted the word TYPE to be displayed on 2 lines because of the LOVE sculpture in New York. I also found a poster online which had OH ME OH MY with each word on it’s own line. This poster had a shadow effect coming from the letters and going off the page. I also liked this idea but I wanted the shadow to be black instead of the bright colour they used on the poster. I thought this black shadow made the text stand out more from the background because I used the same colour just 2 different tones for the text and background. The shadow helped to contrast the text from the background and also fill some of the empty space on the poster.

My second poster design was based off of steps and I used the word type and reflected it over and over to make it look as if it was steps. I added a black shadow to one of the type words to make it stand out from the others. I like this design because it had a 3D effect but I feel as if it is slightly empty and maybe needs some more detail to improve it.

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My next poster design is also a 3D inspired design and it has 2 layers or steps with a shadow separating each step. I got some inspiration from a poster I saw that had the word love and I changed the word to type and also changed to colour. I tried to recreated the poster because I liked the design and the 3D effect. This poster has too much empty space I feel and the word needs to be bigger to attract attention of the target audience.

My fourth poster is based off of my initial idea of using photograph or a real life background with a word place somewhere on the poster. I first tried to use some royalty free images but my tutor and peers gave some feedback and thought that it would work better with photos which I have taken myself. I added some dripping effect to the word typography and also added an overlay over the image with the word cut from the middle. This helped to give some more detail and a shadow effect on the word. This is one of my favourite posters but I wasn’t happy with the photos I could get and I couldn’t find anywhere in the are which suited my idea the best.

My last poster was a simple black background with the word typography spread out with each letter in a different position. This poster was a bit different to my other and I added a red line going through and around each letter to give a 3D effect and also some more detail. I like this poster and I feel as if it stands out and would be perfect for the target audience but after some feedback they said it was slightly difficult to read at first glance.

 

Similar to when I created some type ideas, I drew out some small poster layouts which I thought looked good and could then be designed into actual posters. I used my research which I had done about posters and type and put the annotations I had done into actual designs to see how they could look.

The first poster I drew up was the word type digitally added over a brick wall background. I wanted to create the word in 3D using Photoshop and try and make it look as real as possible. I thought this layout would make the word stand out. I also drew out my first idea of the word over a relaxing background. I also used inspiration from a poster I found, which had a step like design, and had a 3D effect. I also did some other basic designs but I am not too keen on those.

Now that I had some ideas for the background and layout of my poster I began to start looking into how I can show the word typography. I looked into different fonts and methods to create the text. I created 6 basic designs using things such as: stencils, stamps, cutouts and paint.

After creating these I realised that I preferred text which is created digitally and I thought it looked a lot more professional when created digitally. This meant that I could also use Photoshop and Illustrator to create and edit text.

To get some more ideas for my posters and the techniques I could use to create my posters, I started to compile some typography posters which caught my eye and ones I thought I could get inspiration from. I found some posters which related to my original ideas. For example: one poster had letters stood up and there are shadows being cast from the letters, another poster I found had a hand drawn word over a forest background, another had the word created using lines going from each side of the poster.

I annotated each poster I chose and this helped me to get an idea of how I can start my posters and what techniques I could use.

Now I began to research into Typography and it’s definition. I also looked into aspects of typography such as: x-height, different types of fonts and type faces, ascenders and descenders and other aspects. I then began to look at famous typographers from the past and which fonts they created. I also looked at their history and past jobs etc.

Firstly, I wrote down my research on some paper and there wasn’t much information for each typographer. To improve on my research I created a Powerpoint around typography and the typographers I looked in to. I did some more in depth research for each slide and added more information about typography and the advanced terms surrounding it. I also did more research about my chosen typographers and I added which fonts they designed, where they have worked in the past and some of their general past.

To start my project I began to do some research on typography and some existing typography posters. This was to try and get an idea of how they can look and also to get some inspiration for my own ideas. To get all of this research together I created a spider diagram which has all of my initial ideas about: backgrounds, ways to present the text and different techniques I can use to create my poster.

One of the ideas I thought about was photography. During my first week I went out and took pictures of random places around Blackburn and the first idea I had in my head for the posters was to use a forest or relaxing background. I then thought I could add the word Typography somewhere to the poster. I thought this would make the text stand out because it looks out of place from the background. After researching some typography posters I got the idea for using paper cutouts and arranging them to spell words. I also liked the shadow you got from the paper if it was raised from the canvas. Finally I researched paint and existing typography posters where they have used paint to get certain effects. I thought about using a stencil or cutouts then painting around them and leaving the inside of the paint blank.