Poster Design- the press team
After becoming a member of
the press team the first thing I knew I wanted to tackle was the theme of the
fundraising. As you would with a business I felt that the events and the whole
fundraising reason needed to be summed up and held within a continuous but
adaptable theme.
My idea was to have the
foundations of the theme as the concept poster, a poster that would set the
theme and remain the same telling people what the events were for and telling
them that they were ‘upcoming around NULC’. The idea was that all the other
posters that advertise the events would be the same style, layout and use the
same font as the main poster so that people could begin to connect with the
idea and piece the two together when they saw an event occurring.
Initial ideas
I had a brainstorm with
Sylvia where we discussed what things we liked about art and what we felt
worked well when researching gallery and exhibition marketing. The style we
liked best was a 1920’s poster that looked quite propaganda-ish. The concept of
an artist reaching out of the page pointing a paintbrush at you with the text
‘art needs you’ was the initial image I had in mind for the theme of the
exhibitions fundraising for 2013.
One of Sylvia’s ideas was
to use ‘make art not war’ or something similar. Either way one thing we had
both agreed on was to use propaganda as inspiration for the posters. So I
gathered the notes I had taken from our meeting and began to create a few
mock-ups which I then planned on showing the class to ask firstly whether they
liked our theme inspiration and secondly what they would like to see.
The first design
The very first design I
did was a play on words. I didn’t want the poster theme to be too obvious
because to me that is not what art is about, art is a challenge and it takes a
lot to understand it. I liked the idea of turning the marketing into a puzzle
that needed to be worked out. It reads ‘art needs you’ but with the r from art
missing and the u from u it read ‘at needs yo’ with the question ‘what’s
missing?’ followed by the answer ‘you are’ but shown as the missing U & R
from the above words to read:
A_T NEEDS Y_O what’s missing? UR
When I presented this idea
to the group they all agreed on the propaganda theme that I had been working
with but most of the group decided that maybe the ‘puzzle’ marketing wasn’t a
good idea as not every student in the college thinks the same as an art student
would and therefore would dismiss it as an unsolved riddle.
The second design
Following on from the
feedback I had gained after presenting the first idea to the group I then
created a new design using the same font as before (rosewood std) and the same
heading but with the missing UR now added back into their words so that it
still had the same feel as before, a ww2 propaganda poster.
It was also suggested in
the last consultation that the colour scheme was too dark and contemporary for
a propaganda inspired poster. Taking that into account I made this design echo
more of a vintage art nouveau feel with the use of complimentary stripes and a
frame I had acquired from Google. Notice
that this time I placed the logo for NULC at the top of the page because I
believed that it enhanced the composition.
Feedback for this was much
better and more responsive than the last design and it was certain amongst the
group that this was a style we all wanted to use in the marketing of our
fundraising. Although this was a more favoured design there will still tweaks
to be made. People wanted me to try and find a new frame in which to house the
lettering and also that once I had found a new frame if it were possible, to
change the stripes within the frame to a new colour so that it became 4
complimentary colours rather than 2, thus adding a further depth to the
posters. I was also informed that due to marketing regulations it wasn’t
acceptable that the college logo was at the top, rules stated that it needed to
be at the bottom of the page.
The third design
The third design quickly
became the final design. As I consulted further with the group it led me to the
final stages of designing. Working alongside the group, the lecturer and the
marketing department within college I soon had the final design and the core
poster of the entire campaign, the idea as I had stated during the preliminary
stages of design were that a main poster would talk about what it was we were
doing and sub-posters would pop up following the same theme but in different
colours so that each event had its own personality but was also recognisable as
our poster. This is designed to help people connect what they see in front of
them with the event they will encounter and vice versa. With the help of
marketing the poster was also correctly branded with the correct institutes. There
were many rules to follow in the placing of the logos; the main rules to abide
by were that they must have enough empty space around them without any other
writing or art work interfering with their designated space. That is where the
stripe of blue came from within the design; it is solely to house the logos.
The first event.
Bake sale poster
The bake sale was the
first event to take place and alongside the original core poster I created this
poster, using the same style and theme to connect the event with the cause but
changing the colour just enough to create it its own identity. I also decided
with these designs to add the words ‘in association with’ just above the logos
so that people could also appreciate the importance and official feel of the
events we were holding. After all they aren’t just fun for us to enjoy, they
are vital to raise funds for our exhibition and to pass the module.
The second event
Keeping the theme the same
I again changed the colour scheme slightly but made it quite clear that this
was an event that was about to take place by making what the event was the
headline and moving the ‘art needs you’ title out of the centre of the page. I
also faded and compacted the once centred headline.
The third event
Previously I have used
pastel colours as the theme of the poster to echo the core poster; I have
always changed the colour according to the event. When it was the bake sale I
chose pastel pink, when it was the ‘guess the name of the bear’ I chose a
tertiary looking brown/terracotta. This time for the sweet shop I decided to go
crazy with colour and use a bright vivid red to reflect the nature of sweets,
marketing is the best tool of a campaign and is there to be used. The
importance and benefit of having an interchangeable poster scheme is that there
is always the possibility for reinvention.
