The Story Of The Poster- Dave Taylor

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.