Poster Finals & development

Poster Finals & development 

Bellow are examples of my final printed outcomes presented in there 2:1 ratio on A3 paper. I am happy with the outcome but when i created the pdf mockup i chose a lightweight grey hoping that I could find a paper stock to match this mockup. But this wasn't possible this was the closest i could get and it changed the ascetics completely, before the grey was light now its darker and more pastel. The outcome instill high impact but the contrast between the light grey and the red provided a higher impact outcome before. This restraint of not having the correct paper stock is something I will consider into more detail next time as this altered the outcome more than I would like, I would also like to try out screen printing next time so with better time management I will try out this method next time. Overall though i was happy with the outcome though and I will display the stages it underwent to arrive at this finished product.

The typeface used was Helvetica Neue in bold weights and regular weights of varying type sizes. Uppercase was used for high impact. 

Below are the source sketches in which my designs were developed from with underlying influences coming from my investigation into existing poster designs. 

I will now go through the digital development stages highlighting were major changes happened. 

Tightened the leading to attempt to increase a more solid block of type to increase the high impact outcome. 

Centre justified to visually emulate a hurricane in an abstract format. 

A quick discussion with Simon made me see that it just wasn't working in terms of impact, from a distance it wasn't very visually eye catching and the centre justification wasn't working. Everything needed to be presented in one flush block of type. Still staying with the centre positioning I went on to start increasing point sizes on important figures to draw the viewers eye into key statistics. Bold weight was used to strengthen this concept.

To keep everything neat and well aligned i played about with leading to create even consistent spaced between all the design elements.

Getting there now in terms of impact, but the page still appears too empt, and the positioning of the type is a little all over the place still so some adjustments need to be made. 

Visually the linking lines weren't working so I began to remove these and started to increase leading a little bit. 

Established it wasn't necessary for any of the linking lines the small lines frame up the 3 blocks of information well enough.

I thought that the bottom of the page had too much white space so to make use of this I placed the Hurricane Katrina as a footer of the poster as the figures were to be the focal point of the poster so the viewer would go through the 3 elements top to bottom in terms of importance. The emissions been the most important issue due to this causing the deaths and the disaster outcomes. 

 I played about with subtle type edits, this helped add a little playfulness to the design and created a feeling of interaction with the glyphs. The A was overturned to emulate death a little more, my concept was that things seem to float and turn over when dead in the water, and the water was the main focal point of the disaster so i edited the 2005 to simulate waves in an abstract format. And the D been blown over to simulate wind. 

Kerning, tracking and leading were altered while playing about with typeface weights and sizes to help focus in on important facts while keeping typography aligned in a rectangular centre aligned block and keeping it as easy to read as possible letting the eye flow from line to line with ease. This works ok i guess with the eye stopping to take in the figures presented in bold and large point size. 

Began to add color to increase impact, red was the main color used in charities in the recovery stages after the disaster and emulates emotions of danger so I felt this fit the concept well. The contrast it created with the black type was nice as well framing up the 3 segments. 

In my research stages I liked the idea of striking elements out to emulate that if the emissions displayed were 'struck out' then the outcomes deaths and other stats wouldn't have happened. 

The strike outs were brought close together to create a more solid block to increase visual impact. But the solid colors completely hid the facts, and my concept was to link the disaster outcomes with global warming.

Adding opacity helped prevent this problem around 70% was applied, it balanced nice in terms of tonal range with the contrasting black typography. 

Played around with different shades of grey arriving at this final grey presented bellow. The image only and type & image followed the same layout style as the type only poster to keep constancy throughout so the posters work nice as a set.