Unit 6 | sebastiankaczmarczyk

Brief Summary and Initial Ideas

For this unit I have been asked to provide a set of three posters created in a similar fashion and similar idea. The purpose of those posters is to show my experiences with the course. Posters should show "hard-won wisdom and life lessons", "who and where I am now and what that means" and "celebrate what I've learned". Posters have to be in the A3 dimensions and have short descriptions.

I have already created some posters for this course, meaning that I already have some experience with such task. I think that I will not have any problems with creating the posters in the future stages, whereas the first stage of thinking of designs is not an easy task; at the moment I have just some ideas but none of them is really good.

I have started this task by researching posters in general and looking for interesting motivational quotes. I did so in order to have some examples of what I am expected to do.

After some time I found quotes I liked.

"Difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations."

It could imply that course is not just having fun but working. However all work done rewards us with more experience, knowledge and skills. To create poster like that I would look for some beautiful views and recreate them. I think that I could use one of those American roads in the desert - ones in the desert mountains, or however those places are called. I think that it could be a good composition - ugly and dangerous road with colourful garden in the end.

"You will never have this day again so make it count."

I really like this one but have no idea how to make poster like that, considering that we are not allowed to write more than one symbol.

"No matter how you feel. Get up. Dress up. Show up. Never give up."

It is a very good message, which I consider relevant to the course as sometimes you just feel down, having no ideas but still have to move forward. However, I do not think that creating a poster showing this quote with no words would be an easy task or even a possible task for me.

"A river cuts through a rock not because of its power, but because of its persistence."

Another quote relevant to the course, but not too obviously. It simply shows that in the end everything will depend on your hard-working thorough the entire course and not just one unit.

I have written down all ideas and quotes found in my notebook. This way I can easily access them outside the college, in places with no internet access. It also let me to sketch some designs - it is much less time consuming that preparing them on a computer.

As we were introduced to the unit I started gathering all my ideas and tips from others in form of a mind map.

At some point I thought that I could use a technique I have used before to create those two images below.

I would use that technique to create a poster of a person surrounded by art. In order to make the poster easy to understand I would use the most iconic buildings and paintings.

Some posters were presented to us. This design is a mix of all their ideas. Circle is supposed to catch your attention - people instinctively look inside circles on images (like in the Youtube thumbnails). Straight line is doing the same, as it makes you to follow it.

This idea is not about the message but style used. There I thought about making my posters look like comics.

In this design I wanted to refer to the course and building bridges by learning new techniques and software that we might use in the future. I would show it as puzzle pieces lying around, making a bridge of them.

There I have finally found a good idea. Be different. First design shows two similar people saying similar things, where the last person is upside-down saying something different. Second design shows one person wanting to do one thing and somebody else wanting to do something different. Last design shows people trying to go around the wall. One person is trying to dig below it while somebody else wants to fly above it.

Research

I have found out that most of the popular websites use shades of blue (Facebook, Twitter, Steam) so it might be a good idea to use it as well for my poster. It might be the case, that it will be much easier to notice this way as people will instinctively look at my poster.

Series of books with similar design.

All those cover look very similar and get together very well. I think that this effect has been achieved to their simplicity and randomness. I mean, those covers were given a lot of thought, but compared to other covers they seem pretty random. Thanks to that, they are very easy to notice so there is a higher chance of them being bought than for any book with typical cover.

I think that this idea is very good and I would like to do something similar to it in the future, even if it was not for this Unit.

Series of posters.

This is an example of series using the same style and techniques used to create graphics on them.

Series of images.

This is an example of series using different styles and techniques. However, it is still a series because all of those drawings show the same object made by more than one artist (or one artist using different styles for each one image).

Series of bottles.

This an example using similar styles and techniques, layout and colours getting well together.

Comparision & Proposal

IDEA / STRENGTHS / WEAKNESS

1. Difficult Road - Wold be prettier than other design. Would show my skills in creating graphics. BUT It would be hard to complete. It would need too much time to finish.

2. Make it count - Gives a nice message. BUT I have no idea how to design it.

3. Persistence - Would be rather easy to create. BUT It would not look good.

4. Y? - Stylish. Would catch attention. BUT I do not know how to make it into series.

5. Surrounded by art - Would look good. BUT It would be time-consuming to do.

6. Building Bridges - Message is good. BUT It would be complicated; I would have to use multiple applications to create this poster.

7. Be Different - Message is good. It is quite simple to do.

For the last few weeks I have been trying my best in order to prepare for this unit; I have researched many areas that are compulsory and those that might be useful. I did that because this unit seems more complicated that any previous one and might cause some problems as I move on. This unit required more researching that any other, however, I believe that I have covered all areas I had to cover.

My research has been conducted both during the lesson time and during my free time, just as I did with the 5th unit. Because of that I feel more confident that I did at the beginning.

I know what I am supposed to do, because I have read the brief and kept my notes done as we progressed. In addition I was listening carefully to teachers and students consulting each other.
I know how other did their posters, because I have researched other artists using websites such as designspiration and analysed their work. I think that it was very inspiring.
I know what to do, because I have written down a range of ideas, analysed them and consulted fellow students to choose one that will suit audience the most.
I know how to create my posters, because I have used software such as Photoshop, iPiccy, and Illustrator in the past and I already know some useful techniques.

I have decided that my final design for the series is going to be 'Be Different'. I believe that it is the best idea I have produced for this unit; idea is quite simple and simple ideas tend to be better as you cannot do too much or too less. I think that 'Be Different' is superior to other design on a different level; message of being different is much more powerful than any other message given by other design.

In order to pass this unit with the best grade possible I shall;

research, reproduce and develop techniques used by successful authors.
work at home, giving myself more time for this unit.

Production

Right now I have a clear idea of what I want so create. Thus the only thing I should worry about is the production process. I know it from the past, that this process can be tricky and messy - at least for me as I tend to do many things and once and not focus on one particular thing. In order to prevent such situation I have decided to create a flow chart showing what I have to do from now on. Thanks to this chart I will know what I should focus at the moment.

24th MARCH

9th JANUARY

9th FEBRUARY

19-27th JANUARY

10-18th JANUARY

10FEB- 23th MARCH

Scale of time has changed. We have as much time as we had, however, it will be more condensed. It means that number of hours we will spend on this unit does not change but number of weeks for this unit decreases and number of hours per week increases. It will result in working for much longer everyday and more time later. Thanks to that I might be able to more at college and then have more time to polish everything at the end.

Having that in mind, I have decided write a bit more about what I will do.

Pre-production. Creating key documents. It includes my notes and sketches.
Designs for each poster.
Production. Creating all the posters and putting them on my site.
Evaluation.

I do not have much experience with Illustrator. Screenshots above show two ideas for my posters created with this software.

After some time with Illustrator I came to a conclusion; this software is weird. Simply weird. If I draw outside the white space and save the image, I will get the entire image-even outside the bounds. Also, I was unable to find the Fill Tool. Because of that, I have decided to come back to iPiccy to create that image.

I think that this design is good. I am very happy with letter B. In order to create it I had to create three layers with different size and put one on another. Then I had to change colours.

In the end I think that it is a good design but it could be better.

That is why I started thinking.

For this design I had to create few circles and triangles to create speech bubbles. Those characters were pre-defined shapes in iPiccy so I just had to create ties for them.

I like this design. However, I feel that there are too many objects, even if they create a point of focus between them.

It is practically design, except the missing people and using less colours. I think that this poster looks much better.

Another design using speech bubbles. In order to make it different I decided to not use letters and show the message in some other way. Because of that, one of those bubbles is in a different colour. I think that it was a great idea, as white and black are contradictory to each other, making contrast. White looks good with red, same for black.

For this idea I had something else. In order to make it distinct I decided to use letters only - no shapes.

This design shows my message - Be Different - by empathising on one letter, which has different colour.

For this one I decided to make it somewhat 'artistic' and chopped the left side. This posters shows my message thanks to the use of letter b.

My teacher insisted that I should create at least one of those designs in Adobe Illustrator because I do not like this software. And there it is, not without problems. The biggest issue was to save this image as it was, without any additional space around this.

Fortunately, I was able to solve it by changing the exporting option.

This design shows my message thanks to the use of two different fonts.

Final Designs, Message & Evaluation

What I want to tell through my work is to 'Be Different'. I believe that being original is very important as nowadays people try to steal other's work or do everything exactly as somebody else does. It results in industry filled with mountains of same products, including games, movies, animations and graphics.

Because of that I have decided to create 'Be Different' poster series where I empathise on being original.

It has been already few weeks since I have started working on this unit. During hat time I was able to learn many thing new to me that allowed me to develop new techniques and gain experience with software I had problems with. After such time I was finally able to create my series of three posters - posters that now I am proud of, that show my skills and knowledge.

In order to create those posters I had to research different artists for my hours followed by as much time spent on planning and creating designs and reviewing them. It taught me to appreciate others' work as they had to sacrifice their time in order to create beautiful art and all time they spent on learning way of doing that.

Concept for my poster changed each week as I have never stopped my research; designspiration.com was the biggest inspiration for me, as I found there many different posters using different styles, techniques and following different ideas. Because of that, I have created a range of initial designs, as many developed designs and two sets of designs to choose as my final series. One oriented around shapes and one using letters to conduct message.

After seeing beautiful graphics incorporating lettering I have decided to use the later set. I believe that it was a right decision as those posters are now of a very good standard and meet their purpose; whenever I show them to someone, people know in an instant what the message is.

I believe that my work meets requirements set in the brief and that it meets needs of the audience. I think that this unit taught me a lot and I will be able to use that knowledge in the future.