Fall 2023
Overview
This project challenged us to design a 10inx16in all-type poster surrounding a theme of diversity, equity, and inclusion in education. We had to incorporate a strong quote related to this theme along with body text we wrote ourselves to provide commentary on our chosen quote. Further, we were randomly assigned our four spot colors except for one which we could choose ourselves after being given our color palette. We had to incorporate all of these colors in our final poster design. No tints, duotones, or gradients were allowed and any illustrative elements had to be created out of type only.
Research + Brainstorming
Researching type posters was really fun for this project, but brainstorming...not so much. This is only because I found myself getting progressively more angry at the thought of what Ron DeSantis and far-right extremist groups like Moms For Liberty are currently doing to the education system. There's a genuine threat happening right now, and it's pretty enraging to dwell on, especially as I kept brainstorming. I knew a lot of my classmates were taking our provided theme and going for a more positive outlook on DEI with really uplifting quotes related to diversity, but given the current sociopolitical climate and the very real attacks on schools, I wanted to keep it (depressingly) real in my poster. I ended up finding a truly amazing article written by Delta College President Dr. Michael H Gavin titled "Amid Extremist Attacks on Higher Ed, We Must Go Beyond Diversity and Inclusion." His entire article took a totally different approach to DEI discourse, one that I hadn't even considered. This project theme is really important to me, and I found this article to provide an outlook that I think everybody should tune in to. I knew I wanted to use one of Dr. Gavin's amazing quotes to use on my poster.
As far as the actual poster design goes, I really loved the examples with huge, page-wide characters and/or massive quotation marks. I love blocky, big letters. I also ended up really drawn to a lot of the diagonals used in constructivist posters. And then, to my future detriment, I made a fatal mistake. I looked at my provided color palette and realized I had two out of the three American Flag colors. I realized that I could add a red color and, drawing inspiration from the constructivist posters, I could tie in my quote with some sort of American flag graphic (made from type). This was stupid. I changed everything at the last minute because marrying myself to specific colors and a specific design idea using these colors before even getting to my sketches was dumb. Yes, I've absolutely learned my lesson.
Sketches + Doodles
My chosen quote was really long, so I did have kind of a hard time fitting the entire thing within my tiny sketches. I still think I managed to get a good idea for placement, even if a few words were left out. I wanted to try as many placements I could think of, with most designs including the flag stripes (again, stupid). I did really love the idea of playing into the "seismic shift" phrase and making that selection of characters really glitchy and cool (like a seismic shift in the words themselves). I had a lot of good ideas playing with perspective at this stage too, but I suck at drawing things in accurate perspective, especially words, so this didn't translate super well.
Thumbnails
I drew more tight thumbnails than were necessary. At the time, I thought it was because I simply had too many ideas. Looking back, It was because I had caged myself within this American Flag/constructivist design idea and I felt trapped to the point where no single design idea under this umbrella looked or felt right, so I kept trying to make something work. I really, really wish I had gone in a different direction at this stage and freed myself from the notion that I had to include American Flag stripes.
Intermediate Compositions
I think you could tell by the quality of my work in these intermediates and my hand final that I really wasn't vibing with these ideas, and I was just trying to get what I did have down on paper to be done with it. I was really loving this split-value background idea though, clearly. The first intermediate looks terrible, it wasn't a great idea to use the prisma markers on top of my pencil type, it just kind of blurred together into a blob. Sorry about that! Here I decided that the 'flag' stripes made the entire composition just a little more fun to look at, so I went with that design for my final hand composition.
Final hand Composition
For my final hand comp, I tried to make the 'flag' stripes look a little better, and I made sure to block in with marker the spots I wanted to be the darkest in my final design. I was honestly just so bitter at this stage that I didn't want to spend too much time coloring in the rest of my text, I just wanted to get this dumb flag situation into the computer. Here is where I decided to do angled body text. I also decided that keeping "seismic shift" on one line looked nicer than I had initially drawn in my intermediate. I kind of knew that the positioning of the top text in relation to the tilted "seismic shift" would probably cause me some issues.
Black + White Computer Progressions
By the time of my computer outputs for my initial design, I hated everything. The flag stripes I was so attached to looked awful and didn't even translate as flag stripes. I think the only good thing about this initial computer output was the actual "seismic shift" phrase. I thought the slice across the characters which also formed a break in value on the page was nice. Still, I wasn't digging the rest of it and yet, I felt like I had to keep going with this design. Probably the sunk-cost fallacy in full effect, unfortunately.
At the last minute, I did conquer my inner demons and said "screw it," before scrapping the entire original flag idea and just following my little design heart. In less than 5 minutes I had put together a new design approach that felt a lot more like my style. Somehow, it didn't feel as forced as the previous idea either. So, I just kept going with my black-and-white progressions from this new stage. I loved the even glitchier type, diagonal text, and huge blocky quotation marks. I ended up with a cool composition that incorporated white space, which I knew I shouldn't be scared of!
Color Studies + Mini Applications
The color studies were so much fun for me. Adding the lime green color really elevated the entire color palette. I did have some slight color-matching issues due to the major difference in color when printing on presentation paper versus regular paper. I had an extremely close match with my colors when printing the swatches on regular paper, but when I tried to print these same swatches on the presentation paper, the colors didn't even look the same. So, I had to go back and readjust and match the colors based on the presentation paper, which unfortunately left me with colors that weren't as close of a match. This was really evident with the orange and olive green colors. I tried a lot of test prints on the presentation paper to find swatches as close as I had before, but I couldn't. The regular paper allowed for a much better match, but I still think I did well with what I landed on. A lot of the color combinations I loved were a little too risky contrast-wise, but I'm glad I tried so many different applications. I really wanted to incorporate the lime green in a big way, but using it as a background color was a little overwhelming visually.
I was having trouble incorporating the olive green color because all of my favorite designs only had a very minimal amount of it. So for my final design, I decided to actually add color to some of the glitchy parts of my quotation marks and make those sections green. It's definitely funky, but it got the green in there and didn't take away from the other colors. I loved so many of my color studies so it was really difficult to choose my final version, but I'm happy I went with something bold and bright.
Final Poster
