Posters In Context

The meaning of my posters and general meaning of my proverb is that you can do things on your own and its ok, but to really have fun and enjoy yourself you need other people. Therefore I think a suitable place for my posters would be in a club or pub, a place where people enjoy being together and dance.

Illustrator Typeface: CMYK

After trying different colour combinations, I think that blue on white works best.

I think that this format works best. This is how the letters would be seen in context and I think that they look more interesting when they are so close together.

Illustrator Development

This was how I digitised my original hand rendered 'pop' letter and made it work as a complete typeface.

I started by drawing circles over Helvetica Regular as this is what my original drawing was based on. When I had drawn circles over the letter, and some scattering around the letter, I used the 'Unite' button from the pathfinder menu to merge all the circles together. Finally I filled the shape in with 100% Cyan to make it more obvious that the letters are made of bubbles. I repeated this with every letter of the alphabet keeping the guide as helvetica.

Final Triptych

Image and type development

I began designing the type and image poster without restricting colours. Again, I prefer the poster using only two colours.
After experimenting with type at the start of the brief I liked the idea of having the words 'to tango' doubled up slightly to illustrate dancing. I think this works well with Gill Sans Ultra Bold because its quite subtle but still noticeable.

Solely image

This is the image before I narrowed it down to two colours. The sausage is sad because he is alone and is confused about the strange guest at the door.

I was skeptical about what the image would look like with only two colours but having done it I think it is a lot better than the multi coloured one, it is much simpler, clearer and more 'graphic' rather than childish.

Type poster development

After trying various combinations of fonts I have settled on Gill Sans Ultra Bold and Chaparral Pro, I think they suit the characters of a dominant knocking at the door and a timid character answering the door.
I have played around with the speech marks to make a more interesting and balanced poster.

Type Poster

Orator Std & Plantagnet Cherokee

Poplar Std & TW CEN MT

Rosewood & Baskerville Old Face

My type poster is going to be the start of a 'knock knock' joke. I have tried using different typefaces which contrast each other so that the two characters telling the joke can be identified easily by the reader.

Change of mind..

I began designing for the idea of 'It takes two to tango..you only need one to breakdance' and I started thinking that it was irrelevant to the proverb and I wasn't too sure of what the message I was trying to convey was. I looked back through my ideas and this idea stood out to me, it has a clear message of friendship, happiness and love. I also like the relevance of the 'knock knock' format to the content of the proverb- with both parties being involved with the telling of the joke.

Type poster

These are some preliminary ideas for what my solely type poster could be.

I struggled making them look like a finished poster being restricted to type alone. I was playing with the idea of two sentences crossing over to illustrate the tango idea. 

I think the bottom idea works the best but still looks unfinished and a bit standard.

Proverbally Yours Mind Map and ideas

Through brain storming and getting ideas down I began to understand what message I wanted to get across that was also suited to the proverb.

I began by trying to convey some message against domestic violence but after a while I decided that this message might be interpreted as "don't provoke your man or your gonna get hit" due to 'It takes two to tango' implying that both parties are in the wrong which isn't what I wanted to say at all.

I then tried some more optimistic ideas which were suggesting that 'friends are good' then I thought that people who have plenty of friends know that friends are good and don't really need a poster to tell them so, so I decided to aim it at an individual viewing the posters. I have decided to take forward this idea which says: "it takes two to tango..... only need one to breakdance" which is designed to pump a bit of optimism and happiness into the viewer.

Design Principles, Type

After Dissecting 5 newspapers by cutting out every different bit of type, wether it is a different weight, point size, italicised, colour or different typeface.

The results were:

i: 16 different styles of type

Metro- 28

Independent- 31

Daily Mirror- 41

Guardian- 43

This was just on one random spread, but I think it's interesting how the more national and better known newspapers seem to be more complex in terms of type.

We decided that the most readable newspaper was the Independent. this was due to a good balance of white space and a clear structure that wasn't too busy.

This is the type hierarchy of the Metro organised by point size.

Font family

Frankenstein Letters

Digitising 'POP' letters

I tried digitising a few of my letters and these two were the most effective, I think I will follow on with the bubbley letters as my typeface as it is more interesting.

Name Badge Development

Here I was trying to find some colours that I thought suited the typeface and suited what I knew as Greta. I also tried picking some colours from a Disney image (bottom rectangle) but this looked bland and out of place without any Disney characters.

I thought that the above name badges all looked empty and too spacious so I tried adding some background to fill out the badge a little bit.

I think that the red and green combination works best and suit Greta.

Hand drawn Typeface Poster

Finished Typeface

Overall I am quite happy with the finished typeface, I think it represents Greta as I know her. I think that that the typeface starts of stronger than it finishes and that some of the letters could be tweaked to work better as a set. Some of the elements that make this typeface relevant to Greta are a bit too subtle to be noticed without explanation, if I were to repeat this brief I would develop the letterforms to be more obviously about the curves of a bass guitar and make it more obvious that the counters are travelling out as I think these references go unnoticed at the moment. 

However I like how the letters look bubbly and work in context e.g. the name badge.

Colour

I have done this to see if my type works better solid or as an outline, I think that when it's in solid black it doesn't look very friendly or playful. I am going to stick to the black outline version of the letters for the A1 poster and use a solid colour fill for the name badge.

Keeping it subtle

After my Progress crit on friday Jack suggested I could try adding some machine heads to the ascenders, I have tried a few different ideas here some which are obviously guitar related and some which are a bit more subtle. I have decided to put some little machine heads on the top of the d only rather than every ascender.

Progress

Elements relevant to Greta:

• Tails taken from Greta's treasured bass guitar. Also letters are bottom heavy to look deep, groovy and 'bassy'.
• Letterforms are friendly and fun, like Greta.
• Counters and dots on 'i' and 'j' are moving around, sometimes outside the letterform as Greta is passionate about travel.
• 'g' is scared of the spider.

In context: 

Greta hates spiders!

In answer to 'What is your greatest fear?' 

Greta answered: "SPIDERS! and drowning."

I decided to illustrate this fear with the 'g' screaming at the 'f' who has spider eyes, which makes sense in the context of a typeface laid out 'abcdefgh...' and is a bit of a cryptic mystery when they're not together.

Letter Mods