Studio Brief 04 - Reflective Practice - Speaking From Experience

Studio Brief

Produce a series of posters, advising freshers undertake research into other posters that freshers may find attractive to catch there attention use this research to help influence your design choices. 


Background / Considerations

• Think about facilities and how they have helped you 
• Think about the choice of colour & type to catch attention of freshers 
• Think about advice you have been given and how it's helped you

Mandatory Requirements

• Printed out final piece
• Cheap media so it can be mass produced

Deliverables

• Design development sheets, support work 
• Resolved design solutions in a format and media appropriate to your ideas.

Below is some research I carried out into looking at posters that were colourful as I felt that colour would appeal to freshers as I remember when I was a fresher and the leaflets and handouts that I was offered were lacking in colourful interest therefore I would not take them. Because of this reason I began research into posters using the website bechance, what i found is that a lot of the posters were type based which I liked as I enjoy typography, type would work well as a main image as its impactful depending on how it is use and can be made bold to stand out therefor catching a freshers eye. I also noticed that a fair few posters had also included patterns which make a poster more visually attractive and interesting to look at adding patterns adds a different visual experience. From finding this research out I felt that this information could influence my design decisions. 

From this research I then began to think of things that have helped me & what I've learnt: 

1. One of the main things I've learnt is that booking printing slots in advanced is a must as slots get booked up weeks in advanced as there is many courses that have deadlines the same time as everyone else therefore if you did not book a print slot in advanced you would not get to print your work out. Drop in session at lunch are only an hour and because of this with the lack of people pre booking slots I found we had to queue at least two hours before the print room opened and sometimes because the queue was to long and you wouldn't get seen to. 
2. I've learnt that you need to remember to bring your college card to uni with you as if you forget it 3 times in a row you will not be allowed in to college and you will be sent home, this also includes when you have deadlines on the day and if you've forgot your card and get sent him it's your own fault, I've been very close to this happening and it's not worth the stress. 
3. I've found inductions are a must to go to, as when it comes to certain projects you need you use printing methods etc other than digital, at the start i never went to any of the inductions and this impacted on me when it came to other projects and I then had to wait weeks until there was another induction session.
4. I've learnt that turning up on time to lectures is a must as you may miss a apart of a lecturer and not think you've missed much, this experience has happened to me when i turned up to session late and we were given a task and I didn't find out till the day before therefore i rushed my work for the next day which ended up in a rushed piece of work. 

From this research I found that my posters needed to be colourful/eye-catching & bold to appeal to freshers, I also learnt that I need to advise freshers. To do this I began first by digitaly experiment with colours such as hot pink as its a postive colour & combined it with a green colour to tone the poster down, i then added a font called bebas Neue which is bold & clear I kerned the font which makes the text clearer and easy to see, I wanted to create a fairly modern poster so it appealed to the younger generation I felt that this typeface appeals to younger people as it's a san serif font. 



I choose to stick the bebes text as i felt that it worked well, I was unsure of the colour choice as i was unsure it made it visually difficult to read because of this I researched colour swatches of pastel colours to try combine the colours together to tone the poster down. 



I created this two tone effect which I think  works well the reason for this was to create a contrast between the two colours, I feel that it adds more texture to the poster design. I also decided to introduce a two tone system to the text as I felt it would draw your eyes into the main word which is important whilst making it visually interesting. 



I then started experimenting with pastel blue colours which looked calmer and less vibrant which would make it easier to visualise and read. I also added patterns as in my research I found that patterns were often used in posters which added more textures and interesting to imagery to grab a viewers attention. 





I then began experimenting with orange and yellows and found it difficult to to find a colour that you'd still be able to see the white text on. Because of this I again used colour swatches to help me experiment with different colours. 









This is one of my first of many experiments where i tired to keep the text simple but I found that the design look lacking in imagery and felt it would not catch my audiences eye, even tho the colours & typed worked well. 










From these experiments I then Began mocking up some of my posters and the colours schemes I wanted to keep them a series so they linked together and look more professional. These posters advise and communicate to freshers due the high intensity of the colour scheme, bold/modern text & type layout therefore making it eye catching and noticeable to read and interesting to look at. Overall I'm happy with my final outcomes as i feel that they communicate my ideas and relate to my target audience. If i were to carry out this project again i would take more time and care on these designs and try screen print these posters rather than digitally print to help my screen printing skills and also add a different look to the designs.