After thoroughly reading the previous posters critiques, I have made changes based on what everyone thought! This is now a poster that reflects on the ideas and overall direction the ArtX club is all about.
The things I changed based on suggestions
- scale up the email
- add contrast to paintbrush on X
- scale image down in post
- fix spacing between vmmc & 107
- make words at bottom bit bigger
- add another visual element
As you can see, I scaled the email, reduced the file size when first viewing it on the blog and I fixed the awkward spacing between vmmc & 107. As for increasing contrast on the paintbrush I added a drop shadow to it because I still wanted the brush to be a little bit “hidden” like an Easter egg, but I thought it looked nicer with the shadow because it continues the rest of the letter X more seamlessly. Changing the words at the bottom was my biggest hurdle because I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant so I made all of them larger than what they used to be and completely rearranged them to fit the space. This one took time because I wanted words that made sense to be next to each other. Sizing, all capitals, and letters that wanted to cross over into other words was a fun puzzle to fit but I think I pulled it off pretty well. One of the last suggestions in my design was “add another visual element”, which I wasn’t really sure what to do because I didn’t want to make the poster more busy than it already was. Considering I added the drop shadow and rearranged the letters at the bottom seemed like those took up a lot of visual space on their own and I decided against adding more since so much had already changed. I figured sometimes just a few things need to be moved around to fit better instead of adding more content that might not fit just because something feels like it’s missing.
Design Process: Updated
A major effect I used throughout this poster is the overlay settings to create high and low contrast effects to draw attention to specific elements on the page. I took inspiration from the 00’s grunge band posters, and similar themes that incorporate messiness and creativity into a fun and unpredictable aesthetic to push the idea of “thinking outside of the box”. Elements in this design included the action of creating (the hand with pencil), materials used (paintbrush in the “X”) and the final product (abstract art spill background).
All of the photos were taken by Elsa Temme (myself) in the art studio on campus, except for the painted warp background I sourced from Pexels by Anni Roenkae. Pexels is a copyright free image source where users are asked to share where the image came from as substantial credit to the creator. I staged the materials on a white sheet of paper with even lighting to make masking their backgrounds out easier.
The reason I chose these images for my final poster was because they were easy to work with and encouraged the idea of what the club was about. We use our hands at every ArtX meeting to draw, pain, or make something, and generally the outcome is as fluctuating as the abstract background. I needed to pick a solid font title which is why I went with the Franklin Gothic family because it was a strong and reliable statement and resembles the way that the club operates.
When it came time to assemble the draft, I started with the background and the main title text “ArtX”. I tried different positioning for the title until I found one that fit the theme. I then began choosing a color scheme to follow and brought in more of my elements like the brush and hands to see how they fit with the piece. I didn’t want them to appear “plain” so I found ways to make them apart of the dialogue, for example the brush IN the “X” and the hands drawing the “R”. I tried different warp techniques on the elements but decided it was best to warp a plain rectangle because it didn’t need to be as recognizable as the rest of the elements.
The only problems I ran into were minor technical things like transforming my paintbrush element because the bounding box was larger than the element itself and would get in the way. My best solution was just locking the layer when I didn’t need it since cropping the original image distorted the placement of the clipping mask.
Revisions
As stated previously I went through my checklist of suggested changes and followed through on them. For the most part the revisions were fairly simple so there isn’t much more to go into detail about. I did have issues with getting my fonts to transfer over since I had made the poster on campus and then revised it at home so I had to go through each file layer and update it with the right font (I wasn’t sure if there was a faster way and didn’t know if it would take longer to research it or just do it by hand). So I ended up just doing it by hand but it didn’t take too long and in the end it worked because sometimes when I try to take too many shortcuts things get left behind or broken in the process. Although, if I had over 100 layers I would have considered looking into a faster process.
Final Thoughts
I hope you all like this final product of my poster!
Fonts used
Asphalt Scratch Rounded Free for personal use
CGF Off-Road 100% Free
Franklin Gothic Free for personal use
Images
Abstract background: Pexels by Anni Roenkae, 100% Free
Hand 1 & 2: Elsa Temme, Creator
Paintbrush: Elsa Temme, Creator