I wasn't too sure where to start exactly but after writing down my thoughts in the last blog post I thought that I should start by drawing some compositions that involved my illustration for my book cover.
Due to the lack of information displayed on the Ftweekend “poster” that I saw in the newspaper I decided to add some additional details such as the date and location as well as a little heading. I'm still a bit unsure of whether or not that poster was actually for the festival but as FT weekend is sponsoring the event, I assume it was.
I sketched out a few ideas, trying not to simply repeat what I had done in the illustration and aimed to just show a segment of it. After I had run out of ideas I looked back at my previous post to have a think about what to do next.
I decided that I would just create a template for the poster where each of the designs I had done for my book would be dropped in. This is because when I looked at other exhibition posters such as Pick Me Up and the ones in Somerset House, they normally displayed someone's artwork which will be showed at the event. In this case, I will be displaying the designs of the book which features literary quotes and other subjects that will be included in the event (such as politics).
I thus quickly sketched out some ideas having been inspired by Somerset House's designs.
As my template is quite basic I only needed to sketch out two ideas before opening up InDesign and creating an A3 document. I first dropped in my image and then played around with the layout.
Once I had nearly finished with one of the posters I zoomed out to look at it in terms of layout, and decided that I didn't really like the information being in a box and preferred it as shown in my sketch where the box would bleed on both sides. I copied and pasted the whole design, stretched out the box, and then carried on adding all of the extra details.
I then changed my text colour from black to a charcoal grey as I found that black was too bold and overpowering, and that grey gave a softer and friendlier appearance.
I was still a bit unsure on how to display “FT Weekend” so I quickly hopped back onto their website to see how they use it in their text. It seems that they display it as “FT Weekend” as opposed to how it's shown in their logo, so I did the same with my posters.
I noticed that I hadn't included their location and quickly added it into one of my designs, adjusted the kerning and changed the size of the font. This makes it design look less cramped and give each segment of information more room to breathe.
I wanted to explore with more layouts so I just chose one of my designs to work on and produced three compositions (including the one I already had):
Thoughts
1. The illustration in this design was more dominant and all of the information has been put in one place, meaning that it'll be easier for passers-by to quickly flick through all of the information in one go instead of having to stop and look at it closely.
Due to the fact that all of the information is in one place the design could look a bit cramped. Luckily it isn't too cramped here because I have adjusted the kerning and made sure that the font size was relatively small.
2. The illustration here is still quite dominant but there is a lot more white space which allows the information to breathe. However, as the text are placed in different areas it would mean that the viewer would have to stop for a moment to read everything.
3. The above goes the same for this version; everything is in different places so the information wouldn't be quick to read however it's still quite easy to read. There is a lot more white space in this one and the illustration is even less dominant but it still takes up a lot of the poster.
Out of all of the versions above I'm leaning on the first and second one. The white space in the third is a bit too much in my opinion and it detracts the impact that the illustration has. To help make deciding easier I used both layouts and carried it across to all of my other designs.
1)
2)
Now it's much easier to decide, and I can clearly see that the layout in the second version does cause problems for most of my designs as they can't seem to fit within the gap. The ones with the white background would work for this as it wouldn't matter if I reduce their size but if I reduced the others you could clearly see white spaces on each edge.
Therefore I have decided to go with my first version as I don't need to reduce the size or cut parts of the design off.
Reflective & Critical Thinking
The idea to display my designs was probably better than using my book cover illustration because it ties in with my design brief: “If possible, at least one of the designs within will be carried across to poster designs in order to promote this festival which takes place in March (details are on their website).” It would also mean that there are more versions to display around the country to raise awareness of this event and that my client would have more of a choice (if they only wanted one of the designs displayed).
I also used a typeface - Minion Pro - that looked similar to the one featured on their website and have also used their logo from there as well. This is so that a stronger connection is created which makes it obvious that my poster design is for the Oxford Literary Festival.
Although my poster design is quite basic, I find that it's minimalist appearance would make it a lot easier for passers-by to quickly look through rather than having to stop and find all of the required pieces of information. I have added more information on this poster than the one I had found whilst flicking through the newspaper as I believe that things such as the location and date are extremely important.
This minimalist design also makes it easier for me to drop in my designs featured within my book because it allows my posters to remain consistent so that even if different ones are featured in different locations, people would still be able to recognise it as being for the Oxford Literary Festival. If I had done different designs to suit each one it'll just be confusing.
Later on I realised that the poster ad I saw wasn't in fact for the Oxford Literary Festival. However, it is the only one that features FT Weekend so it was an easy mistake to make. I had tried to look for other posters but I couldn't find any at all so I thought it best to include that design anyway.
My next step is to carry out some test prints to see if a high resolution is maintained for my illustrations.
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