color
One color for text and one for background is definitely not enough to emphasize the information hierarchy. In this context, even though the information is classified through linespacing and stroke weights, the text still seems very flat and almost on the same level of importance.
As I introduced a second color into the text, the hierarchy immediately becomes more three-dimensional and dynamic. It increases the difference in the level of importance and really adds another layer of information grouping, thus helping audience to group information in a very visually straightforward way.
What’s more, in the following images I was also trying to use shape to direct audience’s attention to the text I want to emphasize or guide audience to read the information in a certain direction/order.
My color choice was based on the quote I extracted for the event, and I used popping bright color against dark background to reiterate the idea of “igniting”. Following this path, the images I chose for the following posters also reflects this idea.
size
I definitely think this part of the exercise loosened up my mind when I moved the text around physically. Even though it seems like playing with layout is easier on the screen, I feel like I am more free and explorative when I did it physically; especially when I started to cut a large chunk of information into smaller pieces and play around the layout in a more complex way, I feel like I get more freedom and that inspired me to continue on this path in the later posters.
Images
Rationale behind the images chosen: to reflect the quote “ignite your creative career”, I tried to find images that celebrate this idea as well.
How I treated the text:
General composition — after the size exercise when I moved around my text physically, I realized that I will have much more freedom and flow in composition if I break down the lecture information into individual chunks instead of treating them together as columns of text. To better integrate the text into the images, I experimented with having text follows the flow of the objects in the image to break the stiffness of the poster.
Information Hierarchy — Title is the content that should be able to draw the viewer into the image from a far distance so it on the top level of hierachy. The content of the lectures, especially the name of the authors should be emphasized in the second level since it is the content that interests people about the events. Since the authors invited are nationally-acclaimed, I emphasized their names to distinguished it from the rest of the text.
Iteration 1:
image — I played around with vertical text and using negative space to guiding viewer’s attention. I especially chose this image because the five fog streams reflects the five authors and it also gives a feeling of calmness that reflects the characteristics of the event.
text-choice — through containing the information in a box the text looks more organized, but on the other hand, it also limits the size of the text and it is hard to justify the choice of size in terms of the level of importance.
Here I tried to experimented with the color. I took the color in the rainbow in the image to assign different “personalities” to different authors, but after the first critique I realized that five different colors actually breaks the seriousness established for the whole poster.
iteration 2:
This time I tried to use images of lanterns to emphasize the idea of ‘ignite’, and to make the composition more succinct, I modified a lot of the original image to simplify the composition.
The second image is my first iteration, I had the idea of typographically making each individual chunk of information about the lectures into small lanterns and make them flow with the images. Therefore, for the color choice, I chose to use orange and pale yellow to recreate the color the lantern, and center alignment also helped to recreate the symmetry in lanterns.
The first iteration uses a very symmetrical design. After the first critique, I decided to be more experimental with the placement of the “lanterns” to makes it flow more naturally.
typography choice: The name of the author is emphasized through brighter color and boldness; the size of the name is increased to the same level as the book name so that the viewers can see the dates more easily than book name. I also increased the linespacing between the date and the author so that the author and book name are more grouped together and the date is a relatively independent information while still remaining the cohesive structure.
letter spacing — during the process I paid a lot of attention on the micro-detail to make the information looks more consistent. In order to make the length of each line as uniform as possible, I did a lot of adjustment on letter spacing to tighten the book name so that it goes well with the rest of the chunk.
For the final iteration, I tried to tie the bottom information in a more harmonic way, since it was originally separated from the tittle and the line was very awkward. So for the final iteration, I got rid of the line to better integrate the text together.
