Poster Concepts

The Graphics team that I am a part of for this exhibition recently held a poster competition - in actual fact, that was the very first thing we discussed as soon as the team was formed. After our designs were all completed we held a voting ballot with the whole lecture group, or at least those who were present, from which the final poster was chosen.

Mine didn't win, but I'll go through the process of my design here:



For my design, I wanted to try out a fairly simple, text-based design. Using white text on a dark blue background - chosen to match the University's navy blue - I felt this would be pleasing on the eye. The large "3rD" makes use of a red 3 and a light blue "D", playing on the fact that anaglyphic 3D glasses usually have red for the left eye and blue for the right. I chose to capitalise the D in "3rd" for a unique effect, having it read as "3rd" while also playing on the exhibition theme being based on 3D.

A second variation of this poster was produced, and for this one I instead applied a faux anaglyphic effect to a white 3 and D, as a subtle way of conveying the theme, on the same coloured background:



When both designs were shown to other group members in the classroom, the dark blue background wasn't too well received, as the brighter Mac monitor made it look purplish. My monitor at home makes the colours on screen look slightly dimmer than they really are for some reason, and that didn't help. With this idea not being as well received, I chose to instead have black text on a white background, and see if that turned out any better:



The "R" inbetween the 3 and D was capitalised, as suggested by another student in the graphics team. Along with this change I also added the University's logo to the top of the poster. With this change, I feel that the poster lost what I hoped made it eye-catching in the first place; however, at least one other student noticed the anaglyphic effect when it was shown on the screen. Overall, I don't feel that using a white background was the best idea - especially with my design being quite simplistic compared to other team members - and thus it only got one vote from the other students present when we held the voting. Perhaps I simplified my design too much and thus made it boring?

In retrospect, I think having the red 3 and the blue D on the white background would have been a much better design choice for me to go with, as something like that is more likely to grab the attention of passers-by than just black with an effect that may not be noticeable.