Poster | Finalised

I have finally completed my 1st poster, inspired by the "Come Into The Factories" poster, illustrated by Phillip Zec in 1941. Below you can compare my updated version of this poster, and the orignal.

Source: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~pv/pv/courses/posters/images1/womenfact.jpg

Im pretty chuffed with this, and after using the live trace tool in Illustrator CS4 to create this textured effect over the top of my poster I think I've succeeded in creating a poster to match what the brief asked of me. 

Here is the colour palette I ended up selecting. It includes many shades from the original poster, along with the blue selected from the Vimeo logo. I've also included screen shots of the hexadecimal colour codes for each of them. 

Final | Background | Textures

Here are two copies of my nearly finished poster. The one on the left shows the background i've added in. I thought I could do with adding a Vimeo logo in the background because there was a lot of empty space. I also thought there needed to be a larger logo in there somewhere to emphasise who I was promoting.



 I decided to add a rough gradient to the bottom of the "V" because I had seen this used in a lot of propaganda from that era. To do this I used the pen and blend tools. I began by drawing a rough shape and then copied this and set the opacity to 5% on the second one. I then completed the blend with the blend tool using 8 steps on the blend option.

To finish the poster off I found a bitmap texture online that I thought would suite my poster really well. As I was well aware I couldn't use bitmaps images in my poster I used the Live Trace tool to make it into a vector image. I then lowered the opacity to 14% so that it blended seamlessly with the rest of the poster, whilst retaining some of the texture over the top. Below you can see the subtle textures I've added:

Illustration | Developed

Here is an almost finished version of the woman ready to use in my propaganda poster. She now has all facial features, clothing highlights and added details such as dress folds and Vimeo logo belt. 

One of the elements I was suggested to improve in my poster was the company logo promotion. Although in my original mock up I had 4 Vimeo logos, they simply weren't effective enough or central to the design. With this in mind I drew out a belt buckle in the Vimeo logo shape and added it to the clothing on the woman. Its very subtle but effective, and now more central to my design. 

Illustrating | Woman

Today I've almost finished drawing the iconic woman to go in my poster. I've used the pen tool very extensively now and I'm quite happy with how this had come out. I

To develop this drawing further to show inspiration from the original I'm going to add highlights all around her clothing as can be seen on the original. 

Pitching | Concept

Yesterday I had to present my concept for this project to my class. I went with a simple, clean theme for my presentation. Minimal texts, and pictures to support anything I wanted to discuss during the presentation. 

I felt that my pitch went fairly well, and constructive comments were made about how to improve and develop the ideas I've come up with so far. The elements of my design we discussed were mainly my slogan and aspect change, because it has made my overall poster a lot weaker than the one I'd originally come up with. We discussed how I've got two great ideas, but how they're both stepping too far past the mark so somewhere in the middle of them would be perfect, possibly a mixture between the design on the newest poster and the aspect of the first one? We also talked about how there needed to be more Vimeo logo's in it somewhere, and a 5th storage box added somewhere in my design to go along with the 5GB/Week aspect of Vimeo PRO, although this will become obsolete if I go back to my "Compression - Less Is More" tag line. 

By the end of the discussion I had this list of elements to work upon:

• Vimeo Buildings
• More Logo's
• Keep Compression Slogan
• Develop Original Idea

Problems | Redesign

Although I was pretty sure I'd selected a successful aspect and design to continue developing I came toa fault in my design. I hadn't used enough of the original poster design for my design to be legitimate enough for use in this project, so with this I had to add to the design as seen in the screenshot below:

I began by using the colour scheme from the original poster, and then progressively adding more artwork. I think the woman is a key feature and must be used in my poster so that it is clear where I've referenced my design from. I ended up being unhappy with the results and so I continued to develop it. 

Here is the newest design I've come up with, only slight changed have been made but I think overall it is a far more effective poster, and most of all it reflects the artwork of the original. Although it is unfinished it has made me realise what I could achieve with more work. I've changed the aspect I'm promoting too, it is now focused VIMEO PRO which allows you to have more storage space and more uploads per week.  

 

Inspirational | Posters

After looking at constructivist artwork a lot, i've come to the conclusion that I'm not going to use it after all. I've become a lot more interested in British and American Propaganda after re-reading my first post and so I've reverted back to that as my focus, although I still want to take some of the ideas from constructivism and use them in my design. 

Here are examples of typography I've taken from both British and American propaganda posters. I really like the use of a hand written font and a san-serif font in the same poster as I feel it is a strong part of the visual language seen on the posters. I feel it is one of the most important visual characteristics to mimic in my poster. 

When looking into the colour scheme for my work I decided I'd use the colour palette from the original. Colour is a huge part of the visual language, arguably the most important visual language a designer must conquer in a design. I figured I'd use the original colour scheme as well as an extra colour to support the social media I want to promote which is in this case pastel blue for Vimeo. Below is a pixelated version of the poster so you can quickly see the colours I am going to use. 

Aspect Choices | Mock Ups

After much deliberation I've chosen to promote Vimeo's HD service, as in my experience when compared to others it is far superior in terms of quality and the way it runs. I presume this is down to the way the video is compressed once it is uploaded to Vimeo, and so my first poster design revolves around this.

Here are two mock ups I did in a couple of hours today. I used a British World War 2 Propaganda poster by Phillip Zec for inspiration, mimicking the colours and some of the layout. The top design was an original mock up, but I felt it needed more development so I added some VHS tapes into it to symbolise the videos on Vimeo. I think that the fonts need a lot of work, but you get the gist of the art style i'd like to use.

Decision Time | Which Site?

I've come to the conclusion I'd like to promote Vimeo. It is a social media website based around video, much like YouTube. I decided I'd like to promote this over all the other clients because I haven't used it as extensively as the others, so I have a fresh view on it and I'm keen to learn about it. No preconceptions. Hopefully by the time I write my next post I will have come to a decision about the specific aspect I'd like to promote. 

Social Media | Promoting Aspects

We have been asked to promote a certain aspect of a social media website. Below I have researched and recorded the different aspects for each of the social media websites I would like to promote

• HD
• News Feed
• "Like"
• Watch Later
• Staff Picks
• Comment
• Upload
• Create Albums/ Groups

• Poke
• Like
• Comment
• Inbox
• Chat
• Share

• Like/Dislike
• Comment
• Upload
• Subscribe
• HD
• Widescreen

• Tweet
• Direct messenger
• Follow
• Integrated applications 

Now i've completed this list I can begin to gather together a short list of clients and aspects i'd like to promote. 

Art Movement | 20th Century

 

Source: https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-zE8ib3Ot_YM/TX

axn8wH8sI/AAAAAAAAAys/NYQ5YJCUS6Y/s1600/shepardfaireyxsaks1.jpg

  

I've finally found an art movement that I really like from the 20th century, called Constructivism. It focuses mainly on shape and the hard straight lines created by these. Constructivism has been developed from another art form called Futurism, which originated from Russian in the early 1900's and is still inspiring people to make artwork today. Below are some examples of the modern constructivism work produced by artists such as Shepard Fairey, and album art for Franz Ferdinand which was based on the work of a 1900 constructivism artist; El Lissitzky.

   

Source:http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lvi9qnhv

5o1r7wmdzo1_1280.gif  

Source: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_dTPtJCThggI/SQkIYEUomnI/AAAAAAAAAIY/7

EtfOYEb-9U/s400/600px-Franz_Ferdinand_-_This_Fffire.jpg

Source: http://obeygiant.com/images/2010/11/Constuctivist-banner-

red-cream-500x664.jpg

In summary I think this art movement has potential to be the style I am going to be mainly inspired by in my final poster, I feel they show a great alternate and unique style compared to the rest of the propaganda posters of the era. It has my favoured aspects in art, abstract and minimalism.

The mainly British propaganda reviewed earlier in my blog are very contrasting; softer colours, smoother lines and some portraiture art. The constructivist art style is far more in your face with it bright hard hitting colours, strong clean cut lines with all manor of angles used to create ever stronger  impacting shapes. After researching into the background of this era of art you can quickly link the art style and the stereotypical Russian image of strength together, everything about constructivism is strong and unforgiving. The captions are powerful and encourage strength into the communist culture.  

In terms of using constructivism for this project I think my poster would have to feature a very hard hitting caption something like "Vimeo HD Came First! Join the revolt!". Maybe something even shorter and harder hitting would be more suited though..."Join the revolt!"would be ample with the rest of the caption could be told through visual language.