Critique | Corrections

Today I displayed my work to my classmates in order to get some feedback on what they think of my design.
They gave me a lot of points to work upon for both of my posters, especially the first one. 
To do list:

• Larger bottom font/ different font

• Add softer texture to background V
• Move text from hands, make boxes into Jack in the box with text coming out of them

• Less bend on line underneath compression and centre "compression" in order to balance out loss of hand text.

• Rethink the colour of the dress highlights. No light source in my poster so the highlights are too bright. Possibly use slightly lighter brown than the dress colour to illustrate highlights.

For my second poster I have had problems selecting a colour palette. I want to include colours that reference Vimeo, but to do that I need blue, which completely fights against all the original colours of the poster because it is a cool colour. After discussing I've decided to:

•  Experiment with either Black/White/Red or continue with the Blue/White/Red colour schemes.
• Add far more detail on the clothing and faces
• Use the star shape at the edge of the poster to emulate the original

Second Poster | Progression

I decided to start my second poster today and below is a screen shot of my progression so far. I've had to alter the colour scheme slightly, removing the yellow and replacing it for the Vimeo Blue. I feel by changing this element I've lost a lot of the Russian character the poster originally had, but without it I can't see it working.

The next tasks for me are to continue doing the finer details of the poster, and experiment with the colour palette.

Plans | Second Poster

As i've successfully completed one poster I would like to try to complete a second before our hand in date.

Because I've already researched fairly deeply into the Constructivist art movement and I am very fond of this art style I am going to use a soviet poster as inspiration for a second poster design. I'm going to continue promoting Vimeo, but using a different aspect.

Source: http://criticalinquiry2.zoomshare.com/files/soviet.jpg

My ideas for this poster so far:

• "Unite with Vimeo!"
• Aspect - Groups
• Vimeo logo in centre of the star

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.