Design and sketches 3

Third design lesson! 
Okay this lesson was pretty much about poster designs, like what makes a good poster design such that it effectively communicates the main idea of well, the poster.

Basically your poster can't be too messy such that it makes it difficult for the reader to digest. You can do this with the use of columns to neaten the words. I'll show you good and bad examples of posters below!

This poster may be very amateurish but I feel the designer did a good job by having 2 columns at the bottom, one for pictures and another for the words. Placing the pictures and words in separate columns is a good technique to use when your poster is quite wordy. The pictures at the side can also be really helpful to highlight certain points in the words, or in this case the more prominent artists in the line-up of performers. I would rate this poster a 6/10, with my major complain being that the entire top portion of the poster looked like it was done by a kid using Paint.

Okay this is a real mess. If I was the designer responsible for this poster I would quit my job immediately and deny ever being a designer. The background is hideous, the guitar looks absolutely awkward and out of place, the logo is plain ugly and the font is a disaster. All these would still be tolerable if not for the final nail on the coffin: the huge clump of words around the poster. I mean how could anyone bear to read this poster without getting a headache from all the badly placed paragraphs? Is every single word that important? 1/10. No question about it. If there is a perfect example of an ugly poster it would be this right here.


 
Now this is a nice poster. Its neat, but not awesome. I really love the background with lines, which fits with fashion event theme of the poster, as it represents the lighting effects at fashion shows. The words are kept simple, with the more important information in bigger fonts than the other boring details. It would be even better if it wasn't so plain, perhaps by adding more colors to it. 7/10

This is a nice poster. Just words without any pictures or effects and it still manages to look presentable. The main points such as the name and date of the event are in big fonts so that a reader's attention is drawn to them first. The other minor details decrease in font size along with their importance and overall is a simple yet easy to read poster. 8/10

I really like this poster. Firstly the designer used the colors really well to grab attention but at the same time doesn't make it too loud. I like how there is a progression from top to bottom, where we see the image, followed by the name and lastly all the minute details. Seeing the image first really generates interest in what this poster has to say, and the image is pretty creative too. Even the shape of the poster is unique, being curved at the edges gives it a really 'fun' feel to it. 10/10

 I am pretty sure this poster is done by a kid, and I don't mean that in a bad way. The whole event is about children so its only natural to have a design that kids can easily relate to, thus the simplicity of the poster. The slightly neon colors help gain interest, so do the picture of pandas. However the words could be arranged a little bit and if possible, reduced as kids most likely won't read all that. 7/10

Okay enough of posters, back to what I did in class. We formed into groups where we had to pick 3 ads or posters from magazines, and then re-draw it on a piece of paper. The aim of this exercise was to spot mistakes in posters and attempt to correct them. Unfortunately I kinda misplaced the drawings so I can't show you here but when I do find them I'll upload it!