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Alcohol Digital Media Posters

Drafts
Version 1
Version 2

I started doing some experimentation with what I could create for a  poster without using any photographs. I thought these could act like mini posters, which are quick to create. I began this idea on Tuesday, and version 1 is the result of how far I got. I wanted to start with the word 'alcoholism' and link it with words relating to it, to show the consequences of it.

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The second version is the continuation of the poster experimentation on Thursday. I thought that this idea was effective because everything links - it symbolises that alcoholism creates all of these problems in the same way that the word connects all of the others because it is the starting point of the poster. I wanted to get all of these problems across in a way which wouldn't use too much information - having just the issues created by alcoholism still has an impact because the audience will see it and realise what kind of consequences unfold. I also believe the format is unique - not many posters would use this kind of format, which makes it clever and creative. I'm aware that this format follows the same style as a crossword, but while it looks like one, I wanted to show that it's different because it's not something to be filled in or solved - I just wanted to use letters from words to create other words, all to do with alcoholism.

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I asked my peer for feedback on the second version and she liked it, but I was recommended to change the background colour in order to make the layout pop.

I coloured in the background and asked for feedback from the peer that originally told me I should change the colour to make the poster pop. She really liked how it turned out, and the colour was subtle but eye-catching - it also wasn't too dark but not too bright either. I agreed that the poster now looked a lot better, because that splash of colour was much needed to make the entire thing stand out and become really inviting to read. I chose a dark teal colour because I thought it would work well with the black outline of the boxes.

I created this using Photoshop - I had gotten the idea to use the common phrase 'live to fight another day', and it inspired this mini poster draft. I took a leaf brush and used it to draw the background, then I used the rectangle and line tools to create the words 'live to'. Due to the background, I made this poster centre around living to play in the leaves, and I added the message 'stop abusing alcohol' at the bottom. I wanted to create a few similar drafts with different messages on them. I liked the font of 'stop abusing alcohol' better than the one I used for 'play in the leaves', and I attempted to change it when I finished this draft on Friday (I started it on Thursday), but I was unable to find the same font and had to keep the fonts the way they were.

 

I got feedback on this draft, and I was told that I should go out and take some photos of leaves to use as the background - although it'd be difficult this time of year. However, I was told that the concept and the campaign idea were both good.

Another one of my peers told me I should change the font and think about the layout, because the elements of the poster look out of place.

I redid this poster, and made it look like the 'live to' had a shadow behind it. I also retyped the two lines, using Arial Rounded MT in Bold for the font, which I liked a lot. I outline these by using the paint brush to go around the words in black, to make them stand out.

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The shadow for 'live to' took a little bit of time to create because at first I thought maybe I should used the same effect for the other lines, by painting around it. I didn't like the idea very much, so I duplicated the 'live to' line and then experimented with sizing, until I liked it.

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I'm not sure if I like it, although I received some more feedback from one of my peers. She said that the two bottom lines looked better than the original because they stood out more, and she recommended that I do the same with the 'live to' line.

I like this version of the poster a lot more - I used the feedback from the previous version of the poster and used the same technique around the 'live to' line, outlining it in black. I think that if I was to develop this poster even more, I would need to make the work a little more cleaner and make sure the outlines are all equal. However, since this was supposed to be one of my draft posters anyway, the next step would be to photograph some leaves and redo the poster, possibly with the same fonts but also with different techniques and I would also need to add more information.

Typography
Examples

I started looking at different fonts on the website 1001 Fonts to find examples of the type of thing I want to do with my posters. I found the ones to the left, which look okay but I don't think they'd have much of an impact. They look good and they caught my eye straight away, but I'm not sure that this is the type of thing I want to make my typography resemble.

I continued to look at the different fonts on the website and found the two on the left, which are slightly closer to what I'm looking for. They're bold and the second one has a slight texture to it, which I think look pretty good. I think these types of fonts would make a bigger impact on an audience, because they're not supposed to be pretty or imaginative, but they look like they would represent brutal honesty.

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I then thought that maybe I could see if the website had any blurred fonts, which would resemble the blurry eyes that everyone gets when they're intoxicated. Unfortunately, there wasn't any fonts that I could find like this, so I decided that I want to make my own and see how it turns out.

Font Experimentation

I chose this font, Chalkboard, in the Regular style, because I like the way it looked. It looks simple yet the font style reminds me of how anyone would usually write in capitals, and I think it looks quite good.

I blurred the sentence until I was happy with it, so that it wasn't too blurry to the point where it was unreadable. I really liked the way this effect worked with the font, because it also began to remind me of the letters wrote on eye exams and how they blur for people sometimes when the sign is far away and they can't see perfectly well. The comparison is funny because those that are intoxicated experience blurry vision but for a different reason.

I used the smudge effect from left to right but it looked odd. It also looked like it smudged the words too much and I didn't like the way it turned out. I wanted to smudge the words to act as if the person reading was also experiencing the text to move and make them think they've got double vision.

I smudged the words from right to left this time, which looked a little better. I used about 5 or 6 strokes but the more I smudge the sentence, the worst it looked. I didn't want it to be as intense as it turned out, so I thought I would try to blur each letter by itself on the next attempt.

I tried blurring one letter at a time by it didn't look particularly good either. I was disappointed because I was unable to create the effect I wanted.

After my experimentation, I went to blur the sentence a little more, but instead it began to blur too much and it was so intense that it ended up merging together, creating an outline. I re-wrote the sentence and coloured it white, and put it over the new outline I'd accidentally created. I was happy with the way it looked though, because it resembled graffiti with words stencilled over it.

I also looked at some different fonts for the same sentence in Photoshop. The first one is Myriad Pro in Semibold, the second one is News Gothic MT in Regular, and the third one is Plantagenet Cherokee in Regular. Out of all of these three, I like Myriad Pro the best because the style is simplistic, yet looks good.

Although I didn't particularly like the outcome of this font experimentation, I asked for feedback from one of my peers, who actually really liked it. She also thought it would be good to use in a poster - she liked the smudging of the words as well a the blurriness. Hearing this is making me wonder whether maybe I'm just doubting it, and that this type of font and the detail of it could actually be effective for my campaign.

First Poster

I started off with using one of the photos I took whilst filming the final part of my advert which was to showcase the injuries of the pedestrian victim involved in the drink drive car accident. I focused on having all of the injuries on one side, which was on my left, but I realised that when a photo would be taken, it would be on the view of the right for anyone looking at it. I wanted to do this because from the perspective of the camera, the left side of my face and body would be uninjured, and look like the 'before' version of the accident, whilst the right side would be bloody and hurt, portraying the 'after' version. I wanted to use this concept because I thought that it would be clever to show what the victim looked like before they were injured and what they looked like after - I wanted to use this for one of my poster designs, and I may possibly take another photo of myself to use for the left side if I don't like the outcome of this version of the poster.

Second Poster

I found one of the photos I'd taken a while ago whilst filming my music video, and decided the picture would be perfect to use for my poster. The photo is of a landscape which looks beautiful with the sun shimmering down on the water below. I wanted to use the threshold technique on this photo to turn it black and white so that the city scape looks like silhouettes. After this, I experimented with fonts and decided to use the line 'not everything is black and white' for the title because I thought it would be clever to incorporate with the colours.

Third Poster
More Typography Experiments

I wanted to look at different fonts on this website because I wanted to see what type of other fonts were available besides the ones on PhotoShop. I'm considering using some of them as more testing fonts on my posters, and I may possibly replace them. It was also fun to look at, to know that these types of fonts are also available if I want to make another poster too.

Fifth Poster

I started off by re-looking at the two posters I'd researched prior to actually making any, and decided on some of the attributes that I liked. I was also thinking about researching a couple more to see what I liked, in order to link this to another poster that I can make which will incorporate some of these features.

All Finished Posters
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