For this assignment, I was required to make four different designs, two pairs revolving around two different subjects. For the first pair, the main focus was with typesetting and the decisions I made concerning font type, size, color, and spacing. For the second pair, my main focus was on which information was organized where, as well as how to space words and letters in order to use the space on the poster in the most economical and appealing way. Some other aspects I had to focus on while designing was groupings, contrasts, and iconography.
For the first design, I was constrained to several requirements; the paragraphs had to be left-aligned on a white background, and the letters had to be grayscale. Furthermore, no images could be used. Otherwise, I had total liberty as to how I would convey the required information. To do so, I created a three-tiered hierarchy of information based on what I believed to be most important, and the three paragraphs follow this hierarchy. These create three different groupings on the page. To ensure that I had three different type encodings, I decided to size what I deemed to be the most specific factor (1 million) one size larger than the rest of the words, as well as making them all caps. I did the opposite for the last group, making the link one size smaller so as to not make the call to action so demanding to the viewer.
Module 2 Case Study
The instructions for this design were mostly similar to the first, however I was required to align the paragraphs either center, right, or justified, as well as having a non-white background and using colored letters. I attempted to use center alignment at first, however I felt that I left too much open space across the page and risked creating windows. I then moved the wording to a right alignment, which I feel avoids these issues and better grasps the viewers attention with the unorthodox style. I decided to use a green background, because the topic at hand revolves around conservation and environmentalism; I feel that light green evokes similar ideas. I knew that I wanted to have the one million factor and “trafficked” colored in red to stand out to the reader and create a contrast that emphasized the facts. I first tried to color the remaining letters a dark blue to symbolize the “water” on the globe-esque graphic I wanted to make, but I found that the color contrasted too heavily with the light green and red, so I instead opted to go with a dark green instead.
For the second half of Part 2, I was put into the seat of a social media manager for a restaurant. The main requirements were for me to read a list of weekly deals and determine how and why I wanted to create the hierarchy of information that I did. Otherwise, it was up to me to portray the information that I wanted. I determined that the title should be at the very top of the page, as this is the first piece of information people should know in order to understand what they’re reading. I then had the name’s of the days; they each have a unique title, creating brand recognition. After that, I had the prices, which, while important, could mostly be determined from the aforementioned names. I differentiated between these two ranks by making the prices one size smaller than the titles. However, I grouped the two together by putting a purple backdrop behind them to ensure that the viewer associated the the specific title with the specific price. Finally I had the days of the week as the last piece of necessary information. As stated before, most of the titles convey this already, but it helps organize the page more into four specific blocks. While the instructions included specific days, each description stated that the deals extended to every week, so I decided to just include the day of the week rather than the date, which would require more space and possibly confuse the viewer as to when the deals are available.
The instructions were similar to the previous design, with the added addition that I was required to include images that not only helped convey the information on the page, but also had matching designs and aesthetics in order to preventing contrasting ideas. First, I decided to align the text to the left in order to ensure that I had enough space for the images to be viewable and deliberate. Then, I decided to go with icons that were specific enough to convey the type of food being served for each day, but not too realistic or specific that the viewer would believe that they were seeing the actual product they would receive. For example, the burger simply has its core ingredients, the contents of the taco are not specific, the lobster is the main focus of the dish (I previously did not know what lobster thermidor was), and the drink is just specific enough to be identified as alcoholic. I also made sure that the icons were all similar in size so as not accidentally create a grouping that didn’t exist.