typetwo. change one thing. final.

Here is the screen shot of how my poster looked on the front page! It was exciting to see it up and everyone who accessed the website at that time saw it as well. Will I win? Absolutely no clue, but this was definitely an enjoyable project to do nonetheless. Below is bigger version of my final poster.

So this is the final product. I'm rather pleased with this poster seeing as I started this entire process with this:

The initial idea was definitely there, but everything about it just wasn't anything absolutely stunning. With revisions, revisions, and more revisions I finally came up with the final design. Yes the aesthetics of the poster are just that, aesthetics, and doesn't help push content or meaning further, the poster just didn't feel right, or complete with a solid color or even a gradient background that echoed the colors of the paper. I realized once i finished this poster how much I despise 100% digital work without any sort of hand-made quality to it. This was a nice process to be able to spend such a long time on one poster. There is so much that goes into posters that I never fully realized. It's pretty dang difficult to make a shnazy poster and I have so much more respect for the greats who have come before me who have made such amazing posters.

sources: aiga blueridge poster clash website.

typetwo. change one thing. updatethree.

My poster... it was pretty much stagnant since last update. I tried a couple different ideas for today(even tried bringing back a typeface from before):

But something about them just still isn't there. Michael put it best by saying that he still wouldn't hang it on his wall just yet. The interaction between the type and image still is not meshing cohesively enough. Next on the list? More angles!
more angles comin' at ya tomorrow!

GERMAN.

WILKOMMEN. So kann mann meine PDF schen! Es rockt der Welt!

TYPETWO. Change One Thing. UpdateTwo.

Yesterday, we had the lovely pleasure to listen to Steve Frykholm lecture in Epperson yesterday afternoon about his work at Herman Miller. Then, we had the even bigger pleasure of him also critiquing our posters for the "Change One Thing" competition we are working on in TypeTwo. This is the poster I based my direction on for this competition:

The main feedback I got on this one was that there were too many layers of information going on. The Red Cross, the rainbow droplet, the Red Cross as an "x", change one thing, and then the gay symbol. From the good feed back I got in crit I created the posters below. Taking the idea of using the American Red Cross as an "x" to symbolize the denial of gay men from giving blood. I have over twenty different iterations of this idea, the ones below cover the main span of the iterations. The first one below is the poster I liked the most so I printed in color for crit, the rest are the other iterations, I printed them in b&w.

The idea I presented in class was taken to very well. I got a fair amount of feedback, but the overall consensus was that it is a good direction for me to go in. The main feedback was just the overall placement of everything on the poster which may sound really big but all that takes is many different iterations of placements to find the best one, nothing I can't handle. The main thing was to move the blood drop more to the center of the Red Cross. For Steve Frykholm I worked on moving the droplet down but I didn't have time to get it done so I ended up putting the same poster back up, no big deal, it was a minor change that really didn't affect the entirety of the poster.

TYPETWO. Change One Thing. UpdateOne.

Here are some screen caps of the three directions that I had going at the start of today.

The third one was nix'd pretty fast(you're welcome ray and brandon). However, the direction that I'm going in is more of the second idea, but with the aesthetic feeling of the first one. Below is my favorite iteration of what I have so far. I ended up WhatTheFont'ing the American Red Cross's logo to figure out their typeface to use it as another layer of recognition. The font ended up being AkzidenzGroteskBQ-Super.

TYPETWO. ReadingOne. Type Image Message.

Putting type and image together is something that all designers(supposedly) think, breathe, and dream all the time. It is something that we all face and something that challenges us all. Type exists in black and white area whereas image exists in a much more gray area. When putting those two together it makes the viewer have a harder time understanding the information in front of them. The text is more straight forward and the image makes the viewer think more about what is trying to be conveyed across to the viewer. Though there are different ways that type and image go together and depending on those ways, the viewer understands the relationship differently.

TYPETWO. Change One Thing.

I don't want to be the cliche gay designer who always is speaking out for everything to do with gay rights, but in all honesty, that really is a big part of what I'm about. And it's not even necessarily that it's all about gay rights, but about equal rights, for everyone. The topics that I have chosen are either topics that have affected me personally, or ones that I just strongly believe in.

• Take homosexuality off Red Cross's permanent red list
• AIDS awareness for straight couples
• Take 30 minutes a day to exercise

And so the sketching commences.