OUGD505 - Studio Brief 01 - Leeds Public Spaces - Posters & Feedback

By using the most favoured ideas from the first crit, I was able to move on to digitally producing 3 sets of posters. These all use the colours and typefaces chosen in the previous stage of the process, and have thin margins to keep consistency with previous designs.

Once the posters were made I presented them to a dfferent crit group, to find out which one people thought is the most relevant and celebratory for the Carnival.

The first poster is very much an ambiguous poster that uses the 5 main colours chosen in the colour scheme. The aim is to represent the exoticness of the Carnival, simply through the use of colour. Type was kept very minimal in the top and bottom corners to put a strong focus on the colours seen at the Carnival. People in the crit group liked the ambiguity of this poster; however, the main point raised regarded how I would physically print the poster, as there are 6 colours in the piece (including black). In terms of screen printing and other methods, it would be very difficult to achieve this outcome. Whilst I allocated a week to physically produce the posters I opted to pick one of the other poster ideas to produce, as this idea would have been very challenging to produce at a high-quality.

The last two posters created use Din Pro Bold. For the second poster I wanted to put a focus entirely on typography and illustration. Futura Std Heavy was used for the typography and an illustration was made of the 'Kings' and 'Queens' - a visual combination of the costume headdresses and Carnival crown. As the poster focuses entirely on the fact that it is the 50th anniversary of the Carnival, gold was the most appropriate colour to use as a golden jubilee is a celebration held to mark a 50th anniversary. A background pattern was produced to make the piece more visually interesting. This compromised of tiled '+'s, as they are a symbol of positivity - a theme that the Carnival stands for. The crit group strongly liked this idea and thought that it was much more effective at promoting the Carnival's 50th anniversary than the first poster produced. Despite this, many people preferred the more personal message used in the third poster produced. Therefore, I did not choose to develop this poster further.

For the last set of posters I edited the old image found of the Carnival founder, Arthur France, celebrating the Carnival and scaled it to fit an A3 sheet. This left room in 3 of the corners to position the typographic information. The quote made by Max Farrar and Geraldine Connor about Carnival being 'By the people, for the people' seemed to be an extremely relevant phrase to use alongside the image of Arthur Frank, as his initial ambition was to create a Carnival that the West Indian people could enjoy and celebrate. As this is such a strong, impactive phrase, I scaled the text much larger so that it would be at the forefront of the poster. The Carnival details and logo were then positioned in the following 2 corners of the poster. 3 bright colours from the colour scheme set were used to create a strong contrast against the black background. This is to ensure that the type is easily legibile and readable. When presented to the crit group, there was mixed opinions on which colour to choose; however, in the end, the highest-voted colour was cyan, as people said it is the brightest and most energetic colour out of the 3. Overall, people thought that this poster was the most celebratory, as it visually shows the founder celebrating the Carnival and has a tag line that is very representative of what the Carnival is all about. For this reason, the cyan version of this print was chosen to take forward in the production stage.