Graphic Design
This is a collection of the posters I have created using parts of an artist statement from my graphic design course, centered around how I connected to my culture through arts. They utilize almost the same text but are arranged in different ways.
Denotative Poster
The hardest part about this design assignment was communicating a clear hierarchy while using a denotative font that carried no meaning.
My first iteration had a very clear hierarchy, but the design itself was too plain. I was not too fond of the almost symmetrical composition either.
For my second iteration, I tried to be more bold and experimental with the design. I intended for the body paragraphs to be read in a zig-zag fashion with the pull quotes in between, but that hierarchy was too confusing. It was difficult to tell which block of text to read next.
My third iteration was better but there were still spacing issues, particularly with the title and header. The text was too squished in between the “intersections” and the “culture” and trailed outside awkwardly.
My fourth iteration was the most successful one overall, and is actually the one that you see on the right of this text. It was hierarchically distinct and the overall composition was pleasing to look at. There were a few minor issues such as accidentally jumping between the two columns of bold quoted text when reading it from left to right, and the last pull quote being read before the body text.
These were the issues that I tried to fix in my fifth iteration, which is placed in the row above. The combining of the two columns certainly helped with the readability, but un-bolding the other pull quotes made them not stand out enough, thus weakening the impact of the composition.
Connotative Poster
For this assignment, we had the freedom to use connotative fonts and to create compositions that imply meaning at first glance. This was actually more difficult than the denotative poster since there was more freedom meaning too many choices to pick from and more opportunities to mess up.
My first thought was that I needed to intersect the words “art” and “culture,” so I tried to overlap the T and the C. I did this for both the first and second iteration. The problem with both is that they had too many separate elements that the overlook was incoherent and it was difficult to navigate the hierarchy.
Then I decided to create a diagonal across the page with the “intersections” and put the “culture” and “art” at the C and T in “intersections.” This did require a bit of flexibility on my part, since it meant “culture” would be read first in the title, thus changing it to “Intersections of Culture & Art,” but I did not see that as too big of a deal. The third iteration felt too heavy and loaded with text so I shortened it down and tilted it to balance out the diagonal “intersections.” The version on the left is the final version, which I think looks the most coherent and pleasant out of the four.