carp

my first idea

For my first idea, I made use of Photoshop to give two photos a restricted, complementary colour palette to create a vibrant, high contrast piece which will attract viewers from a distance.

Overall, I consider this to be a fairly strong piece and a great contender to be refined for my final piece. There are clear areas for improvement, for example, the header text looks too spaced out and the information about the sessions could be better integrated with the background or, in the case of the pricing, could benefit from contrasting more with the background, however, I think the overall layout, colour and font choices are very effective.

my second idea

For this piece I tried to emulate a more chalk-like, concrete aesthetic and experimented with creating a horizontal poster instead. Key text is designed to look like it's been drawn directly on the ground, with text boxes providing information about the dates.

Overall, I consider this to be my weakest design – the concept is good and the photo alongside the header work well, but, if I were to refine this piece, I would need to put much more thought into how I present the information, as it falls flat in terms of hierarchy and the text boxes look somewhat out of place.

my third idea

My third idea utilises a similar colour palette to my first idea, but has a very different aesthetic. Similar to the posters I observed in my research, this is a vector-based artwork, which gave me great freedom to create a unique layout.

I aimed to capture a carefree mood, while also evoking a sense of adventure, given this skate clinic is also being marketed to newcomers, hence the girl skateboarding over the mountains in a forest. The big, orange sun also draws the viewers' eye straight to the main heading.

Following discussion from my tutors, we agreed this was my strongest piece and the one I should focus on refining.

refining my piece

Main points of critique towards this poster were as follows:

• The dates aren't laid out cohesively
• The pricing is hard to read
• The piece is too central

With these points in mind I started making necessary alterations to the piece. As shown, I began by altering the layout of the dates, giving them a better balance and greater cohesion with the overall composition.

my final piece

Having resolved the positioning of the dates, I then changed the font of the pricing to match the dates, as this font is much more legible at smaller sizes compared to the header text. This also means the header now has a unique font which, much like the sun, helps guides viewers' eyes to it.

In order to provide greater contrast in the composition, I then changed the layout of the forest, reducing the number of trees on the left. This, in combination with the mountains, makes the poster look less centred, or "safe" while still guiding the viewers' eyes down the hierarchy.

Following a final discussion with my tutors, I'm very happy with this final piece. In this case, my initial concept was already a very suitable design, so refinement was challenging, but this final rendition shows some greater thoughtfulness with regards to the overall composition.