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Final Poster and Brochure

These were the final designs for my poster and brochure. I changed the poster quite a bit before submitting it, but I'm glad I went through the extra effort and did extra experiments because it looks much nicer/more interesting than my previous poster. I also added a few extra elements to my brochure that call back to one of my previous designs. I originally tried to make the background in InDesign, but I couldn't round the edges so I just copied and pasted the background pieces into Illustrator so I could round off the edges and give it a sort of 'goopy' look, where it seems like its sliming together and it's stuck at the corners.

I started this class not understanding what I was doing and felt stuck for a while until I eventually figured it all out and did a massive load of research in week 3. I was only really working on my poster up until that point, and then I began all of my experiments for the brochure layout. I did enjoy making the poster a lot more than the brochure, although I didn't dislike the brochure process, I felt like I had a lot more freedom while making the poster. As the weeks went on, I really enjoyed doing different experiments, colour palettes, and small tweaks. I feel like if I had had more time I would've kept changing minute details until I had an entirely different final piece, but I'm very proud of what I've made. I wanted to put a lot of extra effort into my poster/brochure because I enjoyed the process so much that I wanted it to look as good as possible. I usually really struggle to try to get into a project when at first I don't understand what I'm doing, but I'm glad I put in an extra push because I'm proud of my final product.

[grad603michaelameyer]

Different background experimentations

As I was finalising my project I decided to look through a few of my peers blogs. I feel like, after having stared at my design for so long, I started to hate it and felt like it was too basic, so I started to do a few more different background experiments and layouts just to test it out before I printed my final piece. These ended up being a lot nicer than the previous poster I thought I was going to use for my final, so I decided to swap them out before I printed my final brochure.

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Re-iteration of Brochure

After my talk with George on Tuesday he suggested that I change my fonts because I had too many, and some of them weren't legible enough. So, I went back and changed all of my titles to Elephant, the subheadings to Impact, and the body text to Microsoft Sans Serif. I also changed my paragraph style from Justify Center to Right or Left depending on what side the portrait was placed on. I also made all of the portraits and titles bigger, and since I had changed these sizes I ended up having to change the margin sides of the document so that everything could fit in while still having my text be large enough to read.

I aligned the top of the tables with each other instead of the bottom because it looks cleaner, and made the font for the bottom left corner text bigger so it would fill the whole box because it felt too empty otherwise.

I'm still trying to decide between the two colour palettes, everytime I feel like I've settled for one I start thinking that the other one might look better and then I keep going in a loop of what one looks better.

[grad603michaelameyer]

Updated Headshots

I realised after I did the printed samples that I had forgotten to add in the eyebrows for Carol Twombly, Joseph Churchwood and Jessica Hische, so I went back into my illustrator files and added in their eyebrows. I also noticed that in both prints Tobias' face came out really pink, so I changed the hue to a slightly more orange one so it wouldn't blow out again.

[grad603michaelameyer]

Printed-out brochures

I did a quick printing test for the two brochure colour palettes I was trying to choose between. I discovered that Tobias' face came out super pink on both prints for some reason. I also didn't like how some of the text came out and decided to change it from a justify-centre to just a regular one. I also found out that when I printed the darker green brochure it was a lot more shiny/thick than the peach one, probably because it needed to use a lot more ink. I like the shininess because it looks more professional, however, I don't like how the colour chips/peels off on folded edges. These printed samples gave me a good representation for how my final prints would be, and if the font pt size was legible or not, which it was.

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These are the two layout variations that I'm, choosing between. I'm leaning more towards the second design as it follows the brief better since I made my own mega-table for the first design, which is changing the content of what I was given. I also feel like the first design looks too sparse, while the second design is a little more crowded, it doesn't look as empty.

I played with the two colour palettes I like and went a little more in-depth with the green/gold palette. I also got to put a few of my map designs to use in these variations.

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Even more colour experiments - focussing on the green design

These are the green variations of the poster design. In these designs, the drop shadow works a lot better and I feel like they enhance the look, unlike the peach ones. I used a few more colours for these designs because I feel like they stand out a lot better than when its just one colour being used for the fonts.

[grad603michaelameyer]

More Colour Experiments - Drop Shadow VS No Drop Shadow

I went quite overboard with my colour palette experimentation, these are just the peach colour palette variations that I went through. I also played with the idea of drop shadows, but I feel like the effect doesn't really work for such a light colour palette. I thought it would make the words stand out more, it just made the poster look really muddy and unprofessional. The variations without the drop shadow are a lot more simplistic, but they also look much cleaner.

My first two designs are my least favourite. I think its because there are too many different colours with the font, and although it worked with the green colour palette trials I did, it doesn't work as well with the peach colour palette. While the bottom two variations are almost identical, I'm leaning more towards the top one because the text doesn't blend in as much.

[grad603michaelameyer]

I created a bunch of headshots of the speakers using illustrator. I did this so that when I put their headshots into my brochure they will all look unified and the same. I noticed a lot of their images weren't good quality, and the ones that were weren't in colour. I still need to refine a couple of them, especially my first one as her glasses don't look right.

[grad603michaelameyer]

Map Experiments

I went real crazy for this experimentation and did a bunch of different colour combos for the map. I think the most effective-looking maps were the ones that only utilized two colours from my palette, as any more than that and they started looking too messy.I added in the extra buildings at AUT later on so the maps a little more recognisable and it would be a lot less confusing to someone who hasn't been to AUT before. I didn't label the ones that weren't being used for the events because I thought it would be too much, so I instead chose to make the used buildings and the unused buildings have different properties, either being outlined or being filled with colour. It made more sense for the buildings in use to be filled with colour, as otherwise the fade into the background a bit, and they also stand out more with colour. I also chose to fill in the highways, just to show that they were important. I forgot to add in the names for the roads so I will need to do that for my final map so it's not confusing. I'm still not sure if I want to use gold and green or peach and green, but I'm leaning more towards peach.

[grad603michaelameyer]

Different Title Typefaces

I originally had Elephant as the font for the title, but I started trialling different fonts in my title to see if the one I had originally chosen for my final poster was really the final font I wanted to use.

Elephant is very clear and all of the letters are readable in this font. It's bold without having all the letters mush together, and it meshes really well with the effects I put on the text. I think this is because of how 'basic' the font is, it doesn't have a bunch of different thicknesses so it works a lot better because it doesn't become too complicated.

Broadway is a nice title text on its own, but for some reason, it didn't want to co-operate with the trapezoid effect. It could've been a really nice typeface if it weren't for that fact.

I don't like Goudy Stout by itself because of how spaced out and big the letters become, but as my title piece, it actually looked really nice. I think the font is just a bit too rounded out though, I like the sharper look of the other fonts.

While I really like the look of aziga and I had really wanted to use it in my poster, the letters are a bit harsh on the eyes. I think if I hadn't used so many effects on my text Aziga would have looked good, but otherwise it's just a bit too much.

I'm going to continue using Elephant as my main title font, but this experiment was very useful for me as I got to trial out different fonts and see if my design could have been improved upon.

*I accidentally used broadway instead of gigantic for my testing, but I have posted another example where I used gigantic, and the letters became too bunched together and unreadable.

[grad603michaelameyer]

Trying different typefaces and effects on text

I used the fonts Elephant and Gigantic for these samples.

I wanted to experiment a bit with my typeface for my poster so I tried different effects on it with different fonts to see what I liked the best. I used the wave effect on the top two fonts, I like the way it looks quite a bit but it looked too bland, and the first text font was way too thick to be properly legible. I played around with slanting the text to give it a cooler look. I did this by creating a box, grabbing one point of the corner of a box and moving it inwards, and then doing the same to the other corner to create a trapezoid. I then typed in my text in the layer below the trapezoid and used 'the 'object-envelope distort - make with the top object to transform the text into the shape. I used the wave effect on one of them after I'd done this and it created a really cool effect which I decided to use on my poster. I did end up grabbing the words and bringing them further apart so they weren't so bunched up in my poster.

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Playing with different colour palettes

I used the font Elephant in 22pt for the top section of text, dates and paragraph, as well as for the title, which doesn't have a specific size since I transformed the text and warped it. I used Impact 11pt for the text at the bottom of the poster and made my own Facebook and Instagram logos in illustrator.

Now that I've decided on my final poster design I started trying out a bunch of different colour combinations from the same palette to see what I liked best. I discovered I really wasn't a fan of the green text palettes as they look very muddy and out of sync with the other colours. My two favourites are the two designs I placed at the top of the post as they have the most cohesiveness in terms of colours. The words are all very legible and contrast well with the backgrounds. I'm leaning more towards the green second one as it pops a lot more and also gives off a more mature tone.

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Here are a few of the layout ideas I came up with for my brochure. I decided to use the top two designs, as I didn't want to do a 20-tile brochure because I feel like it would have been a lot harder to fit all of the information and tables in.

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Different colour palettes

I've been exploring different colour palettes I would like to use for my poster and brochure. I was originally going to go for a very bright and colourful look, but after listening to my teacher talk about the project more, and how it should be more mature because of the type of event that this brochure is advertising, I am going to go for a darker and more mature colour palette. I was deciding between the top two colour palettes, but I think I will go for the first one because it has a bit more variety and colours that pop out while still being muted and cohesive.

[grad603michaelameyer]

Poster Design

I really like the layout of this poster, but I've again used too many varieties of font and font size. The main text is also a little boring and utilises too many fonts. I will continue to refine this design and make it better. The colour palette is too immature and like my previous design, it looks more reminiscent of a festival poster than a typographical one.

[grad603michaelameyer]

Typeface Testing

These are a few of the fonts I was deciding between to use for the body-paragraph sections of m brochure. I wanted something a bit spaced out, so I ruled out Palatino, Athelas and Microsoft Sans Seriff. I liked Andale Mono and Silom, they are both very easy to read and aren't too squished together. I ended up choosing Silom for my final piece because it stands out well and the type is very legible.