Data collection
For my posters I decided to collect data on the films that I watched in a week. After I watched the films I rated them out of stars and out of 10 so that I could use whichever style of rating ended up suiting my posters best. I rated categories like laughter rating and thrill factor after I had watched each film and then I did some background research on each film to find the year it premiered, the length and main cast. I also made a note of where I watched it and who with plus what I ate during the movie. Collecting all of this extra information will help me when designing because even if I dont need them all right away, if I need some extra info to fill a space or have extra time and need to make some more graphs/graphics then I will have some backup information ready.
Initial Ideas
These are the initial sketches for my poster. I decided I would lay the information out on a TV screen outline with the ratings marked out on a graph on the screen and the buttons of the TV being icons that represent some of extra information I collected like the food I ate or the genre of the film. I decided to make them as simple 2D icons so that they were easy to read from a smaller scale as I may have to fit more than one poster on a page and keeping them simple will also make it easier for them to be universally understood. My first idea for the layout of the graph is to make a line graph so that it looked like the signal lines on TV's.
This is my initial idea made up on illustrator. I think the icons and layout look good because it looks a bit like a TV screen and I managed to show the difference between the top and bottom icons by changing the shape and colours. I think the contrast between the black icons and the bright colours is really effective and helps them stand out, and to help the top icons stand out I used very bright bold colours to contrast with the white. I dont think the graph works though because the line graph is more for showing a period of time instead of separate categories so I think a bar chart would work better for the information I want to show.
For this development I tried out the bar charts. I think these work a lot better because it separates each category so it is easy to see each rating. I didnt want to leave them as plain white because I think it stood out with too much contrast so next I tried some other colours.
First I tried making the bars the same colour as the icons below them. I dont think this was very effective because some of the icons were the same colour and one of them was the same colour as the background.
Next I tried adding some speckled effects to try to create the effect of the TV screen when it loses signal and all the black and white dots come up. I tried a couple of different effects and mixes of effects.
I also tried using the same effects on coloured bars but I didnt like the way the yellow was also added in so I decided not to use this technique.
This was my favourite end effect because I think it looks the most similar to the TV screen and there isnt too much contrast between the grey and black so it works well with the rest of the poster and compliments it.
Font work
Next I worked on my font and tried out a variety of different options because I wasnt happy with the font I had before as I wanted something with straighter lines and a cleaner finish.
I liked that this font was sans serif but I think the edges were too rounded so it didnt work well as a title.
The stroke of this font was a bit too thin for the title.
This is a more decorative font and again I think the stroke is too thin.
This was another decorative font and I think it was too decorative and wasnt simple or bold enough for the titles.
The lines on this font were too rounded and the stroke was a bit thin so I dont think it was bold enough.
The stroke of this font was definitely too think to be an effective title.
I liked this font but I thought the white circles made it too decorative to be a title and it made the top bar look too cluttered. But I liked the shape and stroke thickness.
Because I liked the stroke and sans serif style of the previous font I decided to use it but just edit it to remove the circles so I used the paint bucket tool to make it all black and I think it is effective because it is bold and stands out as the title but isnt decorative and is very simple so it doesnt overpower the other elements and compliments them instead.
I decided the bars of the bar chart needed a little colour to seperate them from each other and add more colour to the poster so I colour coded each one and I tried to relate the colour as much as I could to the feeling I was rating. To do this I made colour blocks the same size as the bars and placed them over them and lowered the opacity so that the speckled effect below still shone through. I really like how this turned out and I think it looks effective because it is easy to differentiate between each category and it makes the poster a lot more bright and colourful and fun to look at. I also added more black space between the bars and the blue because it looked a little cramped together. This is now the basic layout for my poster and I will be designing all the other posters in this style but just adapt the top icons and the height of the bars.
Posters:
Next I made all the posters in this layout and just adapted the height of the bars and the icons to the information I collected about each film. I think the layout worked well for all of the films because there was space to add in or remove extra icons and the font was still legible when it had to be made smaller for longer film titles. The bar chart worked really well for comparison between the ratings for each film.
Front cover and key
I decided best way to lay my posters out was to make them into a booklet because not many could fit on one A3 page so it would be difficult to make larger posters with them. Because of this I needed to design a front cover. I decided to use the same font for uniformity and also because it is a great title font as it is bold, easy to read and catches your attention. I did it in white for a contrast with the black to make it stand out as a main title. Without the icons the layout didnt really look like a TV screen so the next thing I decided to do was add some of the icons.
First I used the same icon layout as the individual pages and just added some extra at the top to fill the gap where the film titles usually were. I think this looks quite effective because it gives it the look of the TV screen but because the top icons were longer it looked a bit top heavy.
I then tried using the top icons on the bottom too to help even out the poster. I think this made it look a bit too cluttered as there is alot going on in these icons so it looks too decorative.
The bottom icons were simpler so I made these top and bottom instead but I think this made the poster have too much black and didnt reflect how colourful the inside was so it made it lose a bit of uniformity.
The solution to the problem I was having was to make the top row of icons the same length as the bottom as this stopped it from being top heavy, had more uniformity as it represented the inside of the booklet and added more colour, and it had a mix of the simpler and more decorative icons giving it the perfect balance between the two. I think this front cover is effective because it is uniform with the layout of the pages inside and has a clear, legible title that is easy to read. I also thinks it sums up the content of the booklet because the icons show the sort of things the films might be rated on.
I created a key because some of the icons could have had multiple meanings and instead of having to repeat this on each page and take up space on the pages I decided to make a whole page dedicated to the key that would be the first page in the booklet. I wanted to keep it simple and legible so so I used one word sum ups of what each icon meant and to keep it as simple as possible I just lined to icons up and placed it underneath them. I think it is effective because it is easy to understand and the typeface is bold and legible and using the same typeface as the rest of the booklet kept uniformity.
