Kristin Becker's DTC Classes at WSU

Poster Design by Mark Midgett

Of the three design’s that I’ve completed I felt that my strongest design was this one. I believe that the aesthetic of this design presents itself as chaotic yet balanced. When producing this design I wanted to create a poster that drew the viewer in through a sense of heaviness within the text. When looking at my poster horizontally, there is a sense of balance and symmetry that can be seen through boldness and variety of text. This boldness is evident between the title at the top and the amount of information at the bottom.

“Make it simple but significant.” This quote here by Don Draper is how I would best describe my overall sense of design. I believe that simplicity is key in regards to any sense of design but I also believe that significance is important as well. As designers, I believe that we are to create things don’t necessarily ask for attention but grab the attention of viewers throughout the world.

That being said, going into the final edit of this poster, I want to bring a better sense of organization and focus more so on the typographic elements such as point and plane. I personally think the bottom half of my poster could use a better sense of organization as well, this way the viewer doesn’t necessarily feel that they have to dig for the information on the poster but that the information presents itself to them. So overall my  my goal in regards to my final design is to reconstruct it in a way that my poster represents simplicity and significance more so than it is currently.

This poster was designed by Ryan Stuart for a project in DTC 336, in which students were instructed to design posters for and event titled “Experimental Poetry in Action”.

This is the poster that I created that appealed to me the most visually. One of my favorite things about this poster is the way the bios sit in the in each of the main letters for the title. I like the framing in it because it appeals to me visually, because it reminds me of filling in the holes in printed letters. I also like the way that the date time and location fill in the backs of the letters almost turning a serif font into a sans-serif font. Something that I need to do to this poster as part of the refinement process is find a way to make the idea that the poster displays is a little more abstract or interesting. I may be able to do this by taking some of the text that I left in straight lines, and warping it in such a way that they create a new abstract feel to the poster. I may also be able to achieve this by not alleging the main numbers so perfectly. I may be able to push the frame of the poster as well by using a full bleed effect by enlarging some of the letters to fall off of the end of the page. I am not fully sure as to which aspects I will change, and which ones I will keep the same, but I plan to at least give those three techniques a try to see if they will make my poster a little bit more interesting for the event.

Experimental Poetry in Action Sign

I decided to refine my third poster because I feel like its the best of the three designs I created. The reason why I think its the strongest design is because it plays with Scale through out the poster with the first letter of the artist name. It has various line from the information about the authors to the lines created from the Scaled  letters. The poster also has planes arranged on the bottom right and left side of my poster. The poster has a reversible figure/ ground relationship with the scaled letter, information , and  the title entrapped in the side ways M. For most of the poster the white and smaller information becomes the background. While the title “Experimental Poetry in Action ” that placed inside the scaled M  has Hierarchy. The M is the background for the title. The letters that belong to the authors are being positive against the Scaled letter that is being used as a negative space and background. Some of the letters do bleed off the page. The way I am going to rearrange or refine my poster is by trying to make the word Poetry be emphasis so viewer that see the poster from a far can know wharves about. I think I might rearrange the scalded letters in a different way so I can play with the information. I want to try to uses some of the poets poetry design to give the audience a little taste on what they can expect at the event. Other than that I will try to experiment with the poster. I was thinking of arching the information to match the scaled letters. I am still trying to figure out how exactly to use the extra gray letter we are given. Some of my thoughts were towards using it to make the title pop so viewers can know the poster is about poetry.

Poster design by Jared Goodwin

I feel that this design is the strongest of my three designs due to its use of overlapping planes and the balance of the design due to its symmetry and framing.

The design utilizes a plane-within-a-plane design, which a lot of people viewing the poster commented on; it seemed to be the most eye-catching element of the poster. While it does reduce legibility a bit, it embodies the event’s experimentalism fairly well, and places a lot of emphasis on the bios of the poets as your eye looks to the letters to see one solid shape, but finds text there instead.

The design as a whole has a very balanced and symmetrical design to it. This gives it a  very solid look that’s very clear and easy to read – however, while it isn’t especially experimental, which was the most common critique of the design. Attempting to add a new element or continuing to play with the current elements to make it more experimental – but still legible – is probably going to be one of the main considerations of the next draft.

Another element that I’m considering changing is the placement of the event information at the bottom of the page. This is probably one of the main sources of the un-experimental feel of the design; the elements are arranged in a very standard way. I was very unsure of what to do with that information to make it work with the rest of the design when I first made it, but I’ll need to reconsider it again for the final.

This poster was created by Kai Amos for an “innovative contemporary” poetry event that is occurring on the WSU campus featuring 3 poets. The poster was created in the limitations of only typography that was set by the poetry the coordinator. With the assigned text font and text, all information was required to be used in an artistic design innovated style.

For the Poster Remix, I believe this is my strongest design poster due to the simplicity and cleanness of the design that is created through the use of white space. So far in the class, I have learned about figure/ground, framing, lines, points, planes, and balance. In the poster, I used all of the new techniques to create the achieved design. The long large text on the right side of the poster, reading “Experimental Poetry in Action,” is the first place my eye is drawn to: this is beneficial for the viewer because it is the one of the most important pieces of information.The long text creates a line for the viewer to follow up to the top of the page and then back down the page. Down the page, the eye travels to the clusters of text that appear to act as points due to the closeness of the lettering, however, because they are so large they even start to form small planes. The larger texts (authors’ names) are the first words seen, which introduces the authors, and then the eye travels to the smaller text which gives further details. The right justification and framing of the first/last names allow the viewers to understand the relationship the names and the bios have. The eye then reaches the bottom of the page and the bold text creates a weight for the eye to stop and view for a longer period of time. This weight is beneficial for the viewer because, again, it is important information to gather from the poster and unlike the text above that gives the viewer a choice on whether to read the short biographies or not, the heavier text makes it harder to surpass reading the information. The eye then travels back to the left side of the page to read the less bold text “presented by WSU Visiting Writing Series 2014-2016”. The completeness of the eye circling the page creates a balanced asymmetric plane.

In the feedback I received, I was told that the poster is not appropriate for this assignment. She explained that the poster does not show action or resemble a poetic event that is being advertised. To improve the poster I am going to stick with my choice of  white space and bold/narrow fonts, but I am going to try to play around with individual letters to make them have more “action.”

The design I’d like to move forward with would be one that has a more simplistic tone to it. I think the poster works well because my eye is drawn to the keywords first before moving on to more descriptive details. This is done through the creation of stronger, bolder points and lines that are built through the increased weight of the letters. The poster itself is balanced if it were to be folded horizontally and is asymmetrical if folded vertically. I feel as if the poster itself needs a little bit more flair added to it as it currently acts in a simplistic manner similar to that of an advertisement for a play.

I plan on improving on the design by making it a little more dynamic. I would like to manipulate the biographic elements and create a better viewing experience if possible but still keeping it very clean. I still do like the framing of the individual pieces as it helps keep it nicely organized. The design needs some work and overall it will take some time to find a way to change how it has appeared as the current design will act as a base to move from.

The poster I have decided to continue working on was the poster that has the circle, almost moon looking shape right in the middle. Although this poster was not my first choice I have received many comments about this poster being the most eye catching one. I think this poster worked because it was balanced, the title and the rest balanced each other. One comment I received was “the first thing that my eyes move through is the title,” with this the reason the title is the first thing they see is because I Kept it simple and made the title the biggest piece of text the readers I could see, second I made it a single biggest “plane,” the eyes could see. I decided to do this because personally I don’t like reading titles vertically or mixed up, I like to read my titles straight and horizontally like it should be; Easy and simple. The next thing that I used in my poster was shapes, well one circle at least, the rest of the info was compressed in a circle almost moon looking shape big and centered in the page layout. The reason I choice this was simply by chance, there is nothing symbolizing why I choice doing this but it worked to catch the readers eye since I got many comments on it. The second thing I did was bold half the text in the bottom circle than the rest of the other text. I think this played with the idea that there was a balance between the title the middle text and the bottom text. Although this was the poster my colleague choice there was still some critical comments that I received to better my poster, one was to maybe use more of the scale factor since I use a lack of and make it more dramatic. I agree that I didn’t take a risk with this poster, so with that said I want to play more with the scale factor. I will add more dimension to the text and play with the text in size and maybe in how I continue to lay down the text. I will also use the new rule of using “gray lettering,”. I also want to add more points/lines to the poster since I feel my poster is very limiting to that element.  Overall, I can see for the most part my final choice is good but has a lot more elements I can add too and even remove.