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The Art of Floating (poster 2) - The Process #process #DES101

  • Writer: Emma
    Emma
  • Apr 9, 2020
  • 3 min read

Poster 2 came with a new set of struggles… Colour. The assignment for poster 2 was to create a movie poster thinking about colour, composition and typography.


The Haiku:


Catch me if you can

Hurry up, search for treasures

A sandpiper’s game


Morrill, J. (2017, May 16). Pens Love Ink. Thought, pen, ink and paper for May 15 to 19,


I thought about the haiku differently this time, I pictured a breeze blowing at the beach and “the art of floating” came to me, a perfect title for a horror movie! I drew inspiration from movies such as The Shining and A Cure For Wellness.




I used hand drawn and digital techniques, starting out with the illustration of the hand which took me a little while to get the proportions right. I used watercolour pencils and oil pastels to colour it in. I explored digital techniques more through adding hand drawn elements. text and gradients. I also tried creating a background out of oil pastels, but it was hard to read the text on top of so I scratched that idea.




One of my first ideas

The key elements of the poster are saturated to give off a harsh, cold feeling. (Chapman, 2010) The different shades of blue also add to the coldness of the piece. I used the eyedropper tool in illustrator to match the tone of the background to a tone in the hand. The contrast of pure red stands out as the warmer hue comes forward towards the viewer. (Skaalid, 1999) I wanted the drips of blood to look not particularly like blood but more like thick, goops of some substance making the audience more intrigued. I used asymmetrical typography on the ‘floating’ to express a sense of floating in the text. (Dabner & Swann) I had a few different font ideas and settled on a straighter, slimmer font over a more hand-done one as to not make the genre of the film ‘too obvious’.



The hand is a signifier, it’s position signifies a kind, helping hand. In combination with dripping blood and a dark background, it now signifies something mysterious and eerie, “meaning moves due to a signifier calling on multiple signifieds.” (Hodge, 2003)


Using the Rule Of Thirds

So I had the elements of my poster ready. Onto the composition. Originally in class, we had already done a wireframe of how our poster should be laid out, and once I started, I ignored that. I kept everything centred as I really like that look of having lots of negative space on the sides. However the composition wasn’t dynamic, there wasn’t much movement to the piece and my elements were unbalanced. I thought I had tried playing around with the composition enough, but I was actually scared of failure. I really liked what I had come up with and didn’t want to lose that. I told myself that I needed to give a new composition a go though as I could see something wasn’t quite right. I played around with the length of the puddle and immediately the poster became balanced and dynamic, I used the rule of thirds as a guide to place the other elements and added a vignette, “compositions become more dynamic when divided into thirds.” (Dabner & Swann p. 37) I can’t be afraid of trying new things and letting go of what I already have. It’s important as a designer to not get too attached to ideas (seems like I’m still learning from the last poster.) I am much happier with this final poster than what I had before, I just didn’t know it until I tried.


Final Poster!


Reference List


Chapman, C. (2010). Color Theory For Designers, Part 2: Understanding Concepts And Color


Dabner, D., & Swann, A. (2014). Graphic Design School; the principles and practice of

graphic design. Unit 2: Fundamentals of Composition. (5th ed., pp. 32-61). [Talis version] Retreived from https://content.talisaspire.com/auckland/bundles/5e4595170cb4c31d9325cfa4


Hodge, C. (2003). Boxes and Arrows. Semiotics: A Primer for Designers. Retrieved from


Mondo. (2018) The Shining Poster. Retrieved from


Skaalid, B. (1999). Classic Graphic Design Theory. Elements of Design: Value and Color.


Verbinski, G. (Director). (2017). A Cure For Wellness. Retrieved from


Verbinski, G. (Director). (2017). A Cure For Wellness. Retrieved from


 
 
 

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