Welcome to GRPH 381: Graphic Design 1, Promotional Design

These pages are provided as an outline for GRPH 381: Graphic Design 1, Promotional Design. At right you will find links to the material covered each week throughout the course, as well as links to each weeks assignments, distributed via Adobe PDF files. Though this site is updated frequently, all materials and assignments are subject to change at Instructor’s (Todd Roeth’s) discretion.

Things to know, remember, and understand.

This material is a supplement to class and does not replace class attendance and participation. For more information regard attendeance policies, please refer to the Marietta Student Handbook.

Assignments for class are assigned on a weekly basis, and delivered as printable .pdf documents available at right. Due dates are assigned in class.

Required Materials

See Sylabus for complete details.

Required Text

A subscription to Communications Arts is required, and class readings will be assigned from current issues. Additional reading will distrubuted during class from seleted essays from the Looking Closer: Critical Writings in Graphic Design series. The readings will be distributed via the School Library.

Epson Ink Cartridges

Each Assignment will need to be submitted to professional standards. Proper printing, trimming, and folding (when appropriate) is required for sucessful outcomes. Class assignments submitted for grade can be outputed to the Epson 1280 Printers available in the Classroom.

Students will be responsible for buying their own ink. Ink needs to be brought to class when needed. Students are responsible for loading and unloading their own ink from the printers. It is recommended that students store and carry their ink cartridges in an index card box.

Other Places to Buy Epson 1280 Ink

Information about Epson 1280 Printers

Handout

Read: Epson Ink Cartridge Handling [.pdf]

Epson Paper

The Classroom printers need compatibale paper to reneder the best quality projects. Students can purchase these papers locally at Parkersburg Office Supply by calling 1-800-525-1951 24 hours in advance and ordering over the telephone. Orders are shipped to the store in a day.

The following paper sizes are needed for the various Class Assignments:

8.5” x 11” (Letter)

11” x 17” (Tabloid)

13” x 19” (Super B)

Hard Drives

In all digital design classes, students are responsible of storing, organizing, and archiving their own work. Each computer in the class room has designated storage (Student Files on HD), however, keeping your only copies of files on the School Computers is not reccomended. Depending on your academic needs and digital mediums which you work in (Photo, Video, Print, Web) the amount of disk storage will vary. For this class alone, students will need a minimum of 2Gb of storage.

Suggested Hardware for Macintosh Users:

SmartDisk FireLite External FireWire Hard Drive (40 GB)

LaCieFirewire and USB 2.0 Mobile External Hard drive

Adobe’s Indesign is a desktop publishing tool for print designers. There is other software in the industry to create design and print (both personal and commercial printing), namely QuarkXPress.

Regardless of the brand of software used, these desktop publishing programs are best thought of as assembly tools. They alone will not create the projects with the visual quality designers want, nor the effectiveness this class demands.

Indesign is the primary software used in the class. The best analogy to consider is the comparison between the tools and assets in this class to that of cooking: Indesign is synonymous to a mixing bowl. The ingredients (words, illustrations, photographs) are first prepared elsewhere, then added into a common container and mixed together in particluar proportions to create a specific taste.

To sucessfully oeprate in the class students must have a working knowledge of the tools needed to make visually and intellectually engaging Promotional Designs. Among them are:

› Knowledge of the Macintosh OS
› InDesign
› Photoshop
› Illustrator
› Creative & Technical Writing
› X-Acto Knife
› Glue
› Effective verbal skills and the ability to learn new vocabulary

All of these skills are ingredients students will develop – and rely on -in this class.

Focus on the Process

The emphasis in this class is now how and why you arrive at the projects you create in class over what you create.

A designer’s tools (a chef’s kitchen) are a means to an end. Without the creative process, these tools are simple and inhuman computer programs.

What is Creativity?

Consider: Creative thinking: Three basic principles

The Four Design Principles

Graphic Design is a study of relationships within a composition or project. The following four aspects speak to different relationships and dynamics within compostions and page layouts. A keen understanding and a developed sensibilty to these ideas will prove to be a fundamental value through career as a graphic designer.

Contrast

The concept of contrast is to avoid making objects in a design visually the same or equal. Making the elements on a page different causes them to visually stand out. There are three basic ways to achieve contrast in a design.

Size
Big vs. Small, Distant vs. Near, Primary vs. Secondary

Color
Hot vs. Cold, Vibrant vs. Faded,

Alignment
Right vs. Left, Top vs. Bottom, Formal vs. Informal, Tight vs. Loose

Value
Heavy vs. Light, Dark vs. Light, Thick vs. Thin, Open vs. Closed

Repetition

Repeating visual elements throughout a design – or a series of designs – creates organization, establishes visual rules, increases usability and functionality, and strengthens the unity of the piece(s).

Repetition is often found in
• Alignment & Positioning (i.e. page numbers in a book)
• Color (i.e. green and red buttons on a cell phone)
• Typography (i.e. Fast-Food menus, street signs…)

Alignment

Every element should be strategically placed on the page in order to create a connection with other elements and unity and order throughout the piece. Alignment is often associated as an aspect of typography, aligning blocks of text left aligned, right aligned, center aligned, or justified.

Proximity

Visual elements whose purpose or information is related should be grouped together in order to reduce confusion and increase the user’s intuitive response. Of the four design principles listed here, proximity has the most over-arching application.

Designing With Type

Effective Type

Type Hierarchy: For more information visit, Type Hierarchy Lecture
Contrasting Typefaces: Using different Typefaces for different types of information helps readers organize and understand information. Too many typefaces however, will detract from the presentation and clarity.

Basic Functions of Type

Kerning: The amount of space between letters.
Leading: The amount of space between lines (baselines) of type.
Alignment: The horizontal orientation of a block of type. Left, right, or center aligned are a designers basic options.
Justification: Similar to alignment, justification refers to the allowed alignment of a line of type. Force Justified, “rag right, rag left, flush left, flush right” are all popular options for designers. – For more on Type Alignment, See: The Web Style Guide, Alignment

Handout

Read:rulesoftype.pdf

Visual Literacy: The Sum of It’s Parts

Visual literacy is traditionally defined as a field of study in academia, that relies on several areas of study. Psychology, anthropology, art history and criticism, philosophy, information design and graphic design. Even religious knowledge and political awareness is required, as references and undertones of each often are used by designers and artists to convey their messages.

Effective designers use all aspects of their culture (or their audience’s culture, or sub-culture) to cleverly and conceptually convey ideas.

For more on the definition of Visual Literacy, read: What is Visual Literacy?

Non-Verbal Communication Takes Many Forms

Visual Literacy also has practical applications in a variety of other fields of study. Spend some time viewing the The Periodic Table of Visualization Methods to see many examples of how information is communicated in non-verbal ways in a variety of industries and subject matter.

In Class

Browse the The Periodic Table of Visualization Methods discussed above. Think about an issue or and idea in your life that you do not presently understand – or cannot visualize – fully. (E.g. a sports drill, class schedule, a topic in another class, your bank account.)
• How could your life be made easier with the use of one of these examples?
• What requirements does the audience need to fully grasp what is being ‘said’?
• What requirements did the designer need to properly organize and communicate the idea?

Elements for Strong Visual Communication

In her book, Dondis provides basic grammar of visual communication. She defines a set of terms or elements used as tools to create non-verbal messages. Imagine these elements as equivalent the different aspects in the English language we have at our disposal to properly form sentences that represent what we want to say, and how we want to say it.

According to her book, these Elements are the raw materials of all levels of visual intelligence.

Dot

The minimal visual unit, or often the smallest unit that can be defined a composition or in space; a pointer or a finite marker of space.

Line

A linear, curved, or angular narrow band. It can be visible or implied, it can be border of a form, the edge of an object, or the axis many objects when aligned in particular ways.

Shape

The basic shapes, circle, square, triangle, and all their endless variations and combinations. These shapes can be two or three dimensional.

Direction

The thrust of movement or momentum created by incorporating graphic elements in a uniform – often parallel manner. Direction can also expressed as circular, diagonal and perpendicular.

Tone

The presence or absence of light, by which we see – or don’t see.

Color

The coordinate of tone with the added component of chroma, the most emotional and expressive visual element.

Texture

Expressed optically or tactile, the surface character of visual materials.

Scale or Proportion

The relative size and measurement of objects. This can also suggest depth – establishing a distance or nearness to objects.

Dimension and Motion

These aspects can be both implied and expressed. In flat design (2-D print design) these ideas are of course implied, but proper manipulation and rendering of artwork can achieve these elements, and they can have dramatic effects.

Class Exercise: You’ll be given three words to define visually. Create an 8” x 8” page in Adobe Illustrator for each word. Do not use words or photography for this exercise, focus on the elements outlined above.

Visual Literacy Training – Applying Concepts & Semantics

In addition to the visual elements of visual literacy discussed above, there is also the semantic and conceptual aspects.

Like learning any other language, increasing your visual literacy and awareness takes some practice, and continual development. As mentioned above, visual literacy involves aspects from many disciplines. Taking a mentally holistic approach to learning to be a better reader – and sender – of visual messages is important… it is paramount to be a successful and relevant graphic designer.

The following exercises and games are aimed a promoting viewers to be more visually astute, clever, witty, and ultimately, more in control and more efective of the vast amounts of graphic imagery and symbols graphic designers have at their disposal.

The Rebus

Rebus puzzles are often referred to as pictograms. Rebus puzzles are messages that use symbols purely for the phonetic sounds made when verbally spoken, regardless of their meaning, to represent new words or phrases. Many ancient writing systems used Rebus principle to represent abstract words.

An understanding of pictograms is an elemental aspect of graphic design. Many graphic designs rely heavily on them.

For more on rebuses, visit (and play): Uncle Rebus Daily Puzzle

Color

Colors elicit strong visual connotations, and their use in graphic design is one of the strongest tools for communicating. Though colors can have different meanings to different people, there are strong cultural associations to color, and graphic designers need to be aware of their meanings and nuances, and now how to use color for a desired affect.

Colors are linked also to nationality, ethnicity, and religion (red, white and blue = U.S.A; green – Ireland…) and responsible designers should be aware of these meanings.

Read: Colors of the Zodiac

Read: Cherokee color symbolism

Read: Color symbolism and psychology (Wikipedia)

Type

Using type to add tone, emotion, and meaning to written words is a fundamental skill of any graphic designer. All words, messages, and sentences that can be read can also be ‘heard’. Typography has the ability to present words visually in an equivalent manner as their oral delivery.

In addition, Typography can also illustrate concepts that are either defined directly by words or demonstrate or even perform the actions they represent.

Class Exercise: You’ll be given three words to define visually. Create an 8” x 8” page in Adobe Illustrator. Deploy any visuals you see fit: color, pictograms, and any graphic elements.

Photography

Photography and photo-realistic images – illustrations, engravings, silkscreens are all power tools to communicate concrete and abstract ideas.

Pictures are worth a thousand words: Play Google’s Image Labeler

Proper use of computers, software, and tools made available in today’s desktop publishing industry are on par with professional design and printing services – provided the designer using them is properly educated. The conceptual, design, production, and even the prototype printing phases of a design project can all be handled ‘in-studio’ (i.e. ‘in-home’, ‘in-class’).

The following tips are suggestions and practices when using Adobe InDesign to achieve better, professional standards, and professionally printable projects.

Bleeds

A bleed is a term in printing and design used to describe the process of handling artwork when it is intended to be printed to the edge of the page.

Whether printing on a personal printer, school printer, or professional printing press, the strategy is the same: You create your artwork to be printed past the edges of the paper. After the art is printed, the extra paper and ink is then trimmed off. This way, the artwork is guaranteed to be visible to the edge of the finished piece. -This is a bleed.

Without a bleed, when the paper is trimmed, there is a reasonable chance that the cutter (a human or a machine) may trim the edge without enough precision, and a slim, uneven edge of white may remain on the page edge.

Document Setup for Bleeds

Document Layout with Bleeds

Document Printing with Bleeds

Tips:
• It is best to print your projects in the Center of the page. This allows adequate space on all four sides to see and trim your bleeds. This is set in the Setup options in the Print Dialogue box.

• The Offset option controls how far away from the document edge the crop marks will be printed. Regardless of their offset distance, they will be trimmed away from the final piece. An offset of 0 will butt the marks up to the edges of the document.

Clipping Paths

Clipping paths are used to create picture boxes in InDesign that are the same shape (or mimic the shape) of the object in an image. Clipping paths are often used in images that are Dropped Out.

To properly make a Clipping Path, some cooperation between Photoshop and Indesign is required.

In Photoshop:
• A selected area made via the lasso tool or magic wand tool needs to be Converted To a Path.

• The Work Path needs to be named, then Made into a Clipping Path.

• The image file needs to be saved as a Photoshop File

In Indesign:
• The image with a Clipping Path needs to be placed in the document.

• Once placed, select the image and activate the Clipping Path: Object>Clipping Path>Options…

With the Clipping Path respected in InDesign, it can be adjusted with the Direct Selection Tool. Text Wrap can also be applied to this Clipping Path.

Printing

Translating your on-screen designs to paper is a crucial step in any design project. Every work environment has unique situations: Different hardware and software, uniquely calibrated monitors, printers, paper types and even the lighting of different workspaces effect printing.

Resolution

Indesign handles both Raster and Vector artwork. Both of these file classifications have different technical aspects that effect printing.

In short:
Rastered files are composed pixels and are also referred to as bit-mapped art (also: bitmaps, bitmap files). They are generated in Photoshop are bound to the metrics between pixel resolution and pixel dimension.

When a bit-mapped image changes size, the relationship between it’s pixel resolution (measured in pixels per inch) and it’s pixel dimensions change. When an image is scaled bigger (the pixel dimensions become greater), the image will loose quality (the pixel resolution becomes lower).

When bitmap files are scaled above 100% the resolution lessens, resulting in what is referred to as ‘pixelation’ – a loss in visual detail.

Vector artwork is composed of visually presented mathematical equations. They are primarily generated in Adobe Illustrator and are resolution independent; they can be scaled up or down infinitely with no loss in detail.

RGB vs. CMYK

Color is reproduced differently on computer screens than it is on paper. The fundamental discrepancy means that ‘what you see is not what you get” in term of color reproduction on paper from your computer monitor. (See Color Management below for more.)

RGB
Red, Green and Blue are the three colors of light used to produce the visible spectrum of color on a computer screen.

CMYK
Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black( K) are the four primary colors of ink used to produce color on paper.

All computer monitors display color in RGB. All printers use CMYK ink-sets to remake the colors on screen to images on paper. While many desktop printers now accept and print files with RGB color values, these values are still converted to CMKY during the printing process.

To understand the differences between RGB and CMYK the difference between additive and subtractive color theory needs to be examined.

Color Management

Digital print design has one fundamental flaw: The medium that designers create in is not the same as the rest of the world views it in (on).

We design on a computer screen, but our work is presented on paper. No device in a publishing system is capable of reproducing the full range of colors we see with our eyes. Each device operates within a specific color space called a gamut.

Device Profiles
To mitigate this fundamental problem, digital work flows have developed Device Profiles. Every device (a printer, scanner, monitor, or printing press) renders colors in a slightly different ways. So, device profiles have been developed aimed at properly communicating colors between devices in a consistent – if not accurate – way.

Imagine a Device Profile as separate invisible file attached to the side of an .indd layout file that explains to the next device in the work flow (a paper printer or PDF printer) how the color should be interpreted to remain accurate to how it was viewed in InDesign.

Color Management within Adobe software
Adobe Indesign is part of a large suite of software – The Adobe Creative Suite(CS). Nearly all of the artwork you place in Indesign will come from another Adobe program (Photoshop, Illustrator, even Acrobat). This is a big advantage in color management.

With the proper Color Settings, all work shared between Adobe Applications will have the same color profile. In other words, when working within Adobe CS software, you are always in the same device.

Note: In our classroom settings, the Color settings have been configured. In the Color Settings window, notice the Color Polices for introducing graphic files into your projects that have different or missing profiles.

Also Note: While the Adobe CS applications make color management easier while working amongst the various software, your work will have to leave this digital environment and be handled by a printer in order to achieve a finished print piece. (See Printer Setting below for more on this.)

Read: Adobe Help Menu- Why Colors Sometimes Don’t Match

Read: Adobe Tutorial- Color Management in InDesign

Print Settings

Finishing: Cutting, Folding, and Trimming

All of your work is for not if you are unable to create a professional looking mock up of your work. All the excuses and talk you can manage still fall short of a real functional prototype.

Trimming

Be sure to print your files with Trim Marks (controlled on Print Settings). When trimming, use the sharpest knife (box cutter, X-Acto preferred). Cut on a cutting mat, and apply enough pressure so to only make one cut per edge. Place the straight edge over your work and cut to the outside of the sheet. This helps minimize the change of accidentally cutting into your piece.

When trimming, do no cut across the entire edge of the paper. By doing so, you loose the trim mark for the perpendicular edge of the design!

Scoring and Folding

For professional finishing, be sure to carefully consider – and then properly execute – any folds your design may require. Nearly all commercial design jobs which require folds will be done by a machine, but for a professional prototype to show for design review, you’ll need to make the folds yourself.

Paper weight, finish, and grain direction all play importantly into how able your designs will be able to be folded. For example, heavier paper is harder to fold, and has more “memory”.

Different finishes (Gloss, Matte, Coated, Uncoated…) all behave differently when folded. In the classroom environment, the most popular paper used is Epson Matte, in Heavyweight. This is a ‘softer’ paper and despite it’s weight (thickness) folds well when properly scored.

Scoring refers to notching or partially cutting or crushing the inside edge of a fold. It is best performed with the dull edge of a butter knife or preferably a Bone Scorer

Read: Machine & Knife Folds

Direct Mail Pieces

Direct mail is printed material that arrives in your mailbox sent from a business in bulk. It is often referred to as ‘snail mail’ or ‘terrestrial mail’. Direct mail may or may not have been requested by the recipient. Additionally, if it was requested, it often is requested indirectly. (E.g., you have deliberately or in-deliberately joined a companies mailing list, or you have had a sales transaction with the company that has provided them with you mailing address.)

Direct mail is a concentrated form of visual promotion. By it’s virtue, direct mail needs to demonstrate efficient, effective, and often clever design to quickly – even immediately – communicate the message from the business who sent it.

Purpose

The message for every direct piece can ultimately be summed up by nearly all accounts with this statement: Buy this.

Whether the goal of the message it to buy something financially (Eat this pizza.) or ideologically (Vote for this person.), all commercial messages have a clear purpose. The message should reflect and execute this purpose, by effective verbal and visual means. The message should be crafted with careful consideration by the business to properly promote their goods or services. The message should be carefully crafted by the copywriters, photographers, and graphic designers with a keen awareness of both that company, and it’s audience.

Audience

The receiver or, the recipient of this mail piece has to be known and understood by the sender (the company, or its advertising firm) and the graphic designer. Appropriate and relevant copy-writing, visual messages, and design need be used to make the direct mail piece worth the cost to make, print, and send. Some clear questions need to be asked. Their answers will dictate many decisions graphic designers need to make.

How old is the recipient?
What gender is the recipient?
Where does recipient live? (What is the recipient’s environment?)
What is the recipient’s lifestyle? (Are they: married, have children, own a car, own a house, affluent? Do they live in an urban or rural area?)

In-Class

Take example mail pieces and deduct the target audience for the mailing. What criteria do you base your deductions?

Read: Snail Mail Leaves It’s Shell

Consider: Direct Mail Statistics in the United Kingdom

Postal Regulations & Standards

In order for the United States Postal Service to use it’s automated machinery to process and sort the mass quantities of mail it handles daily, there are specific guidelines concerning where artwork can be placed, as not to interfere with automation.

Post Office Guidelines & Basic Standards
• Postal Addressing & Return Addressing Standards

• Elements on the Face of a Mailpiece

• Envelope Layout Guide (Wausau Papers)

For more, read: USPS Resources

Templates and Resources

For practical reasons and standards set by the Postal Service, it is expensive to print and distribute custom sizes and shapes of mail pieces. As found above, incompatible designs can either cause expensive customization and handling at the Post Office, or at worst, cause your mail piece to never be delivered.

Many easy and practical design templates and resources can be found at The Designers Toolbox. There, you can download InDesign files to use as a starting point for this project.

Note: The Designers Toolbox does not offer a folded postcard format required for Direct Mail Piece Assignment. The template files used from The Designers Toolbox will need to be modified. (See the Standard Paper Foldings Page for more.)

GRPH381-Assignment1.pdf

All graphic design studies relationships. Graphic designers all struggle and strive to create combinations in size, color, position and placement that achieve balance, unity, and establish relationships so that the final composition is ‘just right’.

The following topic discuss processes, theories, and methods to better achieve these relationships.

Gestalt Principles

In this context, the elusive term – ‘just right’ is by many learned designers, referred to as gestalt.

Mirriam-Webster defines gestalt as: a structure, configuration, or pattern of physical, biological, or psychological phenomena so integrated as to constitute a functional unit with properties not derivable by summation of its parts.

Simply put, gestalt theory can be summed up as “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

More literally, gestalt is a German word translated to mean ‘a unified whole.” While graphic designers use this term, is was formulated in the field of psychology as a theory of visual perception developed by German psychologists in the 1920s. It is now applied to many disciplines and fields of thought.

See: Gestalt Principles

Read: Gestalt Theory

The Golden Ratio

The Golden Ratio has many names. It is referred to and referenced by many mathematicians, scientists, architects and artists over the centuries. Other names frequently used for or closely related to the golden ratio are golden section, golden mean, golden number, and the Greek letter phi (φ). Other terms encountered include extreme and mean ratio, medial section, and the divine proportion.

In mathematics and the arts, two quantities (dimensions, sizes, proportions) are in the golden ratio if the ratio between the sum of those quantities and the larger one is the same as the ratio between the larger one and the smaller. The golden ratio is approximately 1.6180339887.

At least since the Renaissance, many artists and architects have proportioned their works to approximate the golden ratio—especially in the form of the golden rectangle, in which the ratio of the longer side to the shorter is the golden ratio—believing this proportion to be aesthetically pleasing. There are many intriguing qualities and correlations with this ratio. The image below is a golden rectangle: when the length is divided by the height, the ratio is 1.6180339887. It also creates the structure for a Fibonacci Spiral.

Color: Hierarchy in Hues

Like spatial relationships of proportion and dimension, color can also be thought of in these terms.

The first color wheel was invented by Sir Isaac Newton (Opticks, 1704). He divided white sunlight into red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, and blue beams. More interesting to visual designers, he then he joined the two ends of the color spectrum together to show the natural progression of colors. It is interesting to note (pun intended) that Newton associated each color with a note of a musical scale. Music is another discipline in which ratios, proportions and even the Golden Ratio has been identified.

Establishing Color Schemes

The color wheel shows the relationship among colors and helps artists and designers establish a color scheme. There are three primary colors (red, blue, yellow), three secondary colors which are the result of mixing primary colors (purple, orange, green) and the tertiary colors, created when a primary color mixed with a secondary color such as red-orange, yellow-green and blue-violet. When they colors are mixed with pure colors white or black it creates numerous different tints and shades.

Monochromatic Color Scheme

The monochromatic color scheme uses variations in lightness and saturation of a single color. This scheme looks clean and elegant. Monochromatic colors go well together, producing a soothing effect. The monochromatic scheme is very easy on the eyes, especially with blue or green hues.

Analogous Color Scheme

The analogous color scheme uses colors that are adjacent to each other on the color wheel. One color is used as a dominant color while others are used to enrich the scheme. The analogous scheme is similar to the monochromatic, but offers more nuances.

Complementary Color Scheme

The complementary color scheme consists of two colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel. This scheme looks best when you place a warm color against a cool color, for example, red versus green-blue. This scheme is intrinsically high-contrast.

Split Complementary Color Scheme

The split complementary scheme is a variation of the standard complementary scheme. It uses a color and the two colors adjacent to its complementary. This provides high contrast without the strong tension of the complementary scheme.

Triadic Color Scheme

The triadic color scheme uses three colors equally spaced around the color wheel. This scheme is popular among artists because it offers strong visual contrast while retaining harmony and color richness. The triadic scheme is not as contrasting as the complementary scheme, but it looks more balanced and harmonious.

Tetradic (Double Complementary) Color Scheme

The tetradic (double complementary) scheme is the most varied because it uses two complementary color pairs. This scheme is hard to harmonize; if all four hues are used in equal amounts, the scheme may look unbalanced, so you should choose a color to be dominant or subdue the colors.

Learn More: Color Theory Basics

First, Read this: How Good is Good?

Then Read: Power to the Paper: An Interview with Carol Wells

Also Read: A brief history of the Clenched Fist

Listen, Look: NPR – Political Design, Graphic Artists Urge Voter Turnout

There are few examples in print design where a more concentrated collison of message grapahic design.

Posters: The Message Dictates the Design

Posters historically have been a popular medium to communicate evasive, political, counter-culteral, and/or civic minded messages. Many have observed that these non-commercial posters are often superior to commercial applicatons of the poster. In fact many commercialized advertising styles have been adopted from posters with decidedly different motives and contexts.

See: The work of John Heartfield

Regardless of what the message is you are to convey, is important to disginuish and distill the message, and meaning into it’s barest essntials, to effectivly communicate a singular, clean, direct, and powerful idea.

Aspects of Poster Design

› Poster design encorporates – and relies on – the environment in which they are presented to communicate the message. A strong sense of audience awareness and the environments they inhabit are needed to correctly integrete a poster into the culteral context.

› Posters are mean to be seen before they are read: Type is used sparingly, and is used equally for compositional elements as well as readable information. When type is used as a dominant element, it’s treatment often doubles the meaning in an illustrative fashion.

› Posters are mean to deliver information in a very simple and direct way. Use of Strong and bold graphic images, string contrast of value, color, and size are used in an aggressive way to attract attention.

› Strong cincgular dominant element. Sometimes called an “Eye Magnet”, this focus in a poster’s compiston can be type, icon, shape, or image. All strong poster design (as well as most other forms of flat art) have a clearly defined center of visual interest, that helps anchor the poster, as well dictact the entire balance of the compositon.

The WPA’s Federal Art Project

The New Deal initative called the Works Progress Administration aimed at employing, among many other occuaptions out of work during the Depression of the 1930’s, artists and graphic designers. The outcome of this branch of the WPA, called the Federal Art Project (FAP) was one of the biggest bodies of non comercial poster artwork ever made.

“http://rs6.loc.gov/ammem/wpaposters/highlights.html”:
See: A list of WPA artists

In-Class

Browse the Library of Congress poster collecton via a key work search for “WPA Psoters”.

Browse via “Gallery Veiw” and take an image into the Class Server, to be proected and discussed in class.