Final Piece - Colour experiments

To further push the idea of having sets and to experiment with colour schemes, I decided to alter my final design into complimentary colours, monotone, and pastel colour schemes.
My personal favourites are the pastel themes as they are the least saturated. To achieve this I altered the hue and saturation so that the colours became muted. I then increased the lightness of the poster. This made the colours into soft pastels.

I think when it comes to displaying them, I will pick out a set of three that compliment each other.
Upon comparison I feel that the original red and green colour scheme is too saturated, and takes away from the poster meaning.

Final Piece - Text

When it came to adding text to the poster, I originally wanted to create contrast with the typeface.
To achieve this, I started off with a Serif type, and a Script type. I liked the contrast of type that looked hand written and machine-like. 

It was upon adding more text that I felt like the Script type may not be the most  suitable, as it wasn't clear and legible from a distance. I then altered it to another hand written type called "chalk board". Initially, I really liked this type as it physically looked like it was hand written and gave my poster more of a human touch, but as I went through developing my poster, it was brought to my attention that the vast amount of type conflicted with each other, as opposed to working harmoniously.

I then also had issues with the overlapping of the heart and the title "gender". At first I thought it could be solved with an alteration of colour (as seen below), however when I changed the hue of the text, it just conflicted with the green and the red and made the piece look over crowded.

To try and confront the over crowded issue, I tried to layer the text and the heart so that it was almost woven. This created layers and added depth into the piece.

After layering the text and the heart, I still wasn't satisfied with how the piece looked.
I then tried to layer it so that the heart over lapped the text completely.

I was much more satisfied with how this looked, as it made the poster seem less crowded, and also gave it a more efficient look. Due to this, I then changed the colour of the text back to the same red as the banners so that I could create a sense of uniformity.

To further improve the aesthetic theme, I changed all the type to the same font and removed all drop shadows. This made the text sit flatter, and also worked nicely with the vector theme.

So that the text wrapped nicely around the heart, I used the pen tool to create a shape, and instead of using the text tool on the line, I used it inside the shape and set it to the correct alignment. As this was for the right side of my poster, I set it to a right alignment. That way the heart would be the focal point of the poster.

This is how the poster looked after I had finished the text and all the alignments. I really like how it turned out as I feel that it meets all the objectives of the brief.
If I were to do this again, I think I would try out a different layout and experiment a bit more with colour schemes. I think I'd even attempt a series of posters with linking themes and ideas but different subject matters.

Over all I am pretty proud of how this poster turned out. I think it looks successful and would work efficiently in a public place such as schools or libraries. It has the right balance of eye catching and informative without being over the top.

Final Piece - Vectoring

I started off using the drawing software Manga Studio, as the vectoring tool has many editorial options, and is in my opinion much nicer to use than the Photoshop vector pen tool.
All my vectoring was done on a single layer.

I lowered the opacity of the sketch design, and worked over it using the vector tool.










































Using the line width correction tool on the vector platform, I layered strokes on the details of the heart over lap so that I could create transition in the otherwise monowidth lines.

After I had added the flat colours of the poster, I then used a clipping layer over my line art so that I could colour them to match the shapes. This gives them more of a clean-edge look and in my opinion makes it look more professional.
I chose the colour scheme of green and red as they are complimentary colours that contrast nicely with each other, and so would draw the eye to my poster.
I wanted to achieve a balance of eye catching and aesthetically pleasing. I think I have achieved this through the use of complimentary colours.

To give the poster more depth, I added details onto the heart. This makes it look more three dimensional, and serves to be more appealing.
So that the heart isn't over saturated, I decided to use more mute-red tones for the highlights and shading. This way I can retain the saturated colour of the heart, but also maintain definition without it burning one's retinas.

As a n experiment, I then proceeded to add gradients to the vector art. I wanted o see whether a fade into warmer colour would add depth to the piece, but I feel it just makes the colours too bright and saturated. I will continue with it to see how it looks with text, but I am unsure on the design.
I think the design without the gradient is much more successful, as the block colours really add to the vector design.

Final Piece - Altering the design.

This is the design that I started off with. Though I like some elements of it, such as how the heart is the centre piece of the design, I also feel like it was lacking in certain aesthetics that would make my poster more affective.
To over come this, I switched the style up a bit, incorporating a centre alignment on a diagonal, and added in a more exciting back ground.

This was the design that I settled on. I really like having the main titles on a diagonal, as I feel it makes the poster not only more interesting to look at, but it leaves greater room to have informative text. I also decided that it would look better with some repeated features, so I used the ribbon/banner idea for both the 'Love' and 'Human'. I felt like this would give my design a more professionally designed look, and make it look more high end.