What is Blank Poster?
Blank poster is a website where designers can enter competitions, these competitions are daily and weekly. The designers are given target words, these words are what the designers use to create poster of there choosing. This is the only piece of information that the website provides. Once you have designed your poster you submit it to their page, once submitted its up to the website owners to see what poster is the best. If the poster you created wins they post it onto their Instagram page and also their website. Every season they release a book where you can view all the winning posters. If you do get a chance of winning it enables people to see your work, you are building on your own portfolio. Companies can then see your work and other you some work. So overall the possibilities are endless. Below you will be able to see what there website looks like and also gives me some inspiration on what i could design for the current word.
The current word is LOOP, with this word i can think of loads of different things i could create. The main idea i have currently is to create something that shows someone doing something over and over again. This is where the idea to use a collage comes into play. My first idea is to gather images of different men walking and join them together to make one long strip of the motion of walking. I can also duplicate this to fill up the page and also somewhere in this poster i would like to include the word LOOP. This word needs to be bold as you can see in the posters above each main word can be easily seen so using a bold font is a necessity . Following the idea of creating a collage i could find different fonts that build up the main word. To show this idea in its true form i am going to sketch some few ideas i have for it. Looking at the page above it is clear to see the form of poster that are considered the winning ones. They each have there own independent values. This is something that i find so important when it comes to designing my own poster for this task. I want it to be specific to me therefore it shows me true capabilities.
Sketches
This is my first idea that i have thought of to do for this short task. As you can see the poster sketch doesn't really make much sense. The only part that does make sense is the word LOOP. So when i think of the word Loop i think of doing something over and over again, therefore you are creating a loop. So i started this sketch of with a few ideas the first idea was to have the word Loop being spelt again and again until i run out of room. The text will be different than the one shown in the sketch. I want to use magazine cut outs of each letter making it a some what collage. Next comes the confusing part of the sketch, this is the part with the swirly lines. My idea for this part of the design is to find different pictures of people walking. Once collected i will place them all together and show the motion of walking. This will be following the collage theme to tie everything together. As you can tell there are multiple different coloured swirly lines this is because i wanted to do different themes. So one swirly line could be a man and another line could be a women. Once completed it will show the loop of
someone walking. If i was just to do one main person the design would be dull and boring. This is where the collage effect comes into play. My idea is to find multiple different images that intertwine to one another, therefore building that motion of walking through different people. So for example i might find a photo of someone walking then i would cut out the leg and then find another photo of someone walking and cut out the torso. Once both cut out i would place them together and hopefully they would meet together perfectly. Overall i am excited to see what this design will look like. I think that i have gone bold with this idea and i hope that other people will interpret it the way i do.
Onto my other sketch, if you thought the previous sketch was confusing this one is on another level. After completing the sketch i thought to myself different ways that i could change the design and ultimately make it better. As you can see the focus point of the design is the loop d loop, that will stay with this design and there would be no changes made. As you can imagine using just a loop d loop would be boring and not give the design much character so that is where i thought of making a little theme park background. To start with i want to create the word loop out of green hedge. When i go to a theme park i can always see the neatly cut foliage surrounding the park. This gave me the idea to place the word loop at the bottom of the page and add some bush texture to it. It will add depth to the design and also by using a bright green i am making sure the design can be spotted from a distance away. As i already mentioned the loop d loop will stay in the location that i sketched and the only change would be to add a kart going round the track. For the background i am thinking of adding different rides and themes. Overall trying not to make the design look to busy but also trying to fill the left over spaces. Out of the two designs i believe this design would be viewed the way i want it to. Compared to the last sketch this design clearly shows that the word is loop, i find with the last design if you
was just to see the walking people you would have no idea what that poster is trying to say where as with this design you can clearly see what the poster is stating.
Design Process
To start the design process i had to decide what idea i wanted to go with. When choosing the idea i had to account for many things in
particular i had to account for the time frame.
This task is set to a week, this is due to the
website changing the subject work every
week. This then lead to my choosing the idea
i wanted to go with and this was the loop d
loop idea. I find that by using this idea i will
be able to finish the poster to a high quality
and also it gives me a wide range of creative-
ness. To start with the idea i decided to
include the main word, this being loop. My
idea was to create the word out of
bush textures therefore giving the word a bush feel. This being the centre point of the poster i wanted to include bright colours and also add a wide range of different textures. As you might be able to tell i also added some little flowers to the grass area below the text. This was inspired by walking around Theme parks and seeing there neatly organised floral display. Overall i am very happy with the way that this part of the design come out. If i was to complete this part of the design again i would consider added more extensive detail. I would really want that text to have a realistic bush feel.
Where we last left off there have been a couple things that i have added, to start with i will talk about the most obvious one and that
being the Loop d Loop, as you already
know one of the ideas was to add a loop
d loop as it covers the word Loop. By
adding this i want to give the poster a theme
park feel. The bright colours used in the
roller coasters shell provides an eye
catching scene and also provides another
centre point to the entire poster. When f
finding the right colour i had a lot of things
in my mind. I wanted to make sure that the
colour is bright but also will combine well
with the additional features i intend to add after. Choosing a darker blue was a bold move from me as i have always mentioned from the start to go bright colours. But like i mentioned earlier i needed a colour that would match well with addition background colours. So i thought i am most likely going to use a bright blue for the sky so i am getting both the things i wanted, one being bright colours and the other being using colours that don't clash. The yellow was used to tie in the Darker blue to the brighter blue, therefore making an even contrast between the two shades. It also provides additional brightness to the Poster. The other change i made was adding grass and flowers below the word loop. The grass was added by using a Grass paintbrush tool. This wasn't too hard to do and overall i thought it added a lot of needed depth to the design. Using the flowers also adds additional characteristics and provides the scene that i wanted to achieve and this being a neatly design floral display. Overall i am very happy with how this design is going so far and going off from this step i don't think i would change a thing.
After adding the roller coaster and plant features i decided it was time to tackle adding the sky background. As you can see there are two images, the one on the left is the beginning of this design step and the image on the right is the end of this design step. At the start of the design step i added the sky in, after looking at it for a while i thought that something was missing. It was either the bottom half of the background or i just didn't feel good leaving it the way it was. As you have already read i want to use depth in this poster and by leaving it the way it was depth wasn't even in the picture. So i decided to make a change, i used the polygon tool to cut out and remove some of the sides of the background design. I was trying to make the page feel that it was going in, therefore giving me the depth that i wanted to achieve in this poster. So once the first portion of the background was cut out i duplicated that image 3 times. To understand what i am doing you have to think that the middle of the page is a square coming from each corner of that square is a line going to each corner of the piece of paper. That provides you with the guidelines needed to make a depth look in any piece of work. So by following that guide i was able to place the cut out background directly where i need it. Once they were all in place i added some touch ups, this means i used the eraser tool to smooth the edges off making it look like the background intertwines with the blank background. This will provide me with an easy place for the lower portion of the design to sit. Once all of these touch ups were complete i came out with the design on the right hand side. I don't know about you but i think that the new design looks a lot better and also helps me provide depth into this poster. Overall i am very happy with the way that the design is going. On the other hand if i had to change anything about it i would want to make the lower outlines of the background a lot smoother i could do this by lowering the opacity on the eraser tool and go at it a lot more slower than what i did.
After changing the sky around i decided to move it once again, this time was to fill that white gap left between the bottom of the page and the bottom
of the sky feature. This was not all that has
changed and you might be able to notice what
has been added. There are two things one is
a big change and the other is lowkey. I will
talk about the smaller change i made and that
was adding a fence feature to add more detail
to the grass. As we all know when you see a
neatly floral feature at any location it is protected
with fence panelling. So i decided to give it a go
i was very happy with the way that it came out,
i found before it was missing that final piece and now it has received it the bottom half of the design is almost finished. The only thing missing is filling in that blank space. Now the big change that has been made was adding hot air balloons and also a banner. When i was researching different blank posters all most all of the posters submitted had text on saying what date it was, what the key word and also the designers name. When adding this to my design i didn't just want text to be floating and i also didn't want the text not to go with the theme. So i came up with the idea to include two hot air balloons holding a banner when i can place my text. I find it to be very similar to when you see a plane flying with advertisements and we all know a theme park loves to advertise. Overall i am still worried about filling that blank space i don't want the design to look over crowded and i also don't want it to all mix into one. An idea could be to follow the grass below and add it behind the Loop text, therefore giving me that depth that i have wanted throughout the short project.
As you might already be able to tell only a small portion has changed to the poster, this being filling in that annoying blank space. As you
just read i had an idea to fill that blank
space in with added grass features to
balance out the bottom half of the design.
I thought that it works really well and also
helps to achieve the long lasting problem
i run into when creating this poster. Although
i ran into these problems i didn't shy away
from that i wanted to make sure that when
a problem did occur i looked at all the
option to beat the problem. Overall the poster
came out how i wanted it to, all through the short project i had the idea to add small features that resembled a theme park. I am happy to not of added these features this was due to the design looking overcrowded. I find that the theme of the short project was carried out all the way through and even at the start when i had to decide what idea i was going to follow i was happy i did this one. If i was to complete this short project again i would aim to change the design in a way, i would stick with the idea of using a loop d loop, but change the background that i used. I find that when i'm looking at the design i wish i did something better with the background maybe add some clouds or even change it completely. However the outcome i have achieved i am still very happy with and will look forward to see how it does in the blank poster challenge.
