Promotional Communication Series
Overview
The goal of this project is to create a series of marketing materials introducing the event Summer Fridays at Frick 2021. The assignment focuses on use of hierarchy through typography, color, and space as well as expression through emotion and abstraction. I will explore different aspects of design and consider distinct elements that can effectively communicate the event’s details to help leave a memorable impression on viewers. The final deliverables include the following:
- Promotional poster
- Facebook event banner
Festival Content (3/22/21)
I began by gathering informational content for promoting the event. I considered what types of content would be interesting to a viewer to convince them to attend.
Poster Content
- Title of the Event: 2021 — Summer Fridays at the Frick
- Paragraph: This Summer the Frick will offer an exciting and diverse lineup of entertaining performances, family-friendly activities, a wine bar, and varied safe dining options, casual food from local food trucks, and the opportunity to picnic on the lush Frick grounds. We are all excited to started spending time together and this 10-week, outdoor-focused series features a variety of musical performances, activities for children and families, and other entertainment
appealing to all ages! - Date, time, and location:
Dates — Fridays July 2 — Sept 3, 2021
Time — Open Fridays from 10:00 a.m. until 9:00 p.m., Performances begin at 6:30 p.m.
Location — 7227 Reynolds St. Pittsburgh, PA 15208 — North Lawn on The Frick Grounds - Relevant ticket information:
Admission-free performances are held on the North Lawn on the Frick grounds beginning at 6:30 p.m.
Relevant Ticket Information — Tickets presented upon entry
- Admission to the Frick grounds for everyone — FREE
- Admission to the Car and Carriage Museum — FREE
- All admissions and tours for Frick members — FREE
Facebook Banner
- Title: August 6: BEE Yourself
- Food: Cousins Maine Lobster, Southside BBQ, Las Chicas, and Sugar and Spice food trucks
- Description: Bee Parks and the Hornets will offer rockin’ music, puppetry and audience participation to inspire young people to get up and move — both with their feet and in their communities. With all-original songs that promote kindness, equality, self-confidence, social justice, environmental awareness and dancing your heart out, Bee Parks and the Hornets take audience members of all ages on a musical adventure that will open up spirits and imaginations. Stop by Busy Bee’s Arty Party face painting, bringing fun and color to your world.
Moodboard
I gathered a series of related promotional posters and banners to create a moodboard in guiding the design of my materials. I tried to find examples that expressed similar moods to the event content, conveying happy, light, and vibrant emotions. I also was drawn to images that had a lot of nature and green colors since it captures the outdoor mood of the park environment.
Illustrator Exercises
To familiarize myself with the software to create illustrations and execute my designs, I completed Pen Tool and Pathfinder exercises on Illustrator. I practiced tracing a penguin using the pen tool and got to experiment with setting anchor points as well as adjusting curve handles. I also tried out the Pathfinder tool to manipulate shapes for replicating parts of a robot.
Thumbnail Sketches (3/29/21)
I brainstormed a couple initial ideas for how I wanted the layout of my posters to look. I tried to think of different ways to support and represent the content through illustration. My graphics were inspired by the setting of the event, and I tried to highlight the feeling of summer outdoors through nature and sunlight.
Color scheme: For my original color scheme, I tried to plan some colors for my poster that would help portray the feeling of summer. I wanted to focus on green to showcase the nature setting as well as yellow to bring a light, cheerful mood to the illustrations.
Typography: For the font choice, I wanted to choose a font that would look fancier to better represent the mansion. So for the heading titles, I planned to use Garamond. For the body text I wanted it to be easy to read, so I chose a simple sans serif font Atkiv Grotesk.
Digital Iteration 1 (3/31/21)
I began by digitizing my poster to get my initial ideas down onto text and illustrator graphics to better visualize how the composition might look. This was a very rough draft, but just getting started with the initial digital poster helped me realize some of the challenges of this design such as having to fit a lot information as well as supporting visuals onto one poster layout.
For the poster’s illustration content, I chose to have a large sun illustration as the center of attention to help convey the vibrant, warm atmosphere of Summer Fridays at the Frick. Some of the initial feedback I received to improve this draft included:
- Incorporating a more clear color hierarchy since right now the tones of color have very similar value, especially if put into greyscale
- Potentially layering levels of green meadows to add a more interesting visual element and portray the Pittsburgh hills
- Adding an offset to the composition where the meadow starts so the poster isn’t so harshly split down the middle
- Enforcing clearer sense of information hierarchy, I could play more with font size and placement
Digital Iteration 2 and Interim Critique (4/7/21)
For my next iteration, I made improvements to my design based on the feedback I received and tried to better convey the information hierarchy on my poster through variation in text size, weight, and layout. I added a graphic for the Frick building because I felt this helped to further portray the setting of the event. This led me to shift the color palette since the Frick itself is a pinkish color, and I also tried to incorporate the pink into the title and the banner flowers. In the Facebook banner, I reused the hills from the main event poster to draw consistency between the two.
During the Interim Critique, I received more helpful feedback from my peers:
- In the Facebook banner, could place the name of the event before the date to have the more important information be read first
- Further differentiating the hierarchy between the title and date in the Facebook banner
- The Frick building looks like it’s floating, so it would be nice to include some detail grounding it such as moving it higher or adding a layer of grass in front of it
- Color for the Frick could be a more peachy pink to match the shade used in the Facebook banner
- A mini Frick could also be added to the banner to create consistency
Digital Iteration 3 (4/12/21)
For my next set of refinements, I decided to really push my design to include finer details as well as variation in text hierarchy. I still tried to stick with a simple vector graphic art style, but I wanted the Frick to resemble the castle-like mansion that it is rather than the previous more office building-like depiction.
I tested out a couple different variations of my poster to see which layout might be most effective. In the compositions, I made the Frick the larger centerpiece illustration rather than the sun component since it is more relevant to the event and includes more visual details. I played around with colors and also placement of the text.
Feedback I received on these drafts to help refine them before the final version included:
- Shifting the placement of the text to a more column format over the meadow to leave more space in the center for the graphics
- Combining elements from both posters, keeping the composition and illustration elements of the leftmost one and incorporating the color scheme of the middle one below.
I liked the new layout of the poster because of the extra room, it looked a lot cleaner. I originally made refinements to the more pink and yellow colored posters. This one felt like it had a more vintage feeling to it aesthetically with the muted colors. In the end, I did decide to go with the blue, green, pink color scheme however because it felt the most visually captivating and better embodied the outdoor summery feeling of the event.
For my new color scheme, I drew inspiration from a new set of mood board posters. I liked the example posters below because the colors in them feel very light and vibrant. I took samples of color from each to create my own color palette. I was especially drawn to the bold blue used for the sky.
For my final font choice, I used Broadway for the large title because it has a bold yet vintage feeling to it that helps to capture the historic elements of the Frick. For the subtitle font, I used Acumin Variable Concept because it is more condensed, and its simplicity adds nice contrast to the more decorative appearance of the title font.
Final Critique (4/14/21)
In the end, I went with the blue color palette combined with the pink and yellow poster’s composition for my posters presented during final critique. A few suggestions I received included:
- Getting rid of the Time subheading because it isn’t strictly necessary
- Making the body text a darker color rather than white so it is more visible
Final Pieces (4/14/21)
For my finished pieces, I made a few adjustments from feedback I received during critique and reached my final designs. Overall, I’m happy with how my final posters came out as the color and composition help convey the outdoor summer vibes of Fridays at the Frick.
Reflection
In conclusion, this poster project was a great learning experience. I enjoyed using Illustrator and learning to work with the pen tool and layers. Layers were especially useful for tracing, and I quickly realized how helpful grouping and layering separate components were for blocking multiple shapes and moving them around.
I also learned a lot about the creative process of creating a poster. There was so much to take into consideration from text placement to illustrations and color scheme. Getting these pieces to all fit together was definitely a challenge. I realized looking at other posters for inspiration and creating a mood board was really helpful throughout the design process.
Learning to work with a limited color palette was a big hurdle, and an important takeaway was to consider the value of the colors as a way to measure how well they stand out. Just seeing everything in greyscale helps to put into perspective the contrast levels. I was able to improve on my original color palette by switching to more vibrant, higher contrast values.
In the end, it was interesting to see just how much my poster had evolved over the various iterations. For next time, I hope to be even more adventurous with my initial designs so that I can branch out with various creative ideas at the start of the process. Overall, I enjoyed getting to design these posters and learn about composition, illustration, and color theory along the way.
