COM106: Poster Design

Using the concepts of space, scale, and rhythm explored in the preliminary exercises you will be designing two posters for performances by the Hong Kong Ballet. Each poster must include all of the following information:


Gala de Estrellas: Festival de Pas de Deux
Teatro Municipal de Santiago
Agustinas 794
Metro Santa Lucia, Santiago

30 July 2008
8:00PM

Jin Yao
Zhang Yao
Principle dancers from the Hong Kong Ballet.

The Butterfly Lovers by Eve Chan
Turandot by Natalie Weir

Four additional performances are scheduled on 1, 2, 4 and 5 August.


You may, though, include extra words such as 'and' [i.e. Jin Yao and Zhang Yao], or others as needed to help with your design [i.e. Jin Yao and Zhang Yao perform The Butterfly Lovers... etc]. You need not include extra words, but may do so as needed.

The first poster will use this image as its background:



The second foster will use this images as its background:



All type must be included within the space of the given images. You may not resize or crop the images in any way.

Once again you will be working only with Helvetica, though you may use bold, regular, and italic. I want you focusing on space and scale issues to form a successful information hierarchy. You will also be working only with greyscale.

Each poster should emphasis/prioritize the information differently; consider different ways to look at what is the most important information to convey. Think of a poster as being viewed from three different distances: across the room, six feet away, and two feet away. Consider how different parts of the information are shown at those different distances. A poster need not reveal all of its information to the viewer across the room; it should reward the viewer at each of these distances differently.

You will need to print two copies of each poster for submission; the posters are due at the beginning of class -- 4:00PM -- on Tuesday November 24th.

COM106 Exercise

Based on the demonstrations and discussions in class you will be creating three visual adaptations of William Shatner's rendition of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.



The first design will use the first verse and will be designed using a single vertical axis of orientation:

Picture yourself in a boat on a river
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly
A girl with kaleidoscope eyes

Cellophane flowers of yellow and green
Towering over your head
Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes
And she's gone

The second design will use the second verse and will be designed using two vertical axes of orientation:

Follow her down to a bridge by a fountain
Where rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies
Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers
That grow so incredibly high

Newspaper taxis appear on the shore
Waiting to take you away
Climb in the back with your head in the clouds
And you're gone

The third design will use the final verse and will be designed using a diagonal axis of orientation:

Picture yourself on a train in a station,
With plasticine porters with looking glass ties
Suddenly someone is there at the turnstile
The girl with kaleidoscope eyes

Your job is to attempt to capture the emphasis and pacing of Shatner's performance with the way you use space, position, grouping, and scale. You will execute your designs in Adobe Illustrator and can use only one typeface -- Helvetica -- and may only use regular and bold.

COM320 Project Two: Typographic Map

Using only color, type, and typographic elements design a poster that communicates your trip from your home to room G238 in Donovan Hall. Consider the experience of traveling from your home to this space, not just the literal process. How long does it take? Do you walk, rode a bike, take public transportation, or drive? Are there obstacles and/or difficulties, or can you travel easily? Is it bumpy, smooth, noisy, quiet, straight, curvy, confusing, or familiar? Does the environment change over time? What other ways can you think of to describe your experience?

The goal of this assignment is not to create a map that has precise information in terms of distance and locations, but one that accurately relates your experience of the trip solely through the use of type and typographic elements. You will need to consider how the elements relate to each other on semantic/syntactic axis as well as in relationship to a basic time-series structure.

To begin your project you will be expected to write a narrative description of your trip; this narrative should be at least 500 words, though a really detailed on may be considerably longer. Be incredibly descriptive; perhaps make the trip several times in order to examine different types of experience. What do you see, hear, feel (both tactilely and emotionally)? Consider the pace of events. What you are looking for is an enormity of experience (data) from which to shape a meaningful map/design. This narrative will then be narrowed down in terms of what parts must be handled by language the use and what can be handled through visual organization and the expressive use of type.

[click on images to enlarge]


Ryan Nudo


Jeremy Painter


Peter Nuzzolo


Dexter Girven


Jenna Nicholson


Jean-Paul Quashie


Travis Schwegel


Katie Aiello

 

COM320 Project One: Reading Information

Edward Tufte declares right up front that one of the key goals of any information graphic is to “avoid distorting what the data have to say.” Please note that Tufte does not say that information graphics must not distort the data, as that would mostly likely be an impossible goal. It is important, though, to recognize that every graphic presentation involves some interpretive demands upon the naked data. As such, it is important that designers become well versed in the pitfalls of designing with information.

For this project you will using two data sets: 1] the daily weather in New York City and Washington DC, and 2] the final daily values of Dow Jones Industrial Average, the NASDAQ Composite Index, and the S&P 500 for the entire month of July. With this information you will create two information graphic systems [charts], each of which will tell a different story using the same information. You will, in fact, be using information that has no causal relationship, but the first of your designs will need to produce the graphic implication that there is indeed a causal relationship while the other will attempt merely to present the information as unrelated while it still shares some common space. You will be expected to explore different approaches to this assignment; while it will necessarily follow some form of a time-series design, there are many ways to approach the issue. Utilize the examples from Tufte to foster ideas.

Your designs will be executed in Adobe Illustrator; each design will need to fit on standard letter paper; each design must be black & white, and may use only one typeface. Make sure you clearly differentiate different bits of data, label elements effectively, and develop some method for guiding the viewer to the intended conclusions. All of these things should be achieved with a minimum of explanation.

[click on images to enlarge]


Jeremy Painter: Graphic Manipulation


Jeremy Painter: Graphic Integrity


Ryan Nudo: Graphic Manipulation


Ryan Nudo: Graphic Integrity


Katie Aiello: Graphic Manipulation


Katie Aiello: Graphic Integrity


Jenna Nicholson: Graphic Manipulation


Jenna Nicholson: Graphic Integrity