Visual Systems - Project 1

A Moment in Time

'you are asked to create a series of three posters that share a graphic system/convention, and that will revolve around a ‘moment in time’. The content displayed in each poster should follow a single theme and be designed to present the information that you have recorded'

The task for this project is to record data between 5-6, and represent them in a form of the 3 posters.

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Initial ideas

To start off and decide what I want to record I wrote down a mind map to help get some ideas on paper. At first I was quite stuck with what I wanted to do but slowly as I thought of one idea another sprang to mind.

I decided to record two ideas, people in the park between 5 - 6 and the news headlines between 5 - 6. I decided to sketch people in the park as it was discreet and also I thought I have not really used illustration in my designs before so I thought I would try and incorporate this into my posters.

I put down a time stamp each time I drew someone so I could record at that exact moment and what they were doing. I like how my sketches came out as the sketching adds this life and a movement to the image which a photo could not replicate.

I then recorded the news headlines between 5 - 6 from the three top news sites in the UK: The Telegraph, The Guardian and BBC News. I soon realised that documenting every single news headline in that hour would be too much to deal with so I decided to focus on the main topic at the moment, Covid 19.

The news headlines with the emoji beside it were the final headlines that I chose as they were the most impactful headlines from each news source.

Initial Designs

After taking this data I was still unsure on what I wanted to do so I started doing some research to see if any ideas could move me in the right direction. I created a mood board on Pinterest to get some inspiration flowing I made sure to find posters which used sketching as one of it's main elements.

Swiss Art Centre Poster by Mueller + Hess

I looked at Mueller + Hess Design group work to help inspire me. Used layering to Block out all the text provided and overlaying all imagery with horizontal white bands containing new information in each new poster. Each new element was over-printed on top of the last, resulting in a number of solutions offering multiple combinations. This inspired me to consider screen printing as I want to do something with layers.

These were the initial designs in response to the research I had collated. At this point I went and had a tutorial. My lecturer suggested to combine both of the data that I had collected. This helped to open up new ideas for me as I realised that these two bits of data work hand in hand because the both are recording the moment right now. Each piece of data contrast each other the calmness and normality of the people sitting in the park together compared to the scare mongering headlines of Covid.

Development

Once I had got my new design idea I went to work in trying to combine the two pieces of data together. I started off with scanning my sketches in and converting them to a vector so the image would not loose quality.

On Photoshop when each image was still a raster I changed the colouring of the image just to give me and idea on possible colours I would want to choose.

I then moved my imagery into illustrator and looked at how to convert the image into a vector and how I could change and edit them.

I then moved on to decided which image would be best with each chosen headline.

‘My 57 days in intensive care with Covid-19'

I chose to put this image with this headline as the person is on his own with back turned almost in a foetal position it links to the title because, it is all in a singular tense and 'intensive care' means he was unwell linking to this persons foetal position as if it could be him.

6,178 new Covid cases recorded - close to record from early May

I chose to put these two pieces of data together because these two people I sketched seem to be having a very normal and nice chat which juxtaposes with the headline which is depressing. Saying how in this moment as it so far through the pandemic everyone is now trying to act like normal and not worry about the news.

Majority of public thought Covid pandemic would be over by now

I linked these together as the man lying down seems to be contemplating what is happening with life like the headline which is saying none of us thought the pandemic could go on this long.

Poster Designs

Above is a progression of my initial designs I decided to move from black on a white background to vice versa. When I knew I wanted my background to be a colour when screen printing. I first thought of making the line a colour however I had this idea to make a news paper page the substrate for the poster meaning the colour line would just get lost in the page. The bottom image is my final design I tried to keep my design simple as I knew I wanted to get the data across as easy as possible.

Government Corona Virus Posters and Interface

For the colour of the ink in my posters I used, I took the colours from the UK government's own campaign for corona virus safety and information. I used this so people viewing the poster could immediately see the correlation between my own design and the government. I took the blue and the green from the government posters. I then decided to bring in the colour red to make it my third colour as I thought yellow would not define the text and the imagery enough. Red also has connotation of the BBC, danger and with the newspaper I bought for the substrate the main colour in the Coronavirus spread.

Screen Printing

When I moved onto screen printing I had the idea of getting the news papers from the three news outlets I had decided to record. However I went quite late on in the day and the only newspaper big enough (I was wanting an A3 + size as my design was A3) that was left was the telegraph. So to make sure the type of news paper did not distract the viewer from the design I made sure to remove the header on the newspaper.

I chose the pages to print on before I did some tests to make sure that I didn't make mistakes on any of the pages I needed. I choses pages which covered the corona virus headlines.

These are two examples of some of the test I did before I printed my final posters. The image on the left is my first print just straight onto the news paper but the text is still difficult to see even more so if there were images behind it. To help bring the images forward I used a wash of white to make them stand out. The image on the left is a test on another type of paper just to see if it looked better by itself but I thought it lost some of it's meaning with out the articles about Covid behind.

Final Designs

I am very pleased how these posters came out because I think they represent the data well, putting the white wash underneath definitely brought my own imagery forward to create a hierarchy on the page. I think they all convey the feeling of the moment right now. How everyone is acting normal whilst this pandemic is still rearing its head. If I was going to have more time I would have made sure to not rip the top edge of one of my posters.