Poster a Day challenge

Ms Farrimond/Day 1
Used Photopea.
Random word: underline
Font: Petrona. Added black boxes to break up some of the letters. Design style: starting to use Swiss Design
I think I used the wrong font style for Swiss design. I think I should have used a sans serif font like Helvetica.

Ms Farrimond/Day 2
I used Photopea. Random word: Breeze. I Googled ‘Swiss typography style posters’ and found a 'Gen X' one that really liked and wanted to practice recreating. I used a rectangle tool to make a mustard coloured background. Then I added two text boxes. One with “bree e” and one with “Z”. I lowered the opacity of the Z so some of the red letters came through. I used all lower case like in the example. I couldn’t get the right green colour. I need to practice choosing the correct colours more.

I Googled ‘Swiss Design’ again and found a Smiths poster that I really liked. I liked how the letters overlapped. I searched the font list for a similar looking font and found Droid Sans. Then I created a big letter B. I went to layer - duplicate layer to get an exact copy of the letter B, changed the colour and moved it a bit. Then repeated for the third letter B. I’m still not happy with the colours. I can’t seem to get them to match the poster I found. I’m also thinking that I’m starting to copy too much from the posters I’m finding and I will try and be more original in my ideas tomorrow.

Ms Farrimond Day 4. I used Photopea. Random word: supplementary. I decided today to not look for inspiration on Google and to try and be creative with my own ideas. I did though Google what supplementary actually meant and it means: completing or enhancing something. This gave me a little idea to maybe repeat the word until it filled the page and therefore, it would have ‘completed’ the page. It was a silly idea but I thought I would go with it. I like how the words look real like they could be from a foreign language.

Ms Farrimond Day 5. I used Photopea. Random word: Hand. The word hand generates such a literal response in me. Try as I might I couldn’t shake the image of a hand. I did Google ‘Gestalt posters’ and learnt that one of the principles of this is that the human mind is able to fill in the gaps in between shapes and create meaning. I wanted to play around with this idea and also practice using the pen tool. I am pretty happy with the stylised shape of the hands. The bottom hand didn’t work properly but I thought it looked like a thumbs up so I kept it. Which absolutely proves the gestalt principles.

Ms Farrimond Day 6. I used Photopea. Random word: Defend. When I saw my random word was the first thing if thought about how castles where able to defend themself by being built on top of hills. So I decided to use the pen tool to create some hills. Using Gestalt principles I didn’t need to add any more detail as the shape was enough to suggest hills. I then took inspiration from Neville Brody’s ‘Panic’ poster where he tried to create panic by making everything seem calm. So I chose a font (BP Script) that looked sweet and innocent which I think would make people feel confused. ‘What is on the other side of that hill?’, ‘why if everything is so calm do we need to defend it?’ I consolidated the on edge feeling generated by confusion by choosing the happiest colour I could think of; yellow.

Ms Farrimond. Day 7. Random word: Rare. I used Photopea. I knew I wanted to experiment with blurring an image in photopea after reading about the technique in my graphic design ideas book. It said that blurring can provide a clarity that a perfectly focused poster might not. It can make the viewer engage emotionally. Rare made me think of rare animals. So I googled this and found that the black panther is a very rare animal. I think it generates the meaning that the panther is slowly disappearing both in the wild and in front of our eyes in this poster.

Ms Farrimond Day 8. Random word: Wreck. I used Photopea. In my graphic design ideas book it said one way to draw attention is to mix black and white with colour. When I saw my random word I knew it needed to be red to symbolise that a ‘wreck’ usually means something bad has happened. Possibly loss of life. I wanted to practice layering so I found an image online of a wreck. I like how it came out and I think I would use this technique again. I don’t like the text though. I want to go back to adding more colour tomorrow and refocusing back on text.

Ms Farrimond Day 9. I used Photopea. Random word: Shiver. Today I wanted to learn how to import fonts into Photopea. I Googled how to do it and followed the instructions. I found fontm.com a good source of downloadable fonts. I spent the rest of my ten minutes playing about with different layers of circles and rectangles in two colours to create this pattern. I took inspiration from a Pink Floyd poster. I don't really like how they came out and I still didn't get any colour in the poster today. Time for a radical shakeup tomorrow!

Ms Farrimond Day 10. Random word: Perceive. The word ‘perceive’ is a super word for what the Gestalt principles say the human brain does with placement of shapes and text. In that you don’t need to have a detailed drawing in order for the brain to perceive what it is meant to be. I decided to try and create a fun and colourful poster today with the idea that I could make the viewer ‘perceive’ that what they are seeing is a hand holding balloons. But what it really is, is just the word ‘perceive’ and some wiggly lines. I am quite pleased how it came out.

Ms Farrimond Day 11. Random word: Bike. I wanted today to play around with text as an image. So I was really pleased when I got the random word ‘bike’. I instantly thought that the 'B' could become the wheels on a bike. It was actually trickier than I thought trying to make the rest of the letters create the rest of the bike. I worried that because I jumbled them up it would be difficult to work out what the final word is. I tried my best in the time that I had. I like how the wheels turned out and I like the the spots of red colour. I’m also pretty pleased about the graphic nature of the end result. It looks like it could be a logo maybe? Anyways, not sure that I succeeded creating a bike or succeeded in keeping the word bike easily readable. But I had a lot of fun with this one today and this is definitely something I want to experiment with more.

Ms Farrimond day 12. Random word: celebration. I wanted to practice using Photopea on my phone today. Let's just say it was HARD and leave it there!!!!!!!!