GDS 108 Design Media and Principles

Project 3: Event Promotion
Instructor: John Bonadies

 

Objective

For the first part of the semester you have studied the basic principles of visual organization. Professional designers employ these principles day-in and day-out when creating their designs. It’s important not only for you to know them, but to also work with them—to see how changing—using combinations, etc. can alter, and improve your designs.

You are going to continue to work with these principles in creating print and electronic promotional materials for a lecture. 

You will be required to create 3 different poster designs for the same event to present to the class. The class, as a whole, will vote on each design.  From this, you will make the necessary alterations to your design and then create:

  • Poster: 11” X 17” full-color (vertical or horizontal)
  • Postcard: U.S. postal regulation, full-color on one site, black ink on the mail side
  • Advertisement: black & white newspaper ad
  • Email graphic: Color, 640 pixels wide

 

Secondary objectives

You will also learn about:

  • Creating your designs in InDesign
  • Researching for imagery to use in your designs.
  • Organizing your file folders
  • Manipulating your images in Photoshop and saving them for color and black and white printing
  • Creating presentations of your designs for on-screen and face-to-face display
  • Creating press-ready files to supply a commercial printer

 

Examples

See my blog for examples of posters.

 

Procedure

Part One: Background research
- Find 2 posters for any type of event.
- One poster should be what you consider “good design”. The other poster should be what you consider “poor design”.

Scan or take a digital photo of each poster (save as a jpeg file so you can open it in Illustrator.

In Illustrator:

  • For the “good” poster: indicate what principles of visual organization the designer has used (use Illustrator’s drawing tools to draw boxes, arrows, etc.)
  • For the “poor” poster indicate what visual organization principles could be used to improve the poster

- Save each file as a jpeg. (no larger than 4X6 and 72dpi)
- Place it on your blog.
- Write a brief summary of what principles are working on the good poster.
- Write a brief summary of why the poor poster is not working and what principles could help the design.

Be ready to discuss in class on Wed, Oct. 21.

 

Part Two: Creating your file structure
Create a “Project” folder in your DigiShare folder: YourName-Project3

        Inside this folder create the following folders:

  • Research Images
  • Poster Design
  • Postcard
  • Advertisement
  • Email Graphic
  • Client Content

 

Part Three: Choosing your event
Download event_choices.txt and copy it into your “Client Content" folder. Choose one of the following lecture events and use the copy for in your poster designs.

A. Unpacking Globalization: What China Means For America

B. Media Life: The Experience of Love, Sex & Death in Digital Culture

C. Playing One Race Against the Other: How the United States Managed Labor

D. Climate Policy: The Prospects for Action in the US and Abroad!

E. Gender Equity: The Slow Advancement of Women

 

Part Four: Researching images
Carefully read the your chosen project brief.

Make a list of images that come to mind—use single “key” words

Also consider images that convey an emotion, feeling, or idea that could have some relation to the content.

Search the web for images.  A good place to start is Google Images: http://images.google.com

  • You can search these resources with “key” words that you created from your image list.

You can also search the library for images—check out the book and print to class to scan.

And don’t forget, you can also use your own photography and illustration skills,

When you find images that may be useful, copy them to your “Research Images” folder.

 

Part 5:  Designing the poster

Using one or more of the principles of visual organization that you have learned, begin to create sketches of different layouts of the poster.

Have 6-9 thumbnail sketches for review.

Scan them and put them on your blog

Be ready to discuss in class on Wed, Oct. 28.

 

Part 6:  Designing the postcard, advertisement, and email graphic

Postcard Rate Dimensions: Min height: 3-1/2"; Max height: 4-1/4"; Min length: 5"; Max length: 6"

Letter Rate Dimensions: Max height: 6-1/8"; Max length: 11"

Advertisement dimensions (News Gazette): 2-column ad: 3.806" w X 7" h

Email Graphic: 640 pixels wide; RGB; JPEG file

 

Note: Refer to our class schedule page for the rest of the project deadlines.

 

 

 

 

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