Mark Sykes

Originally the inspiration for this came from various leaflets picked up at various tourist information offices while looking for information on activities that were taking place.

While most of these are obviously professionally produced I hoped to at least make a reasonable attempt at developing my own version of one of these.

It was while selecting images for the mood board that I came up with the idea of trying to develop two discrete posters.

The first trying to deliver a personal message, while at the same time highlighting the need to take exercise on a regular basis as part of a healthy lifestyle.

The other to be more generic in terms of trying to attract people to make use of the countryside around them, but without the use of an overly formal message.

As I essentially saw the project as a means of experimenting with the tools available, I wanted to try and approach this with as flexible a remit as possible.

Information Poster

With this in mind I found a current initiative called ‘change 4 life’ and thought that it would give added credence to the first poster if I could in some way incorporate this.

Since I already had a basis around which to develop the first poster I used several logos/messages associated with this in order to give cohesion to the visual impact of this.

You have to keep in mind that this first poster was intended for display within health organisations, doctor’s surgeries etc.

So, in associating this with a current government initiative I was simply trying to strengthen the impact of this.

As there was an overriding colour theme within the images that I had downloaded I decided to stick with this and try to enhance the use of the bright colours in order to give the poster additional impact.

While there was a certain amount of time spent trying to manipulate existing images the hardest part of this was trying to decide which parts added value and which could be discarded.

After the basic manipulation the main problem was trying to come up with useable phrases, which would have impact but not sound as though they were preaching to people (not as easy as it sounds).

Although this ultimately ended up focussing on the individual I do feel that given more time it may have been possible to try and incorporate a group/family element into this somewhere.

However, given the timeline this wasn’t realistic as it was actually quite difficult to try and get a co-ordinated set of messages that made sense together.

Overall, I was reasonably happy with the colour scheme and the general message sent out, but just feel that there could have been a slightly better visual impact.

The small images of sporting activities near the bottom could probably have been better and didn’t give quite the impact I was looking for.

Promotion Poster

There is always going to be a certain amount of difficulty in trying to find images that give the sort of impact that you are looking for when trying to create a largely visual poster.

While I had an initial thought of having some kind of montage there was no real perception of what this would be.

After looking through numerous photos that I had taken while out walking I started by thinking about what kind of image would portray what I was looking for.

Given that this was supposed to be a generic poster highlighting places from across the country it was not really possible to use specific landmarks as I did not feel that this met the criteria.

Instead I decided to look at incorporating images from different types of landscapes (specifically the Pennine moors and the Yorkshire dales), but without making any reference to place names etc.

Originally, I had thought about using several mini-images as part of one collage but when I started importing some of these into photoshop I realised that they would not really be large enough.

Since I had stated that I wanted the posters to be able to grab people’s attention I decided that the images needed to be larger in order to do this.

With this in mind I started working on two sets of images, one to be based placed at the top and the other filling the same space at the bottom of the poster.

In some ways, these ended up being fairly similar and although it would probably have been slightly better if there had been more contrast between the two, I only had a limited amount of material to actually work with.

As there was still a large space in the middle to try and fill I had in mind an image that contained a signpost. However, as I worked on this I realised that it simply didn’t have the impact that I needed.

To try and deal with this problem I cut out the signpost and created a larger vertical image to try and juxtapose against the horizontal layers formed by the collages at the top and bottom.

I then tried to find some slightly more lowland scenes to place against this simply to give a slightly better balance of landscapes within the poster as a whole.

While the signpost was intended as a visual reference to the idea that there are many places that someone can visit, the text used to surround this centrepiece doesn’t quite (in my mind) emphasize this enough.

I did find it very difficult to try and sum up everything that the images represent to me in just a few words.

However, I still feel that this is a reasonable attempt at the message I was trying to get across but could perhaps have done with some slightly more diverse images (perhaps a nice village scene, scenic building etc.).

Unfortunately, I simply didn’t have any photos like this to use.

File Types

PSD

This is used as a way of keeping a detailed copy of the tools, techniques etc. applied throughout the creative stages of a particular piece of work.

In this version you will have access to the full detail captured as part of the working copy of the file (layers, adjustments, masks etc.).

The main benefit being that at any point in time you can actually go back to the original and edit this, making changes to how the final work will look.

JPEG

As this is a compressed version of a PSD file what happens is that all the separate adjustment layers etc. will be lost once the file is saved in this format.

Therefore, you have to be absolutely certain that no further changes will ever need to be made or make sure you keep a copy in both file formats.

Essentially, this is used for transmitting to third parties, whether by disk/e-mail or for uploading onto a website where anyone viewing the image will not need to see the detail.

Trying to keep the theme of creating a strong visual impact, I used a fairly bright blue from the colour palette as a background to try and make the images stand out.

As the photographs being used were images I had taken at varying times the first task was really to try and select those which might complement each other.

I always had in mind that there would be some kind of collage type effect, but this did not really firm up as an idea until I had started experimenting with some of the images.

Montage of Moorland Scene/Rock Formation

As I wanted to experiment as part of the process of putting these images together, I went through several different types of adjustment before actually settling on the final versions.

This was also affected to some degree by trying to create a collage of different images where there will always be a degree of difference in light levels/colours etc.

With a lot of outdoor photography, it can require some tweaking in order to try and get a balanced image (especially when trying to ‘match’ different images).

Moorland Scene

Before

After

As I hope can be seen there has been a small amount of cropping around the sky as part of the process of trying to get two images to line up.

There was also a need to try and lighten this image up a small degree as part of the process of trying to get a colour balance across the two.

In terms of tools, this has been achieved using ‘levels adjustment’ to bring out the midtones (something that I found was particularly useful for landscape images), and slightly intensifying the ‘colour balance’ to give a brighter colour mix.

Rock Formation

Before

After

Again there has been a certain amount of cropping of the sky layer to try and balance out the skyline across the two images.

This time, however, the image adjustment has been applied using the ‘curves’ tool.

Essentially this is looking to achieve a similar effect as above while using the other key adjustment tool to lighten/brighten the overall image.

The main problem, after colour balancing etc. was really the sky layer as the second image had been taken in darker cloud conditions.

To try and remedy this I used the selection tools to highlight the cloud layer on the second image and then filled this with a blue background.

Then, to balance the two images I used the ‘clone stamp’ to take the lighter sky from the first image and essentially copy this across to the second image.

Layer adjustments

Final Montage

Montage of River Scene/Signpost/Pastoral Scene

As with the previous selection the key aspect of any montage is to try and get a reasonable balance across the images.

Signpost

Before

After

While I originally started out with a full sized image including the signpost this wasn’t quite working when looking at the rest of the poster.

After trying various combinations I came up with the idea of cutting the signpost out to form a centrepiece between the two farmland scenes.

As this was darker than the other images I changed the levels on this to create a ‘lighter’ feel (I believe the mid-tones were the ones most in need of adjustment). This was especially important to try and create a reasonable match in respect of light levels across all 3 images.

River Scene

Before

After

In order to try and get a slightly better composition, and to tie the image in with the other elements, I used the crop tool before adding this into the final montage.

Pastoral Scene

Before

After

Again, as above, this has been slightly cropped in order to try and get a better composition before adding this into the final montage.

Then, by resizing these I was able to try and line up the skyline across all three images to give the eye a line to follow when looking across the collage.

It was also at this stage that I looked at trying to fit the text into the spaces around the images.

I also wanted to try and keep a reasonably informal feel to the text, rather than having something that looked like it was straight out of a government department.

With this in mind I used a text style that I had incorporated in the previous poster (Comic Sans MS).

Not having saved the full details of the technique used in the previous poster, I used Grouping and Merging again to show how this particular technique works in more detail.

Final Montage (including text)

(font = Comic Sans MS/Regular/24pt)

Montage of Gritstone/Limestone

As I was trying to merge two images with a similar theme (but taken in different areas), the adjustment process required here is similar to that used for the first collage.

Part of the difference with this collage is that the images were both taken in fairly dull cloud conditions and as such both needed working on to try and create a bright feel to go with the rest of the poster.

Again, there was a certain amount of experimentation going on to try and create ‘matched’ images.

Gritstone

Before

After

To begin with this needed a certain amount of cropping to try and remove some of the foreground, which didn’t really add value to the image.

Again, as there was a certain dull quality to the overall image tones I wanted to create a brighter feel to this so that it would fit with the rest of the images

I did this by using ‘curves’ to change the overall quality of the image and as I still felt that the tones weren’t quite as they should be, I adjusted the ‘brightness/contrast’ to try and get a better fit with the second image.

Limestone

Before

After

With this particular image there wasn’t a great deal of colour but there were a lot of midtones. Given this the best way of lightening this up was by using the ‘levels’ adjustment.

As there was still a difference with the sky layer I decided to copy the sky from the limestone image and invert this horizontally over the gritstone image.

To try and blend this in I added a mask over the area where the moorland joined the sky, then gradually took away part of the layer until I felt I had a reasonably blended area around the skyline.

Layer adjustments

Final Montage

Final Poster

Mark Sykes

I started by simply creating a poster sized file while leaving the background as plain white to begin with.

As I wanted to create an information poster that would be used within the medical/healthcare sector, I decided that by using an NHS logo, it would add authority to the message I was trying to convey.

I downloaded the original graphic from the internet and was originally going to break it down into several pieces and then use these throughout the poster. However, after experimenting with this it didn’t quite create the effect I was looking for so I decided to just use the logo.

In order to get the desired effect, I imported the full image onto a new layer and then used the rectangular marquee tool to cut the ‘NHS logo’ out onto a new layer.

By going into this layer I repositioned where it would appear and added a layer style by adding Drop Shadow and Bevel & Emboss, to try and make it stand out more.

While I was looking for facts and figures that might be available to use, I came across a current initiative called ‘Change4Life’.

http://www.nhs.uk/change4life

In order to see if this could be incorporated into the poster I looked into this program as part of the project. As the promotion is running at the present time I felt that tying this phrase into the information poster would give it added impact.

Although the promotional material is not available to the general public I found a version of a poster template that is being used as part of this initiative.

After resizing this down to a reasonable size I placed it in the top right hand corner, as a way of giving it prominence.

I then proceeded to remove certain of the elements in order that I could create my own imagery within the template.

To remove the plain text I used the marquee rectangle tool to highlight around a piece of text and then selected fill/background colour to replace this with a white canvas.

As parts of the poster were already using yellow, to replace the text in these areas (that was too small to read) I selected the area, clicked on the foreground colour box and then used the dropper to highlight the yellow to match with the colour from the image I had downloaded. I then used this to fill over the text.

As I liked the idea of having a ‘poster within a poster’ I chose to edit this to make it more relevant to the project

Before

After

By replacing the text with what I felt was a positive message, as required in the brief, I was hoping to catch people’s attention as they walked past and get them to think about what they might be able to achieve.

To make this stand out I needed to have a strong visual impact, and so imported a new text style for the lettering. By using a large font size on a white backdrop this helped to make the text visible from a distance.

As each line of text was effectively a separate layer I then decided to group these so that I could consolidate them later on.

Using the text toolbar I then proceeded to experiment with the orientation. I eventually settled with the Warp text tool and the Rise option. After some minor adjustments to the bend/distortion I decided that I was happy with the effect that had been created and so decided to merge the layers to create the final version.

Unfortunately I did not save a copy of these workings so this is not visible in the file, but you will notice that the final image does not include any text layers as these have all been merged into one layer.

I also decided to bring in a Logo of the ‘Change 4 Life’ campaign as this re-iterated the strong positive message that I wanted to use to tie the poster together.

Before

After

Since the Logo I downloaded for ‘change 4 life’ was actually a full page poster in its own right, I had to use Edit/Transform/Scale to bring this down to an appropriate size for use within my poster.

I then came up with the idea that if I can personalise the messages in a way that everyone can relate to, this would work better.

To do this I decided to amend the main title to ‘Change YOUR Life’. In this way there is no mixed message about whether this relates to children, families, young adults, older adults, it becomes relevant for everyone.

This was done by highlighting the ‘4’ and then filling over this with the background colour (in this case white). I then created a new text image in black so that this stood out in comparison to the rest of the logo.

By repositioning the text into the image I was then able to group these layers and then merge them so that they could be resized as one layer.

To continue with the theme of being proactive, I decided just to use the main banner to try and convey a positive message.

For the hands up logo I used the selection tools to break this down into 3 pieces. I then filled over ‘our kids’ and then moved ‘to live’ into where ‘our kids’ originally was.

I also then moved ‘longer’ over to the left to line it up with the rest of the text.

Once I had these 3 separate layers lined up how I wanted I created a Layer group of just these 3 layers. I then merged the 3 separate layers back together so that I could work on this as one piece.

I then clicked on layer style and experimented with the various options to try and get an eye-catching effect.

Before

After

For a stronger visual effect I wanted to try and incorporate strong colours for the backgrounds to the text, keeping the theme of the colours throughout.

With this in mind I put a striking blue underneath the lighter blue text to give this a greater visual impact. I effectively then repeated this process for the remaining layers.

By experimenting with different text types/sizes/styles I was able to create various different types of ‘look’.

In choosing the ‘Your mission’ message I wanted something catchy which would place the emphasis on taking responsibility for your own health.

As this is also reasonably memorable (it was used as a film catchphrase) I hoped that it would stick in people’s minds.

Again, this was created using a similar process of using separate text layers which were then merged once the desired effect had been achieved.

For the bottom layer containing the contact information I used a strong colour onto which to superimpose the text. As you can see in the final file there is both the original version of the text layers with a stroke added around each piece of text, and also the final version where this has all been merged into a single layer.

Then, as a finishing touch I imported a few small images to place over the bright background, trying to keep the black/white theme so that this looked consistent with the text.

Final Poster

Final Poster

I need to make two posters both A4 in size

I looked over the internet to get ideas of what it was I wanted.  I want something very simple vibrant yet striking. I found a picture after searching on google of a solar eclipse. Although I did not use the picture it was my inspiration for my poster.

The colours used were black red and yellow. I wanted these colours as they were fiery and striking.

My message is that there is a world beyond ours. Not in the respect that there is life beyond our world but that there are planets and stars which make up the consolations. Given the right conditions and some equipment these can be seen from earth and light up the sky in a special way.

The poster needs to attract young adults toward astronomy so the pictures need as much as they can to speak for themselves. They need to get young adults asking questions about the sky and all that it holds.

There needs to be few words to explain what it is they are looking at and it needs to draw them in. I am thinking of adding a web address to do this for me. I thought if I used the BBC it is local to us in the world and could relate better to us in the UK

The first poster I plan to make is going to feature a solar eclipse as there is one due on or around the 22^nd of July, all be it in China. With the internet though there are the possibilities to get a glimpse of something so special. Then the photographs will illuminate those pictures for them. Their attention needs to be drawn to it and that is what I aim my poster will do. I will focus on the solar eclipse. I want to use a mask to play with the layers. I want to blur the red to make it a little more dramatic

My second poster will be more basic but carry on the same message. I see the earth in the bottom right corner looking up at the sky. In the sky we see stars and a mass of colour.

For this I want to have a more understated less dramatic finish. It will still have bright colours and this time carry the message “The Sky At Night” Again it will have a web address so that young adults who have noticed the poster can go home and check the web and get more information.

For this poster I plan to layer and use shadow and highlight I will take an image of the earth off the net and have as the main feature lots of colour in the sky.

I want to use a complementary font which will say “Astronomy” “Beyond our world”.  I also want to include the words “Natural Fireworks Display” but while I am making the poster if I feel that I can not fit that in it will be lost. At this stage I am still playing around with the font as it needs to draw people in as much as the main picture.

I started building my posters up by using my digital camera to take the shots i needed,these included diffrent shots of people i would use for bullys and people i would use for victims. I also took some pictures of young teenagers for my more youth catered poster.

My main Victime shot -

This is the picture i took for my two school kids

- Bully and victim

This is the pic i took for my main bully -

After i had taken these photos i then started to look for some appropriate backgrounds as i was doing two posters one adult themed and one child themed, then i decided i would need two completely diffrent backgrounds but both needed to be gritty for my anti bullying poster. i maneged to find a good school playground background on google and a good prison background aswell.

After i had decided on my backgrounds i started work on putting my first poster together,  my idea was to have a victim in the middle and to have a bully at each side with a slogon at the top, i decided that the adult themed poster would have a prison like background to help depict i prison like state felt like the victim. I started on my first poster by cutting wills head out uusing the magnetic lasso tool –

after cutting the head out i then moved it across onto my blanck canvas and centered it in the middle, the shoulders then needed to be both be equaly proportioned to achieve this i used the masking tool-

. i also used the spot removal tool to clear up the victims  face.

I then decided to cut out my bullies face, again using the magnetic lasso tool and then the move using the move tool to transport my bullie on to the same canvas as my victim

positioning him above my victims shoulder to give the impression of the bully learing over the victim.

Move tool –

As my background was a prison type picture i decided to make some of my own prisin bars that could go across the victim as if he had been locked up, by creating some long bars and then using the gradient tool i was able to colour my bars grey.

-

i then flipped the bullies face and copied it acrross to the other shoulder i used the flip horizontal tool to achieve this - 

this gave the impression that the bully was looking and snarling above both shoulders.

I then had to insert my txt and slogons so i picked out a relevant font – stencil std and wrote in my slogon above his head and underneath my victim, i also wrote a contact number underneath.  The problem i then had was that the txt was hard to make out due to the darkness of my poster, to solve this problem i created long rectangles to go over my txt and to highlight my txt – this was achieved by filling them with 60 percent white so that the images behind the white were still visable but the white highlighted the txt.

all i was missing now was my background i inseted my background and put it in the relevant position the the lairs panel to make my poster look complete.

Finished Product -

Second Poster

For my second poster i needed to cater this towards the youth , using the picture i took earlier i used the magnetic lasso tool and cut my two youths away from the background, i then inseted them both onto a blanck canvas. I Then needed to give them both a background after my search on google i did find a suitable school background and inserted that mige behind my two youths this gave me the basis for my second poster. I then needed to make my two youths stand out abit more, by holding ctrl on the lair with my two youths i was able to select them and make a new lair with a copy of them, i then filled the new lair with black and applyed a guassian blur this gave my original picture a shadowed outline on my youths.

Guassian blurr -

I then needed to edit my background, i decided to create a ajustment lair and by using the hue and saturation tool i took the colour out of my background image thus giving my buildings a more gritty and dark feel, didnt want all of the colour gone so i applied a mask and pounched through on the parts where i wanted my colour to show through.

All that was needed then was my slogons again using the stencil std font and put down the contact number and my slogon on the top. however i thought i looked too generic so i slanted my txt and highlighted it by creating some long bars filling them with 60 percent white so we could still see through them and applied them over my txt thus making my txt abit more appealing.

Second Poster Finished product -

Files Types

PSD- Photoshop

JPG/JPEG

The pros of a PSD files

Saving work in the psd format in photoshop means that all the image quility is saved and not restricted down, it also means it can be taken around and edited whereever we need to edit it.

Cons -  its not very user friendly and would mean only the people who have photoshop would be able to open it, you would not be able to upload it onto facebook and stes like that, if you were to send it to someone else they could potentionaly edit your work and pass it off as there own.

JPEG

Pros – a universally accepted format that is user friendly with everyone meaning the photo could be uploaded to almost all websights, also makes the filesize of the photo come down to a reasonable level.

Cons – image quility is restricted as it takes som e of it away in order to make the file size smaller, would not be able to properly reedit it in photoshop.

My project is going to be saved as both a psd file and a jpeg

one poster for the young audience (my main audiance)

and a second poster for the adult audiance

As i created two diffrent posters for two diffrent audiances i would be able to put both posters up in many places thus covering a magority of places this allowes me to get the most publicity out of my posters and means it will get more views, which may in tern meam more success.

however i have kept both posters with a similer look and feel, both have slogons across them both use the same slogon font.

i think i met the dsign brief fairly well, although it was not as easy coming up with a eye catching poster as i first thought and dose require a degree of imagination, i am most happy with my poster targetted at the youth as i feel it is something that you might see on a bus on on a billboard

I am moderatly happy with my adult themed poster but do feel that maybe given more time i would play around abit more with it as i feel it could be abit more hard hitting. The irony of this is that i spent less time on my youth themed poster than on my adult themed poster but i believe this is becouse i find it easer to create a poster aimed at the young rather than at adults.

I think in the future looking back at this that i would look at using some more photoshop affects and really playing around with the tools however i am pleased with what i have created with the time ive had.

This is to show how the posters were put together and show the photoshop techniques used.

Poster 1.

After creating a new canvas I started with colouring my canvas with a lightened blue. I retrieved, from the internet, images of aircraft, hostesses, a Yorkshire rose and an image of Britian to build up onto my poster.The original logo was removed by use of the clone stamp, the colours on the plane were covered by using a layers mask, and colouring with with company colours using an adjustment. The plane was positioned as to enter from the left edge.  I used a map of britian taken from the internet, cropped it so as to bring focus to the Leeds- Bradford airport area.

Images were cut out by duplicating and using selection tools from the tool window including the magic wand, lasso and quick mask. I mainly used the navigator window to easily and quickly move  and zoom around using the tools. The feather option was used to get a crisper image were needed.

Also, to highlight the Leeds-Bradford airport, I created coloured streams by creating new layers to  paint lines which I then warped through the edit image window. I tapered and cropped  them using an layer mask. I created matching coloured dialogue  boxes using marques, I then used the paint bucket to fill thes boxes with colours taken from the swatch window which I toned by using the colour picker through  the tool bar. At the same time the streams were filledwith the bucket so the colours matched.

I created a new layer for the sun using the orbital marque which I painted in from the swatch palette. I used the same technique to create an halo and painted a glow on top of the plane.

I retrieved images of air hostesses from the internet, duplicated these images to cut them out and dragged them  into the poster. As with the plane I traced around the uniforms  using the magic wand and quick mask tools and created an adjustment layer to alter the colours.

Text was selected from 1001 freefonts website, this was brought in, coloured and sized and used for the logo and phrasing.  the logo was also placed on the plane along with the Yorkshire rose image.

The final task was to create a layer to add a curves mask to adjust the contrast and light to sharpen the overall effect.

Poster 2.

The idea of this poster was change from a brightly coloured to a more plain one. I choose a dark brown background which I faded randon areas using the paint brush.

Similar to the first poster I brought in images from the internet and created a layers mask to change colours. I produced a shadow by duplicating the plane image, scaling it and by using an adjustment layer and levels brought the darkness in, I then blurred it through the filter window.

The logo was brought in and using the same fonts to identify destinations and other phrases, these where scaled to balance the poster. With the angle of this plane not being viewed straight on, I had to skew the rose andtexton the plane by going into the edit and transform to skew.

Again, as with the first poster, I produced a layer to  adjust the  contrast through curves, this time placing it behind the text so it only affected the coloured background and brought in images.

With saving different stages while designing the posters I was able to go back  to them in photoshop and use screen grabs, convert them from PSD to JPEG files,                   so as to use in this blog.

This is to show if the final product match the design plan and reached it’s aims.

The aim was to produce two posters drawing attention to a low cost airline with  destinations across Europe and having an identity with Yorkshire. I meant to do this with wording and symbols.

I think certain positives  were achieved in the designs, my  intented aim for the  first poster was to give the poster a holiday broucher look with clear and vivid colours, creating a sun added to this theme. Blue seemed the obvious choice for the background. I wanted to incorperate many bright and clear colours to give an attention grabbing look, I think this fitted the aim. I positioned the plane coming into the frame from the side, this was to give a sense of movement. To draw attention to the fact of  Leeds-Bradford, a centrally based airline, I used an image of Britian to indicated this. The image of Britian was over cropped, I should have left a greater part of Ireland in, as this was a destination area. Streams of colour led from a spot representing the airport to destination infomation. I think this gave flow and a feeling of travel in the poster. Incorperating the the rose with the logo helped show it’s Yorkshire identity. The fonts used, although not the first choice, worked well. The ones in the logo, although big and chunky, gave a flow and vibrancy. The text fonts gave a more streamline look.

On a downard note with the design, with the rose I would have liked to have incorperated it into the O of the logo, rather than on the end, this would have made a closer association with Yorkshire. The streams were meant to repressent a rainbow, I think  a wider arc was required. Looking at the two posters I would have prefered to switch planes. The one taking off would look better over the image of britian and onto the rainbow leading us to the destination boxes. Turning the canvas length-ways would have been more in keeping with the idea to affect flow and movement in the poster.

With the second design I wanted to contrast it with the first, this seemed to leave it a little bland and bare. I would have liked to have put more elements in but I think ideas dried up at the time.

I think  the designs ticked many boxes with the proposal. They both had an identity with an airline, give infomation on destinations, low cost and relation to Yorkshire. They both had some impact with bright colours in the first and a sense of depth, with the shadow, in the other. I believe they would have appeal to the travelling public.

One think lacking was the use of my own pictures. With these designs this was difficult, I indended useing a view of the pennines as an horizon. With this I would have coupled with a topogragraphic of the pennine mountians on the Britian image.

For my project I was to create advertising to help promote crochet to the modern generation.  I decided to do this by creating a poster and a flyer.  I chose to do a flyer as it’s a form of direct marketing, as you can choose the best location to hand out the flyers for your target audience, as well as who gets the flyers.  The poster I chose to do as we are not looking to exclude people outside the target audience, just to make the target audience feel more included in the hobby.

I had initially planned on finding ugly crochet pictures and comparing them to more modern styles, but I struggled to find suitable pictures.  The pictures were unsuitable mainly due to their sizes, this predominantly due to the age of the pictures.  Most of the ugly crochet pieces derive from the 70′s and 80′s and quite a lot of the available images on the internet are scans from magazines or pattern books meaning that the quality of the pictures were not suitable for the projects.

The issue with the pictures meant I had to re-think my original strategy.  After asking for hideous crochet pictures on an online forum I was provided with the picture that featured on my flyer.  This picture although shocking as it appears to feature a person with a yarn fetish is not really obscene, I could have chosen some pictures that are a lot worse, but I didn’t feel that they were suitable for something that could possibly be seen by people of a sensitive nature.  The poster had more of the feel of the intended image, but as this was larger than the flyer I couldn’t use an ugly piece as intended.  Rather than going for an ugly piece I went for a more traditional granny square, which although it doesn’t have the immediate eww factor I was going for isn’t necessarily what a young person would want to make.

The working images of my project were saved as .psd files, this is the Photoshop native file type and are suitable for the working versions of the files due to the fact it uses a lossless compression, which means no data is lost during saving, keeping all the layer data as well as all the pixel data.  The other file type we used was .jpg, this was used only for saving out the final image as it uses a lossy compression.  Lossy compression types are unsuitible for using as working images due to the fact that everytime the images is saved there is degridation of the image and any layers are flattend down into the original image loosing the option of removing or changing these changes.

Overall I am pleased with the results of my project, the images although not entirely what I originally intended work well for their purpose.  If I was to do the project again with more time I would have created more of my own pieces to use, so I could make the project more like the original ideas, but due to the time needed to crochet I was unable to do so for this.

The mood boards were definitely useful as this acted as a draft for my ideas and felt that this helped me to have a clear idea of how my first poster was going to look. As there was a lot of information to go into that poster it helped from getting muddled and the end result reflects quite strongly the mood board idea.

To the left is my mood board and on the right the finished poster,and I feel that they do reflect each other concept wise. Some factors have been changed e.g I felt that a natural grass background was better than a layer filled in with colour.

By completing the first poster I was more confident in constructing the second poster and although the two are very different in style, similar key images and techniques were used. The first seems a bit amateurish quite obviously the work of a student on a graphics course. I felt that I had to put loads of information into the poster to show what I had been leaning and this put me in danger of overkill. By the time I got to second poster I felt more in control of the process, that I had a clearer idea of what I wanted to do and how I was going to achieve it.This illustrates clearly to me that the more I become familiar with photo shop the better I would become at it.

I feel that I should try to become more confident with using more of the tools available. Part reason for not using them was I was getting the results I wanted from first attempts and that a lot of my images did not need that much tweaking. If I was projecting a more surreal concept maybe this would have pushed me a little harder. All in all I think I played safe and should been a bit more adventures. But then I was keeping to my brief and keeping in line with what was required for my target audience.

I enjoyed working to a brief, having to make a mood board and presenting my ideas to “my client” I felt that this was a useful process in focusing my ideas and being clear about how I wanted to develop the project. It helped me to be confident about what I was doing. I find that we have great ideas but when we start working on them all sorts of factors come in that we had not considered and I felt that the initial presentation process helped reduce that because I had to clearly express my idea to an audience that did not know what I was going to do.