Black Box Poster

 

You can also stream, download or comment on the theme over at Soundcloud.

Modern Art Fair

It’s always tough as a teacher, competing with television, cinema and gaming. It seems that a lot of male pupils’ spare time revolves around Modern Warfare 2, even though most are below the recommended certificated age. I thought I’d try and put together a quick poster to attract the attention of some of these pupils.

By combining the point of view from MW2 and Roy Lichenstien’s ‘Whaam’, I was trying to show the similarities between art and gaming. I think that people forget that art inspired photography, photography inspired film and film inspired gaming.

The poster is free to download in ‘the box’ (bottom of right hand column).

Warmonger

Assisting Primary School Teaching Students through their design unit, I was asked to fulfill the brief of not only creating a short stop animation, but also designing a poster portraying the folly of war.

I had come up with several ideas centering around the idea of ‘your country needs you’ etc, though I was really interested in Russian propaganda posters and also portraying actual facts. My idea was to show that the scale of wars was getting larger and more incomprehensible as we move forward. Technology and military progression has meant that war has become ridiculously easy.

After researching the death count that occurred in each of the World Wars, I had decided that I was going to create a disturbing bar chart made with human bodies, though an idea popped into my head; are the size of weapons relevant to the amount of casualties or deaths that were produced?

Below you will see the final production for my ‘folly of war’ poster design.

Promoting Your Talent

Alison R(S6) designed the clever poster above for Castlehead’s talent show contest (which was held yesterday) through her Enterprise class. Although I helped her a little with the technical side and some photoshopping experience, the idea and choices were all her own. Her friend Megan posed for the image and I think she has done an amazing job. Her pose gives an air of passion and makes us believe that the performer is not only really trying her best, but is also an entertainer reveling in her success.

The poster information is clear and concise, promoting the performer’s names and giving the onlooker an idea of who and what to expect in the show. A fantastic design, well done Alison.

Mia’s Advice

We have two Artwork’s of the Week running very closely together this week as last week’s was delayed by about 3 days, either way, it’s one artwork per week and this is our newest entry.

After seeing Mia S (S1) leaving off this fabulous poster off in her teacher’s classroom (Mrs Day). I thought that the characters and the illustrations were so appealing that I had to take a photograph. The poster is mostly created from the imagination, very little resources were used to make it. The type and the layout is all Mia.

You can see a lot of these environmental posters that are very badly conceived, though Mia’s effort doesn’t remind me of them. The poster has so much fun to it, its tag line, its colouring and its background. If I saw details of the council and a logo at the bottom of the page, I wouldn’t have been surprised. This could be a professionally printed poster.

For me, I think the font makes the poster. The way the type is coloured and its style adds quality to the work. Great poster Mia.

Recessionists Final Poster

So I posted recently on how school taught design has similar links to professional design. I explained how the three examples of development required for the intermediate and higher exams are similar to the three ideas provided to a client for a choice of designs. I posted my designs and provided you with the client’s choice. Today I will show you the final draft of the poster and explain its construction. The first draft of the idea:

The first draft had all the relevant ideas, though it didn’t have any illustrative skill or eye catching elements. It was a version to allow the client to picture what the final poster would convey. The final draft is below:

As you can see, several things have changed. The client wished for the poster to be portrait, so the canvas was rotated. I have spent a little longer on the written and drawn pages in the poster, they contain a little more colour, skill and overall attractiveness. This doesn’t mean that I think they’re beautiful. It just means that they attract the eye to certain parts of the layout. The viewer’s eye is drawn down the poster, looking at each relevant piece of information, attracted to little pieces of red.

Sometimes as a designer you have to compromise your idea to keep the client happy, after all, if they’re are paying for it, they have the last say. You may feel that you have the skill and experience to argue against them, you may be right, though it is important to give your pride a back seat and provide a piece of work that the client wants. I had heard that although they liked my idea and were happy with it, they had hoped that the title was bigger and at the top of the poster, as well as lighting the image a little more. I decided that I would do this for them, as I new the image was to be printed billboard style and it would be easier for the printer.

There are things I don’t like about this version, though I can understand why they were requested. So there you go. How design works outside of school.

Where The Wild Things Are Movie Activity Sheet

My ‘Where the Wild Things are’ resources seem to be very popular at the minute, so I thought I’d quench your thirst with an activity sheet I made about 2 years ago. I had created this unit in advance of the movie release in October 2008, but of course it was delayed by a year. The activity was aimed towards S1 (10-12) for a 50 minute period. Most pupils did not finish the activity as they still wanted to add more movie titles and had got into a competition of who could think of the most.

This is a pleasant filler lesson teaching about movie poster elements, letting pupils practice their tonal skills, with a little movie knowledge thrown in.

Download the jpeg resource for printing from the ‘Box’ at the bottom of the right hand column.

‘Where The Wild Things Are’ Movie Trailer

Over a year and a half ago my S1 classes designed a movie poster for the film adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s children’s book ‘Where the Wild Things are’. Now the trailer has finally been released and it looks magnificent. Spike Jonze as director, music by Arcade Fire and big monsters… what else do you need?

You can view the posters by clicking the link above (where it says ‘movie poster’), an example is below.

‘Where The Wild Things Are’ Movie Poster

S1 created movie posters in January ’08 for the upcoming Spike Jonze film adaptation of the Maurice Sendak book. I really loved this book as a child and when I first heard about the film, I thought that nothing was sacred anymore. Having seen a few stills and heard about its complications to get it looking exactly right (it was meant to have been released in October ’08), I’m sure that it will only bring interest to the book and introduce more children to a great, dark monster story.

The S1 pupils created a starry sky with moon background with white and colour pencil on black sugar paper, they then created their own foliage, light-boxed a title and added colour and then finally attached the credits.

The film is scheduled for an October ’09 release, so the S1 pupils have designed a poster for a film that hasn’t even had paid designers working on it yet. They did a great job.

Days Of The Dead Poster

Around twenty posters were coloured by S1 and S2 pupils for promoting the ‘Days Of The Dead’ event. I created the posters in Photoshop, and I’m also well aware that ‘Dia de los Muertos’ is ‘Day Of The Dead’ whereas ‘Dias de los Muertos’ is the plural. I just didn’t want to confuse the pupils further with the whole ‘is it a day or a few days?’ conversation. After all, I’m not a Spanish teacher… Yet.