Poster (Edited #2)

This is my third edit on my poster. I edited my poster using the alignment concept. I brought the text to the right side, and I aligned it with my bottom text. I also moved the 08 to be next the hands of the skater.

Alignment

Alignment is another key feature for design. What it says is that things need to be aligned to one another. The basic concept for alignment is to organize and unify your product. It is like taking junk from the floor and throwing it into the garbage can. Alignment creates a serious, organized, and sophisticated look to your product.

Proximity

Proximity is a very important feature in design. It reflects a lot upon the connection between objects. If you are making a poster, you want to make sure that the things that are supposed to reflect one another are close to each other. Things that are not really connected should not be next to one another. You should not be afraid of space, in fact space is your friend. If you learn to master proximity then your designs are going to have a much more professional look.

Poster (Edited)

After reading the Proximity section in the book "The non-designers design book" I decided to adjust my poster. I did not change it drastically but the small changes I did apply definitely added a lot to the outlook of the poster. First I combined the when and where text box so they will feel more connected. This concept refers to proximity. After that I enlarged the font of the free of charge text to make it stand out. A lot of people will prefer to go to a festival or show if it is free of charge. The last thing i did was had shadows and reflection to the sponsor images. This allowed the images to not only feel more connected but also feel more apart of the poster. Again, referring to proximity.

The Joshua Tree Epiphany

The first chapter in the book "The Non-Designers Design Book" starts off with a little story. The writer talks about how he got this one book about trees as a present. He talks about the first tree in the book which is called "Joshua Tree". He said he had never seen one before, so he decided to go out to his neighborhood and look at the trees. The first tree he sees, which is even in his garden, is the Joshua Tree. He talks about how he lived in that place for thirteen years and have yet to see a Joshua tree. This explains the idea stating, if you know something and your conscious of it you are in control of it. Then the book continues and the interesting part comes; The four main design principles. Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, Proximity. Lets start off with Contrast. What is it? and what makes it so important in design. Contrast is a very key feature for a design. It prevents having very similar things within your design (Type, Color, Size, Line Thickness, Shape, Space, etc.) You need to make things different, to give a good visual attraction to your audience. Now I am not saying you should put a thousand of different colors, because then you have gone beyond contrast. Contrast can work with two colors opposite from one another. For example: Black and White, Yellow and Black, Red and Black, and many more. Think of the McDonald logo. What do you think makes it so attractive, because over all the logo itself is a pretty simple logo. It is the colors that they chose that make it so attractive. Yellow and red. It is so bright and it has so much contrast you can see it from anywhere at anytime. Second Principle is Repetition. Repetition is also a very important element because it helps keep the design organized. You don't want to have a million different fonts if your doing a poster for example. It needs to be consistent. Repeating certain values such as Line Thickness, Fonts, Colors, Textures, and pictures really adds to the strength of the design. The third principle is Alignment. Alignment is also a key for organization and development. It states that things should be places randomly but still feel like they are connected. This is supposed to give it a unique and interesting look. The last principle is Proximity. It explains that items that are related should be put together. When several items of the same group are close to each other (Proximity) then they become one visual unit. This is the key of the principles and probably the most important. You want your things to be close together, and you should not be afraid of empty space.

Poster

Creativity and the Design Process

Creativity is a very important aspect to design which is usually not well understood. Many people confuse design and creativity, and they are very different from one another. A lot of people also confuse creativity and originality, and that is because they have a similar concept. Creativity is something creative, but it does not necessarily be original, and as you can already understand, originality is something original you made. It isn't bad taking other peoples main ideas and developing on them. But if you take something and you don't change it, then the problem begins. For example look at apple, a multi billion dollar that started with their so called "iPod". Everyone copied there concept, and developed on that concept. Non really beat apple, but a lot became successful. Coming up with creative and original ideas is not easy, but if you manage to come up with a great unique idea that is when you can begin you design process. If you look at hollywood today, you can see that nearly every movie out there is stealing ideas from older films. Not to mention films like Scary Movie and Superhero movie, which are such bad parodies that they are already stealing ideas and making fun of their previous films. Creativity is a very sacred concept for a designers work, and a lot of time goes into creating something new. When you get the core of your idea down, then you start the design process. The design process can take a long time to finish. For your design process you start by creating kind of a rough draft of your design, and you keep building on it. It is very similar to writing an essay and starting out with a rough draft. Sometime while in the design process, it will take you more than just one or two drafts. You want to make sure that when you are done with the design process you feel good about the final product and it stands out; unique, creative, and original.