#principlesofgraphiccommunication

I’ve been wrestling with trying to come up with an idea for weeks now, and earlier today, inspiration finally hit so I’ve been slogging away at my laptop trying to nail down the concept for my project. I drew this Shakespeare head and I knew that I wanted to include it, the only problem was how to include it. I spent ages going back and forth on different designs and colour schemes and just found that it was all too cluttered and squashed, this led to me stripping it right back to basic information and simple shapes, as I saw from Paula Scher’s work. I think it has been quite successful!

Maybe something to come back to another time?

I have been collecting together some examples of previous modern Shakespeare posters for some inspiration on what to produce for my poster, I want poetry to seem relevant and cool, something that people want to get involved in. And as a young person, all of these posters draw me in, they each have something about them which is intriguing or visually pleasing. I shall be continuing to look to what other designers have previously produced in order to assess the success of different styles of poster. 

Scher has done what I am attempting to do in this project, make Shakespeare relevant. This is why she is the perfect person for me to be researching and looking up to when designing this campaign. Her use of bold, bright colours and simple shapes has made for some stunning designs, something that I can hope for in my own work! 

British Airways’ Look Up campaign featured high technology billboards linked up to computers which could tell when a British Airways plane came within view of the billboard, prompting the child to stand up and point, as the sign told you which flight was passing overhead. This campaign was a huge turning point in UK advertising and is heralded as visionary. It aims to recreate the childlike joy of seeing planes in the sky. It was a real head turner and gained widespread media attention during the time that it ran. 

From a design perspective the posters are bright and fun to reflect their youthful brand image, this is something that I would like to echo in my design as I will be attempting to modernise Shakespeare and make it seem relevant to the younger generations.

My poem is about an applicant being told he is empty and blind, and to be fulfilled he should marry a woman (which is always dehumanised in the poem by being treated by “it”), and even though marriage is like a prison and is uncomfortable, he should still do it to satisfy societal convention. I represented this by drawing a boy who’s blindfolded and crying showing his emptiness and his desperation

After deep analysing the poem I had chosen, I started generating ideas with small drawings on my sketchbook. With every idea, I tried to find a way to make it interactive or 3 dimensional, but the ideas I liked more were 2 dimensional so I decided to stick with it.