Designing Outside Your Comfort Zone

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To finish our Type and Layout module, we looked at design styles and the concept of creating a design in a style that is outside of ones comfort zone. Using a song title from a band of our choosing, we were tasked to create a poster in a contrasting style to both the band and our usual work. I chose a Foo Fighters song called 'The Sky is Our Neighborhood". My concept for this design was to use aeroplane imagery to form the message of the collection of planes being the neighbourhood.



For inspiration I used a vintage-styled space poster, which uses a brighter colour-scheme with more illustration within the design. It also focuses primarily on shapes and shadows to create forms. Using a similar colour-scheme, I re-imagined the previous design, this time primarily using the pen tool to create shapes. I decided to add more impact by designing the planes head on almost coming out of the poster. I also exaggerated the amount of planes, copying smaller versions into the distance. To form the concept of neighbourhood in the sky, I inverted a cityscape the top of the poster, using both this and the planes to infer the neighbourhood. To add depth to the city, graduated tones of green and blue were added with clouds inspired by the vintage poster placed behind and in front of the back scape. To contrast the blue city, I used a red/orange gradient in the background to create a sunrise effect and add to the retro concept. Inspired by the titles on the vintage poster, I used the same combination of narrow sans serif and script to title the poster. I finished the design with an aged paper texture placed over the design in Photoshop using the 'Screen' layer tool, however, this made the design very pale. I am also pleased with the version without the screen, creating a modern interpretation of vintage with bolder colours and bright whites. This process was successful in challenging my work process, creating designs that come less naturally.


My first attempt was made on Photoshop, using an old British Continental Airways poster as inspiration. However, I couldn't achieve what I had hoped in lesson hours and found the design didn't embody the title of the song. Therefore, I made the second attempt in Illustrator, using a different poster as inspiration.



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