CRITIQUING YOUR WORK

Project Brief

Posters generally, have an image and one main line of text, most often the title, followed by additional essential information. Look around locally and identify a coming event – it could be a jumble sale, a local gig, concert or play, an exhibition or sporting fixture – and design two posters to promote it. Make the first poster full of details and descriptions about the event, when and where it’s taking place, what’s going on, how long it lasts, how much it costs and what to expect. Include all the details that you think your audience might need. For the second poster apply Occam’s Razor to pare back the information to a bare minimum – be extreme: how little information can you get away with and how few words can you use? Challenge yourself to be as simple as possible, but don’t forget the essentials or the poster won’t do the job it is intended for.

I have been given the task of looking around for an upcoming event and then design two posters to promote it. One poster should have all the details that the audiences could possibly expect and the other poster I need to apply the Occam's Razor to pare back the information to the absolute minimum.

Analysis

I brainstormed what information would go onto poster 1 with too much information and poster 2 with minimal information.

Click on the image below for more detail.

Fig. 1 Brainstorm for poster design (2022)

Fig. 2 Ndlovu Youth Choir (2022)

I found this poster for the Ndlovu Youth Choir to use as the brief to design a poster with all the information for the two posters. One full of information and one with minimal information. Designing a poster with all the information was easy but also stressed me out because there was too much information and the design was looking too cluttered. The poster paring back information was also very difficult. I looked at the brief again and decided to be braver! I ended up with just the title of the choir (which is well known in South Africa) and the website address. I'm hoping that the website address would encourage people to log on for more information about the event.

Inspiration for poster artwork

The Ndlovu Youth Choir started in a rural town in the South African province of Limpopo. My mind immediately went to the famous South African artist Esther Mahlangu.

(Click on image below for more detail).

She paints her artwork with brushes made from chicken feathers (Wikipedia contributors 2022) (See Fig.6) and the Ndebele nation which mainly occupy the provinces of Limpopo and Mpumalanga in South Africa, are well known for bright colours and geometric patterns painted on their houses and brightly coloured beaded jewellery. (See Fig.10 & 9)

Fig.6 Esther Mahlangu2 (2022) Fig.3 Decorated Ndebele House (2010) Fig.10 Beaded Bracelet 2 (2022) Fig.9 Beaded Bracelet 2 (2022)

In my sketchbook I experimented with drawing the patterns using the bright colours of red, yellow, sky blue, green and pink.

Fig. 11 Ndebele sketches (2022)

Then I moved the experiment to the computer using Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop. Which I printed and added to my sketchbook above.

Fig. 12 Using Adobe for Ndebele patterns (2022)

Below my sketchbook page with some of Esther Mahlangu's art works and the Southern Ndebele language.

Fig. 13 Ndebele sketchbook (2022)

"There is nothing quite as effective at making you understand how narrow your own attitudes are than travelling to a place where the people are different". (Downs, 2013)

Designing the poster

I decided to use this artwork inspiration for the poster design, but change it to squares. I sketched some layout ideas for too much information and not enough information below.

Fig. 14 Poster layout (2022)

In my sketchbook I wanted to experiment with the black background and white background by painting across the two papers using green, red, orange and yellow. The squares are not geometric but more random and they all have different stroke weights. I decided to use the Barrio font because it has thick and thin lines to go with the squares.

Fig. 15 Background colour's (2022)

Again I moved the experiment to Adobe Illustrator and came up with this design below.

Fig. 16 Adobe Illustrator pattern (2022)

Fig. 17 Patterns produced on Adobe Illustrator (2022)

When I printed my Adobe Illustrator image I had the idea to re-sketch the pared down poster so the name of the choir was on the sides of the squares.

Fig. 18 Pared down layout (2022)

While making the the poster with pared back information, I noticed that I had to totally change my entire design from the first poster with too much information. However, I was surprised that I actually loved the second zoomed in design better because it was concise, not cluttered and quite eye-catching.

"Occam's Razor: given two ways of doing things, the simpler one is always better" Laufer 2013

Fig. 19 Poster with too much information (2022) Fig. 20 Poster pared down using Occam's Razor principle (2022)

Critique

I asked two people to critique the two posters. For the poster with too much information, they said there was too much information, they would shorten the date; make the address Montecasino; add a quote such as "fresh from their European tour"; make the dates bigger and remove the starting time. They absolutely loved the artwork and the font, because it was eye-catching and colourful and they would rather have had the border all the way around the poster. The font in white is too dense but they loved the orange box for the price. The overall summary was that they loved the colourful design and font but I needed to remove some of the information.

For poster two they found the design too stark, however, it did catch their attention. They suggested that perhaps a QR code could work in the middle as there was just a black square in the middle and that's where they were focusing their attention. If not a QR code then perhaps a music note? They also wanted the font to be the same size, have the venue on the poster as well as when the show would be. In summary I had a much better response to the layout of poster number one with too much information on it than poster two with the pared back information.

Reflection

I found the critique a little disconcerting, I don't think anyone really enjoys being critiqued. I took on all the points raised and put them into the final design. I came up with this final poster below.

Fig. 21 Final poster design after critique (2022)

The points that came up in my thoughts while I was designing the final poster was that I agreed with the amount of information that is now on the final design. If people are interested then they will log on to the website for more information. One of the critiques was to put a border all the way around the poster, I tried this in the design process and it looked too busy. I do think that the final poster still looks busy with all the squares. I would like to put one or two bigger squares at an angle.

"The word process implies a linear progression: from uncertainty to certainty, from rough to refined. Design is in general a very erratic process". (Nottingham and Stout, 2019)

I learnt that although posters generally follow a hierarchy, artwork is very subjective, but does have to appeal to the audience at whom it is targeted. I enjoyed the process of the exercise and being brave enough to pare down the information so much in the second poster. It completely changed the design, a design that I thought was different and pushed the boundaries. I preferred the second design but with the required information. I think it was just a step further from the traditional layout of the first poster, but I have to taken on the points of the people critiquing the two posters.

Fig. 22 My preference with the poster artwork (2022)