student, neighbour, emergency, barbecue.
I took inspiration from this poster for laying out my text in a simple and clean format, because before this it was unstructured and ugly.
From: Behance
I carried this text layout throughout all of my poster designs, because it worked well with all of the images, was able to have it's text changed/altered easily without looking too different, and was simple. I thought about my target audience of students, who like to know the important information quickly, and decided that this worked well for them because the most important parts are highlighted or set apart, so that glancing at the posters on your way to class you would be able to quickly pick-up the most crucial information. We made the images for the posters bold and clean for the same reason, so that they were eye-catching, grabbing the attention of students walking past in a hurry and delivering the message fast and clearly.
These posters can work by themselves or as a series, as they are all similar enough in design to be a set.
My posters:
This one was the very first that I did. It was so much fun piping the sauce for the typography!
I kept it simple and structured, but let the tomato-text be a bit uneven because it's not supposed to be perfect looking, it needs to look student-y and casual. Originally we were going to write our tomato-text in a swirly, calligraphic style, but we decided that that style didn't relate to students much, so we instead took the casual approach.
We used the technique of subversion, and let the typography be the image. Tomato sauce = barbecue, the casual language and word 'flat' = student, and the situation written in sauce = emergency, one where you are meeting your neighbours. The poster also has comedic/ironic value, as the act of writing out "we are out of sauce" has used up all of the sauce, and had they not complained and written the message, they would still have sauce.
This one is the same, except that a sausage has been included to further impress the idea of the barbecue. It also seems to express the urgency required of the sauce - it can't be eaten without it!
I like this layout better than the one above, as there is more negative space and the composition just generally reads better.
This one uses shock factor to make the reader take notice. At very first glance, it looks like a pool of blood and bandages around it, but after having a second look, and reading the headline, the viewer has a smile because it's a lot less sinister than they thought it was. This use of subversion to startle the viewer entices them into the poster, making them stop and read the information. And by using humour, they are more likely to be in a good mood and more open to attending the event.
The barbecue idea is brought in by the sauce, students by the informal language and slang "chill, it's tomato sauce", the emergency by the initial thought when you look that the poster that this is blood, and neighbours (as well as emergency again) by the tagline, convincing the audience that if they found a situation like this with real blood, it would be good to know who they can ask for help.
This one again uses shock factor to grab the viewer's attention, through subversion. At first glance it's blood on the hand, but on second inspection, sauce. The headline is humorous because it's almost as if it knows what you were thinking: I wouldn't want to shake this hand it's a murderer covered in blood it's scary. The idea of barbecue is brought through by the sauce on the hand again, and the words in the tagline "there's a barbecue on". The idea of neighbour is communicated through the held-out hand (the classic "meet the neighbour" pose) and the headline "Your neighbours aren't as scary as you think". Student is conveyed through he informal language such as "chill", and disaster/emergency is conveyed through the first-glance idea in your head, that it's blood on the hand. The tagline backs this up in case it was overlooked with the words "it's tomato sauce, not a serial killer".
This poster uses the same idea, except that the image is swapped out, and the text, instead of reading "not a serial killer" now reads "not a vampire". Scary films featuring vampires and serial killers are popular amongst the university student age group, which also helps with the engagement of the poster. The subject of this photograph is also in the student age group, and therefore more relatable. Again subversion is used, the tomato sauce is the blood. Extreme close-up photography/cropping has been used to zoom in on the important part of the image, showing just the blood/sauce drool on the smirking mouth of the neighbour.
From here onwards are my posters that I felt didn't work so well - this one was supposed to show the sausages as fingers, one of which has been cut off by mistake (emergency), but the sausages were too fat and un-finger-ish to make that obvious. I tried to remedy it by making the headline "Chill, they're sausages, not fingers". but I think that these subversion posters only work when the initial first impression is of blood and fingers, not sausages and sauce.
Students = words like "chill", emergency = scenario of finger being cut off, barbecue = sausages and sauce, neighbour = body text. Perhaps this one wasn't so effective in communicating the idea of neighbour.
This one is kind-of the same - a pool of blood/sauce, but the problem here is that I'm not sure if it would look like blood at the first glance. I feel like in this one and he one above, people are more likely to view the poster and jump straight to the idea of sauce, missing the initial shock-factor idea of a pool of blood. Perhaps I need to amend the headline to "Chill, it's tomato sauce, not dripping blood", but again, if I'm having to tell them that, then the picture isn't doing it's job properly, and isn't working as the subversion that it's supposed to.
This poster worked the least well of all, or maybe it's just my terrible photoshopping skills when it comes to placing images together and making them seem like they belong.
The idea was that the arm in a sling would be a sausage in a piece of bread (the classic kiwi sausage-sizzle), but I couldn't find any pieces of bread on the internet that worked well, and didn't have any bread to photograph in that position. I used a bun instead, like an American hotdog, but here the idea is not very clear. It's subversion - supposed to represent the idea of barbecue through the arm-as-a-sausage-in-bread, emergency as a sling, neighbours through the headline and tagline that encourage sharing and meeting "Tell everyone how it happened", and the idea of student through the age of the photograph subject. The idea of student needs to come through more.
I think with better images and skills this idea might work a little better.
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