Evaluation

Overall, I think that this project went better than the first. Although I struggled at the start of the project to think of a strong idea, when I found the British propaganda I got many different ideas to choose from. I think that choosing the website Myspace over more popular options such as Facebook or Twitter will make my idea seem more original.
When it came to making the actual poster, I did not come across that many problems aside from the initial Illustrator learning process. After I learned how to use the program more effectively, I found making my poster rather simple. I think that I learned a lot of drawing techniques by using Illustrator.
As for time management, I think that I wasted a lot of time o the research as I found it difficult to think up an idea for my poster in the first place. Although, after coming up with some ideas I found it easy to keep up with the project and I got my poster finished on time.
In my opinion, I think that my finished poster looks good and it similar in style to the original. Things that I would change about it would be refining my image so it looked a bit less messy around the sides, although these are minor changes.

Final Poster

This is my finished poster. As I have said in an earlier blog post, I changed the note shapes and and colours so it would look more like the original poster. I also fixed minor errors with my drawing, such as the speakers as they looked too sketchy in my original version of my poster.

Changes I Made

The main changes I made to my poster were on the musical notes. Firstly, I changed the angle of the notes slightly so it looks like they were moving in the same way as the planes. I then changed the colours to a dark grey that was used on the background imagery so I would look more like the colours of the planes in the original poster. 

            I also added more shading to the speakers in the background so they looked more detailed and less flat.

Class Crit

The feedback I got from my class on my poster was mainly positive, and I got told that my idea was strong. The main points of criticism were on the musical notes, as they did not look like they were moving like the planes in the original poster, and that the colours used on them were also not that fitting. To improve on my posters, I shall rotate the notes slightly and change their colours, but I shall also add finishing touches so the final poster looks more professional looking.

Finished Poster

This is what my poster loos like finished:

For the other objects I added in my poster, I used the same technique as i did with tracing the woman to make my vectors.

I will show my work off infront of my class for extra feedback.

Shading

I wanted to replicate the shading style of the original image, and to do this I used various brushes to emulate the style.

This is the initial shading I did with the blob brush tool. When I added all the basic shades, I then made a series of brushes to give a dithered look on the shading.

These are my brushes that I made. I did this by making small dots with the blob brush tool and selecting them all to make a scatter brush. This would make the brush strokes very dotted, thus adding to the dither effect.

These are two examples of the brushes to blend the colours. On the black, I only used two shades as the original poster has two shades on the woman's clothes. For the clouds however, I used many different shades of brush so they would look much more blended.

Gradients

For the sky in the background of my poster, I added a gradient because the original poster had a blending background so I thought a gradient would be the most fitting blending method.
To do this, I made swatches of all the colours I needed for the sky, and then used the gradient tool to fill in the selected area with a gradient.

These are the settings I used for my gradient. I have three different colours blending as there were three main shades on the original poster. I also changed the angle of the gradient to it looked similar to the original. With this effect, I think that it makes my poster look much closer to the original and fits with the style.

Adding Colour

After having my base sketch, I then drew over the woman in the orignal poster so my design would match up with the original image.

I started this process by going over the whole picture of the woman in black so I could have a basic outline of where to add the colours on my picture. From this, I duplicated this layer for each colour I needed and erased the unnecessary part for each of the colours. Eventually, I ended up with a layer for her clothes, skin, hair, etc.

This is an example of one of the colour layers, which is the skin. I added arms from the original picture as I was going to give the girl on my poster a shorter sleeved shirt, so I had to improvise by making the arm shape myself.

This is what my image looked like after finishing the initial colouring. It still has the same pose as the original image, but the clothes were drawn from scratch so they would fit on the woman better.

Starting My Poster

To start off the creation of my poster, I sketched out a rough outline of what the girl on my poster would look like. I think I may change the style of the clothes at a later date however, as these do not fit in too well with the "emo" theme.
I used the blob brush tool to draw this rough sketch.

Font Choices

For my poster. I have looked at three different fonts that would fit in with the style.

The first font I looked at was Franklin Gothic Heavy. I chose to look at this font as it is bold and easy to read, but I thought I would look at other fonts as this one doesn't fit in with the posters that well.

After doing a search on dafont, I looked for fonts that fit in well with the ones used of the propaganda posters, like these fonts:

The font Bebas Neue is a good replacement for the "Come Into the Factories" poster font, so I have chosen this for my font for my poster. The other font, Big Noodle Titling, fits better with the "Join An Air Crew" font, but because the first slogan if from the poster I shall be basing mine off of I think that Bebas Neue is a better choice.

Colour Schemes

These colour palettes are from various posters in my research. The top colour scheme is from the poster I am basing my own on, so I will mainly be using this for my own posters so it looks as authentic as possible. I also want to use a red colour on my poster, so I will take the colour from the second palette as it is still from a 20th century propaganda poster and would fit in with my own poster.

Proposal

From the four ideas I made, I decided to choose this as my final idea. This is because I have the most visual ideas for this poster, and the feedback from my class crit also backs this statement up as most people thought this was a good idea.
For this poster, I shall make it themes around the website Myspace, and as such I shall use themes that are commonly associated with the style of that site, as well as keeping the poster traditional looking. As Myspace is music/band oriented, I think that adding musical themes such as notes and a set of speakers would be fitting. I also think that putting the Myspace logo in the background would make it easier to identify as a Myspace poster.

Sketches

After brainstorming possible ideas, I then went on to make basic sketches for different poster ideas. These were all initial sketches, so the ideas do not link together much.

 My first sketch is a recruitment poster for Twitter, which uses a RAF poster. I thought this poster would be suitable as it set in the sky and the planes could easily changed into the Twitter logo, which is a bird.

My second idea was for a specialist recruitment poster for the site Myspace. I thought this would be a good idea as Myspace is declining in popularity and would need specialist recruitment to get members, and the original image could be changed to show the stereotypes of the site, such as the poster having a music oriented theme.

Following on from the Myspace/Facebook idea, the original poster shows how Britain strengthened within the war. This could easily be changed to be Myspace and Facebook throughout the years. Even though I thought this would be a good idea for my poster, I could not think of any way of showing it visually.

My final idea is from a security concern poster. It uses the theme of talking less so your information isn't over heard, and uses the Web 2.0 community of Anonymous to show this idea. I thought these two ideas would go together as Anonymous is notorious for hacking, which could happen if you aren't careful on the Internet.

Brainstorms

From my research, I then made brainstorms to condense my findings to get ideas for my posters.

This brainstorm was from the specialist recruitment posters I gathered. These were the main points from the posters that I could get, and from this brainstorm I came up with some ideas for my posters. These include using women as the focus for my poster as some sites have more of a male userbase so it would be relevant for Web 2.0.

This brainstorm was from my posters focused on maintaining morale. Again, I looked at the main themes of the posters for my brainstorms.

My last brainstorm was for the slogans for the posters about security problems. I looked at the slogans rather than the themes of the posters because almost all of the posters conveyed the same message. By looking at slogans, I could get ideas for my own poster.

Mood Boards/Research

After researching what propaganda was, I looked into specific types of propaganda poster, which was from Britain in World War 2. From my research, I split the posters I found into categories of what message they were trying to convey.

These posters are all specialist recruitment posters. As most men were already in the army, many of these posters are targeted at women. There are also posters for RAF recruitment and looking for help in local communities. Examples of community help is the "Help Scotland's Harvest" poster. All of these posters are made to look positive, as they are meant to get people to join the army, factories, RAF, etc.The women in the recruitment posters all look important, or proud to be at their place of work, which can inspire other women to join these jobs.

I think that this would like well with Web 2.0 posters as social networking sites are always looking for new members, and those sites can be seen in a positive way on these posters.

To keep the morale high in the country, these posters were made. Some were meant to be motivational, such as the post with Winston Churchill and the picture of British countryside. Others are meant to help people carry on with everyday life despite the disruptions. The last few show the alliance between Britain and the colonies.

The posters showing the colonies together would work well for a Web 2.0 poster as they show different groups of people together, like social networking sites.

These posters were made to stop people talking carelessly in public as there may have been people listening. There are were many of these posters as it was important for enemies to not hear information.There were a series of posters for the "Careless Talk Costs Lives" campaign to show the seriousness of security concerns.

This fits in with Web 2.0 as there can be a lot of security problems on the internet, and people carelessly giving away their information. It could also be used to show the Anonymous community in a bad light.

Propaganda

Before starting to find propaganda images, I started by researching what propaganda was so I could get an idea of what to look for.
"Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda

"information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc."
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/propaganda

 In my own words, propaganda posters use very opinionated and biased messages to sway the public to their views. This can be done in either positive or negative lights, such as posters against certain nations or helping raise morale in times of war.

 These are examples of propaganda posters from the 20th century. The first two are recruitment posters for the army. They use persuasive messages such as pointing at the audience and saying that they want them for the army, implying that they should join. The other poster is more of a morale boosting poster for women, showing their strength. The slogan "We Can Do It!" is saying that women together can make a difference.

Propaganda Poster - Project Brief

"You will produce at least one poster promoting as aspect of Web 2.0 Social Media which can be printed at up to A1 size. 
The design must be based on propaganda posters from a period of the twentieth century.  You will research, collect and analyse examples of propaganda posters then generate ideas which match these to social media services, creating a suitable slogan which links the design to the service being promoted.
You will generate ideas for this project based on research and design development techniques (such as brainstorms, mood boards, sketches) and you will prepare a pitch which puts forward your proposed design solution with a review of how you reached those decisions.  You need to explore type choices, colour palettes, poster designs and layouts in this pitch.  Illustrator work in progress can be shown as part of this.
You will keep a blog of research materials and project development, including research into propaganda posters, placing these into their historical context and analysing their design characteristics, design decisions, problem solving, software techniques, comments on drafts and crit, with notes on changes and improvements made in response to feedback.  "