Evaluation

Although I found starting off this project difficult, I think that in the end it was a successful project. I think this way because of the amount of positive feedback I got from my poster designs, although I had a weaker original pitch.
The things that I think went well in this project in my opinion were the poster designs. This is because I got  artistic inspiration early on in my project, which allowed me to more time to develop my poster idea. In the end, the posters were a mix of modern design and artist inspired work. Again going back to feedback, there was little needed to be changed on the posters so I think that they were successful.
As for things that could have gone better, I think that I should have spent more time on developing the leaflet. On my first crit, my idea was very undeveloped and different from the rest of my work, which was apparent from the feedback that I got. I then has a short window of time to make the leaflet fit in with my other designs and get it laid out properly on InDesign.
My time management for this project was not as good as it could have been, as there was a three week break where I could have developed my ideas more. On my next project, I should schedule my time so I spend more time designing.
In conclusion, i think that this project went well although some parts on my designs ended up being rushed. The posters I made were the best part of my project, especially the second one which got the most positive feedback.

How my Posters Would Look Outside

In Photoshop, I created images using a bus stop and the London Underground to see how my posters would look in real life situations.

 

In my opinion, I think the second poster I made works best as an advertisement as it is uses more lighting effects to draw attention to it, and the colour scheme is subtle.

Final Designs

In response to my feedback from the class, I have changed my posters and leaflet accordingly.

 

No changes made to the first poster.

 

For this poster, I changed the colour of Brighton text as people said the red text was too bright for it.

Again, on this poster I changed the text colours to match the colour scheme of the picture.

 

The leaflet had some major changes, such the gradients from the original being changed to solid colour as it fits better with my silhouette posters. The art style of the main picture also fits in better with the poster theme as well.

Inside the Leaflet

Since I completely changed yhe outside of the leaflet, I would have to make the inside of it look the same as well. However, with block colours the inside where it has little imagery looks plain. I changed this by adding a faint map of the roads around London Road to the background of my leaflet, with the green road being the main London Road.

 

For the text at the top, I used the same effect as I did on the outside of the leaflet, but i made the London Road Brighton text go across the whole leaflet, even going across gaps. I did this because if I left space, the words wouldn't fit evenly.

Leaflet Headings

For my leaflet design, I decided to make the headings slightly different, but still similar to my posters. As i was going to use bold colours on my leaflet pages, I thought that making the text for the headings white would make them stand out, but not as much as the main heading for the leaflet so it would work well.

For example, these are what the headings look like in my leaflet. The white colour really stands out against the darker colours and goes well with the white backgrounds.

Changes to Leaflet Design

Because of the feedback on my original leaflet, I completely changed the look of it. At first, I experimented with gradients again, but afterwards I thought that flat colours would work best for my leaflet as it makes it look bold and it fits in more with the style of my two silhouette posters. The buildings in the background are meant to look similar to the ones in my second poster, so this leaflet ties in with all of my poster designs in some way.
The logo change from "LRUP" to just simply "London Road Brighton" was simple, as it was already a running theme with my posters, and fit in well with those.
I also added a stip of text down the side, like some of my posters had. It gives a small description of what is in the urban regeneration project.

Finished Posters + Crit

These are my three finished posters, plus the start of my leaflet which I showed for my crit in front of my class.

 

 

 

The feedback given on all of my posters was positive. It was said that the silhouette idea was very bold and strong, and although the second poster was different, the idea worked very well with the rest of my posters. The art for these was strong, and it did not need changing. The main rooms for improvement on my posters were to change the background font colours on some of the posters, such as the red on the hotel poster and the green on the bar poster.

My leaflet however, was still in development stages and got a lot more criticism.

 

The main criticism for my leaflet was that it looked so different from my posters, even though i kept the "Brighton" logo theme. The arrow theme did not go over that well, and it was said that it looks more like a leaflet for industrial growth, rather than urban regeneration and that the buildings look like a bar chart. The lack of white on the Brighton text was also a complain. In response to this feedback, I am going to completely scrap this idea, and make it more fitting for my actual theme. I will change the image completely, probably to another silhouette design. The colours will also be changed to look like my posters as well. I will completely scrap my current logo and make the "Brighton" text my new logo.

Logo Idea

For my leaflet, I decided to make a theme to doo with the name for my project, which is London Road Urban Project. I will make it a play on words with the initials, which are LRUP, using the UP to show progress in the area. The logo would have an arrow to show the "up" theme.

Gradients

On my posters, I had used gradients for a colour blending effect.

I have used this technique on older projects, however on this project I used them to a greeater effect, such as the beam coming off the moon in my second poster:

I did this by making a polygon shape into a trapezium, and then adding a gradient which starts off light but gets transparent at the end of the gradient. I then erased the overlapping parts on the moon.

Making my Second Poster

Many of the elements of my second poster were made with the shape tool.

 

For instance, the buildings were all made using the rectangle tool, the edges of roofs were made with the custom polygon tool to make triangles, and the arched road was made with the ellipse tool.

For the windows in the buildings, I also used the rectangle tool, but made several copies of them to form rows and columns. To align them perfectly, I used the distribute spacing tools to make the space between the squares the same for each.

 

To make the moon, I started by making an ellipsis. After that, I made a smaller one and placed it over the original circle. I used the trim tool to make a cut out of the second circle on the first one. After that, I had to ungroup the two shapes and i was left with a crescent.

 

 

Drawing the Silhouettes

For drawing my silhouettes, I got existing images and traced around them with the blob brush tool.
For example, this one was used in my first poster:

Some parts of the silhouettes had to be hand drawn, as parts of them were missing from the source image, which is why I drew over all the pictures myself instead of using live trace or something similar.

Creating my Text

To give the text a coloured effect, I started by typing out my text and making it a vector image but going to "Object > Expand". I then copied the text, changed the colour, and put it behind the main black text. After doing this I moved the coloured text slightly to the right to it looked like a coloured shadow behind the original text.

 

 

Sketching out my Design

Before I started my work on illustrator, I made a quick sketch on the program to give me an idea of where everything would go on the page.