Digital Photography & Imaging - Week 6

Lecture 6
Poster Designs

The principles of design are rules a designer must follow to create an effective and attractive composition.

The fundamental principles of design are:

1. Emphasis

2. Balance and Alignment

3. Contrast

Contrast creates space and difference between elements in your design. Your background needs to be significantly different from the colour of your elements so they work harmoniously together and are readable.

4. Repetition

Limiting yourself to two strong typefaces or three strong colours are okay, as repetition unifies and strengthens a design. Repeated things can also create a motif.

5. Proportion

Proportion is the visual size and weight of elements in a composition and how they relate to each other. It often helps to approach your design in sections, instead of as a whole.

6. Movement

Movement is controlling the elements in a composition so that the eye is led to move from one to the next and the information is properly communicated to your audience, creating a story or narrative of your work.

7. White Space

White space (or negative space) is the only one that specifically deals with what you don't add - the empty page around the elements in your composition. It gives a composition more room to breathe, updating it from mediocre to successful. 

Further references:

• https://youtu.be/qp3jHWyPW-E
• https://99designs.com/blog/tips/principles-of-design

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Practical 6

Poster Design

Timeframe: WEEK 6 - WEEK 9

PHOTOGRAPHY BASIC:
https://youtu.be/V7z7BAZdt2M
https://youtu.be/ffiJH5fUeN0
https://youtu.be/AKXwJbZ7kXQ

Instruction:
Students are required to create a poster design using elements of photography, typography and vector graphics.
Note: Please make sure to consult your ideas before go through the poster development.

HONOR Competition:
https://www.honor.com/global/honor-talents/global-design-awards/

Please follow instructions in the website links
Please choose only one theme below:

Theme:
1. Renewal of life: Return Contemplate, human beings' relationship with all things.
2. Cultural Prosperity: Celebration - A Totem of Renewing Festive Culture
3. Genesis: The Future - Imagine the Innovative World of the Future
4. City Inspiration: Beauty - The Scenery of Hometown

Please choose ONE category only for your execution

Category:
1. Magic Lock Screen (Square & Vertical poster only)
https://www.honor.com/global/honor-talents/global-design-awards/magic-lock-screen

You are required to design the Wallpaper Poster ONLY. The Square and Vertical Poster

Part 1: Research about my topic

1. Study and gather all related information about your topic.
2. Write a summary about your topic.

Theme: City Inspiration: Beauty - The Scenery of Hometown

Category: Magic Lock Screen (Square & Vertical Poster only)

Title: If Only I Could Dream For A Moment

Summary of your design concept:

The feeling of home induced with small magical things that feels like someone living in a dream, filled with comfortable colours yet aesthetic to the eye. The concept would be something out of this world, a mixture of fictional things that happens in dreams, yet something that I would like to live in. As a city person, I would include a city but make it seem like a nostalgic picture from the early 2000s, while including some steampunk medieval hovercrafts and hot air balloons, with the addition of some wildlife and plants, combining nature with futuristic technology. I would include this window-like thing into the person’s eye and put a picture of a cottage-core house, one dream of mine to live in such a house - this would seem like it is looking into the person’s dreams.

This is my mood board:

Poster 1:

        

Fig 2.1                                      Fig 2.2

Poster 2:

         

Fig 2.3                                         Fig 2.4

Poster 3:

Fig 2.5

However after some feedback, my references are leaning too much into illustration instead of photoshop. I should find something simpler and more focused on a main subject, like for example, the hot air balloon from poster 3. I could use different techniques from what I learned in photoshop, where I could use either the collage or double exposure and other techniques I've learned. After fully understanding what I needed to create, I changed my idea into using my own photo and use the surrealistic art-style to express my feelings on the chosen theme. I will dive deeper into getting my inspiration and reference from posters Fig 2.3 and Fig 2.4.