Designing for Speaking from experience OUGD406

My final idea for this brief was to create an informative poster about the importance of asking why? and why not? at every opportunity possible on this course. I believe by constantly asking myself this I have been able to make my designs as informed as possible as a pose to just designing for the aesthetic or to be attractive. I wanted to really drill in this concept of not designing for attraction as the main objective by making my poster out of something considered negative and disgusting. For inspiration I thought about some of the negative things i've turned to as stress relief this year...

• sex
• alcohol
• coffee
• smoking

I then narrowed down this idea to thinking smoking was the most appropriate, its considered the most 'unhealthy' and dirty thing from my list of possibilities. I initially began collecting tab ends (gross I know) but realised the more effective way of doing this would be to create my type out of rolling tobacco instead and it would still have the same effect and concept behind it.

I decided to use a script typeface (I had previously sketched out) to add a sickly sweet feeling to the design, I wanted it to contrast the media used and negativity of it.

I wanted to do something physical like this for the production of this final brief to show next years freshers that its much more fun and often really effective to work more hands on and with unusual media rather than being stuck on a laptop all the time, as that is something I slipped into with a few briefs this year and now regret.

I was happy with the type and i'm certain the tobacco worked better than cig butts did as I could easily show the changes in stroke width. But it looked a little plain.

Luckily I kept some of the cig butts I had collected and dotted them around the design giving it more impact and the make the fact its tobacco more clear to the audience.

I used the Photoshop skills I learnt over the year to improve the contrast/levels of the photograph so it looks bright and eye catching, I want to draw the freshers in so they're actually interested in reading the information and learning more. I also edited out one of the cig butts to leave space for type.

I added my body type explaining the importance of asking 'why' and 'why not'. I then used the Facebook group to ask people what could be changed and improved on the design.

Im not the best at grammar or even writing sentences that make 'proper' sense. So I was told to change and add a few words so this made sense perfectly. I left flush the type, as this is something i've learnt this year that naturally left flush type is most legible and I don't want to cause any confusion or difficulty. I then typeset this so that the rag is really neat and theres no orphans and widows. I wanted to give an example of how when effort and time is put in left flush type can look really neat and attractive and this is something next years students should aim for.

This is my final design. Im really happy with it as I think the contrast between 'disgusting' and the end design being attractive grabs your attention and actually makes you as a viewer ask why? Each element of this design is informed by the audience (next years first years on graphic design). I think the general clean aesthetic and unusual use of media will appeal to them and draw them into reading the type.

Further photographs to show my development and production, will be useful in promotion of my design work. (portfolios etc.)