In this blog post I will share my poster one design procedures including photos of process and brief explanations.
"midsummer night's dream
dashed and I saw stars,
blinking
signals end of love."
These were the very first ideas that came to my mind when I tried to picture poster one. After carefully analyzing the haiku, I decided that the key themes would be dream, realization and heartbreak. Since the requirements for poster one are only geometric shapes as well as black and white can be used, I figured I could use the repetition of heart symbols to signify love and could portray dark and light in the poster to bring up the contrast.
This is my first thumbnail for poster 1. Here, I applied the negative/positive design principle by having white hearts on black space and a black heart on white area. This was also meant to show the emotions shift as the poem begins with a dreamy state and ends with "signals the end of love." In order to create tension building up to "The Moment" - the original title of the haiku, which I understand as the realisation of the female author falling out of love, I used the principle of continuity to make the heart shapes form a diagonal line until they exploded into a big star (the radial strokes signify this) and eventually the heart turned upside down and fell downwards due to gravity. However, after re-evaluating the design, I wasn't quite content with the composition and I found the meaning of the poem not clearly expressed so I did not use this as my final design.
In my second idea, I tested out a different composition and made a new signifier, the box (as explained in my statement of intent for poster 1)
After contemplating my ideas and trying out different composition, I eventually made my decision about the final design. I chose to keep the continuity principle because I find it helpful in creating balance and smooth movement to the poster. Additionally, I added the spotlight to bring up the contrast as well as the difference between positive and negative space.
Reference
Falling Boxes Illustrations & Vectors. dreamstime. https://www.dreamstime.com/illustration/falling-boxes.html