Design Practice: Creating the poster

After watching the film and doing some research i think the most important thing was to have the woman and man as the centre of attention but then also have something that resembled his job as a director.

The concept

The concept is to produce a simple poster that shows how the main actor (Robert De Niro) only thinks about his job and works really hard, but is then distracted by a woman who takes him away from his job.
So i started collecting images that relate to these two things.

I then took parts of these images and started to create vectors form parts of them.

I used the poster above because i like how the two of them were the main focal point but i didn't like any of the other stuff going on around it it is way too crowded, so i took the man and woman as shown below so i could use it with my own poster.

I then created these types of studio equipment using the images shown at the top of the page.

the process in which to make these i have shown below with the microphone which i then did on all the other designs below.

Firstly i took the image and 'image traced it'

Then on the image trace window i ticked ignore white,

I then increased the threshold so the image was sharper.

Then using the smooth edge tool i made the lines neater

I then did the same for the two images below.

Then using all the vectors i have made i started to put together a poster using different layouts.

I started with a 4 by 8 grid, this then gave me the flexibility of having quite a few things on the page so they could easily be lined up.

I put the two people and the centre of my image and made them quite big and prominent.

I then started to insert the images i had made into the poster shown below.

I then put the objects in the background which i felt worked a lot better, this then shows what he has left behind for the woman.

I then added in a line so it didnt look so much like the objects were floating.

I then thought there was too much going on and didnt leave much room for the title of the film.

So i took out some images.

Despite doing this i felt it looked better with the set in the background, shown below.

But there still isn't something quite right about this, i fell there is too much going on and the distracts away from the main point of the poster.

So i then thought about what else i could use, and one thing i hadn't looked at was the directors chair.

So in keeping with the other illustrations i image traced this chair and increased the threshold.

I then added the word director to the chair.

Using this chair i then created some layouts.

Using the same grid i placed the chair in the background to show what he has left behind.

I then flipped it round to see how that looked form the other side, i feel this way would leave more space to put the title of the film and the names of the actors.

I then created this below to see if i could put in any equipment. But i think this doesn't work very well at all and i should just leave them out.

I think this is the best layout for my poster and it also leaves me with some good space for the titles and actors/actresses names.

Next i looked into different typefaces that i could use.

I used font book and typed in the name of the film and went down the list and picked out the best few. I selected mostly sans serif fonts because i felt they gave the film a more modern twist and they are not used on the poster i have seen for this film, there are some serif fonts but i felt these may not portray the kind of romance and hard work that is put across in the film.

I have enlarged the typefaces that i think are the best and what i will apply to my poster.

Futura, i have placed this in the centre and then also moved it to the left

I think it works better here than the middle, because when its in the middle it doesn't work with the image.

I then put in the name of the 3 main actors of the film below the title

I also tried another typeface in the middle and with the reflected version

I then experimented with having the man and woman in the middle, which i thought would work better so i could the have all the type centralised and the only thing that would be off centre would be the directors chair. I also added a black box at the bottom so it could be used to put information in about the film, it also separates the poster well and makes it stronger compositionally.

I then printed it out to see what the composition looked like and how the type was along the bottom

I then printed it out again so i could see what the type would look like and that the point size was okay. I also changed the placement of the title and the names. I just needed to insert the bock at the bottom for all the relevant information about the film.

I then stuck with the idea of having the man and woman in the middle and i changed the typeface to Helvetica Neue bold which has worked a lot better with the illustrations and stands out well.
I also much preferred the type as i thought it worked well with the rest of the poster.

This is an alternative of the poster above having the title at the bottom and names at the top.

I then felt that the background needed something so i have tried to experiment with different stocks to see what would best.

Firstly there was an earlier attempt of a colour that i just printed on plain paper, this colour came out horrible and so i changed that.

Antique White paper

Cotton purple paper

After looking at these printed poster there was a few things i wasn't happy with, one was his chin that looked weird as well as his eyebrow and the white thing on her shoulder, so i got rid of these and also added another leg to the woman so she stood looking more elegant.