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General Concept Everyone walks down Church Street. I set out to depict the way people walk down the street. There is an obvious flow of traffic in the central part of the street, with variations of this path comign from people going to the exterior stores. The influence of brand is not felt in the center of the road. the experience as a whole and the location are more important than brand awareness. as people get closer to the stores, the more the stores branding becoems apparent, and once you enter into the store, you are immersed fully into the brand. The experience of walking can be interpreted and viewed on many levels from the personal journey to the universal experience.
3 Visual Languages used to Create the Visual Narrative Line represents the movement of people. Form and density of the lines represents the mass of people compared to an individual experience. Type represents brand and how people on Church Street absorb it. 2
original sketches 3
Typographic Choices The fragmented typography used in the poster was meant to represent the fragmentation of corporate identity, and how brand perception and impact becomes fragmented as one gets father away from a store. The letterforms are more complete and larger as they get closer to the stores. Only small type elements are used in the areas farther away from the stores. The two levels of opacity for the type further demonstrate the dissipation of brand impact on Church Street. Typefaces used in the poster are popular typefaces for brands to use in their corporate identity. Fonts used include, Helvetica, Garamond, Rockwell, Courier, Textile, and Futura among others. I tried to use a variety of font styles to represent the different look and feels of the various stores on Church Street. Different stores have different logotypes and different vibes, and the variation of typefaces help to demonstrate these differences. I used sans serif, slab-serif, serif, old style, and italic fonts to show the different character of the stores represented. Type variation was key as the letterforms were broken down and no letter was complete intact. By deconstructing the type the differentiations between serif styles became heavily apparent.
For the body text and headline text for the magazine spread I used Garamond. This face was chosen for its easy legibility and understated style. I wanted a typeface that did not detract from the complex line illustration in the background. An old style serif font was picked over a sans serif on because it would distinguish itself from the background better. A sans serif font would begin to interact with the long lines too much and could detract from the reading. Garamond does have an historical feel, and so does church street. The typeface helps distinguish the classiness of the street, compared to other, more modern urban shopping experiences like Times Square in New York City. The body text was set in a traditional and normal manner. I wanted the emphasis to be on the illustration and title. I didn’t want the text to be entirely inviting to read. I purposefully did not include multiple levels of language to lead the reader into the body text. I want the viewer to try and really interpret and soak in the illustration for a long time before reading the article. The body text is uninviting, allowing more time to be spent deciphering the complex illustration and title style. 4
Structure of the Design I based the structure of the poster off of the physical layout of Church Street. The poster physically maps the walking habits of people on Church Street. The layout of Church Street is inherently vertical, and people walk in a primarily vertical fashion. People also tend to walk in a few popular ways, which are vertical bands of traffic. A vertical layout with a strong sense of columns was appropriate to mimic the walking habits of people. All of the structure was derived directly from the physical layout of Church Street and the way people walk and no external grid was imposed on this illustration.
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Color Choices C:42 M:83 Y:83 K:65
I decided to go with a brick red to represent the brick quality of Church Street. Much of the buildings on the street are brick and the ground is completely brick. The color helps differentiate from other urban shopping experiences, which evoke a different color palette.
C:19 M:23 Y:31 K:0
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The light tan is used to compliment and contrast with the red. I did not want color to be a major visual language in the piece so I chose the tan and red colors which are analogous colors to simply show contrast in the lines, type and background, and nothing more. Any other color scheme would have added another visual language. The type used the same tan in varying opacity levels to add more depth. The entire design was made with 2 colors, with some variation coming in the different opacity levels.
Helpful tips from first Critique
The poster doesn’t need areas of street performer or outdoor restaurant as they dilute the central narrative and are confusing. They odd shapes break the system of lines and type.
Introduction of another layer of complexity was something a lot of people wanted. They believed the poster was too simple and could benefit from an added layer of depth to add even more meaning.
“It is showing an organic gathering of human beings as they interact with corporate identity” -Comment from Suzanne that really captures what I was trying to communicate. It was good to see that someone else was getting the message that I wanted the poster to tell.
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Preliminary poster versions
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Changes made after Critique I added an extra layer of complexity in the type forms by copying them, making them bigger, more transparent, and placing them behind the other type forms. This created a stronger aura around the branded experiences and showed the dilution of brand into the center of the street more effectively. The added forms also ground the composition on the outsides, creating a more solid and complete look. I decided to remove the street performer and restaurant area as I felt they did take away from the central point of the message, as they were distracting. People were drawn to the areas and got stuck there trying to figure out exactly what they represented. The overall composition turned out to be stronger without these elements.
I avoided changing colors or adding colors, as many people suggested. Color was not a visual language I chose to tell my visual narrative, so I tried to stay away from extensive use of it. I feel an added layer of visual language on top of the extremely complex line and type forms already present would further muddle the narrative.
Final poster design. 10
Translating the Poster into a Magazine Spread After establishing the poster design, it was a challenge to decide which elements to transfer over to the magazine spread. I realized the line illustration was strong and visually interesting, and wanted to incorporate it into the magazine layout. I experimented with how much emphasis would be given to the forms in the poster versus the type. I originally included an entire spread directly pasting a section from the poster onto a page, leaving a white page for the body text. The strong red background contrasted too heavily with the white page, and created too much emphasis. The lines and the fragmented type took a step back in the hierarchy of the composition, which was not ideal. I then decided to have the line illustrations be on a white background with a very subtle color change. The lines then started to draw more attention visually, without making the page to busy to handle a title and body text. In the end I think I was able to create an ideal balance between the lines in the background, the title, and the body text, while maintaining the spirit and narrative quality in the poster.
For the title of the poster, I wanted it to highlight walking down Church Street, and the dilution of brand. The title “A walk down Church Street” with the words Church Street becoming decomposed seemed to address both key narrative elements. The fragmented type of Church Street symbolizes how the brand of Church Street even becomes diluted while walking there. It becomes less about being at Church Street, and more about just walking, and enjoying the scene. The word “Walk” in the title remains intact for a reason. The only thing about the experience of Church Street, which does not get diluted, is the act of walking, as that is the one universal element in everyone’s Church Street experience.
Magazine spread design on the next page. 11
Regardless the situation and circumstances surrounding a visit to Church Street, certain elements remain the same. A walk down Church Street is universal despite all the diverse reasons for visiting. Everyone walks. And most people walk the same way down the brick street. The center of the road is perfect for everyone from the express walkers to the hopeless wanderers. Purpose seems to disappear while strolling down the center. Just being at Church Street is enough of a purpose for many people. Some people become gravitated to the specific attractions, but everyone is drawn to the lore of the Street as a whole. The paths people take might not tell the individual stories of visitors, but they show the collective experience of Church Street.
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Main Brand Logo 14
Boiling the Design Down to a Logo The design for the poster and the magazine spread included a lot of complex elements, but these elements were repeated many times in both designs. In order to simplify the designs, I had to look at all the designs and made sure Included all unique elements and used them only once. I knew I needed a network of lines showing the different paths of people. A section of fragmented type also had to be in the mark to represent the dilution of brand. I simply used the fragmented Church Street words from the title and placed them with one small section of the line illustration to create the mark. The final mark ended up being quite complex compare to the standard corporate logo, but that is ok. The collective experience of church street is much more complicated than the vision of a corporation. By reducing the mark into simpler or less elements, the visual narrative of multiple experiences would be lost. The narrative is meant to show the variations and different experiences of people walking down Church Street, and fitting them into a mold that paints a different picture of the experience.
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Alternate Logo Version