Isabella Daly New College 66528
Critical and Contextual Studies – A2 Coursework Part 3
Exhibition Name Now that I’ve looked at a variety of different paintings that I could use as part of my exhibition, it’s now time to look at advertisement and promotion for the exhibition. Before I do this I first need to not only think about the name for my exhibition but also the font that I will use throughout to represent it all. Below is a list of different words related to the content of my exhibition:
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Pre-Raphaelite Vanitas Symbolism Allegory Metaphor Hidden meaning Death Emblem Representation
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Time Fate Women The fall of women Reminder Past Present Future mortality
Unravelling the message Unravelling the meaning Unravelling fate Unravelling the secret Revealing the message Revealing the truth Revealing the emblem Discovering the emblem Understanding the truth Understanding reality Delving deep into the depths of symbolism • What’s behind the painting • • • • • • • • • • •
• (There’s) more than meets the eye
Font Analysis
More Than Meets The Eye
Continuing with my development for creating the promotional work for my exhibition, now that I’ve chosen the name, I next need to look at some various different fonts I could potentially use. Below are a few different potential fonts I feel could work with the theme I’m going with.
I really like the look of the font to the left as it has almost like a script handwritten feeling to it which makes the writing some what seem like a personal communication towards the viewer that fits in nicely with my chosen paintings. This font may not be big and bold but it’s still eye catching, partially because of the great loops that both the ascenders and descenders have. What further adds to the very individual look that this particular style has is not only how the baseline that each of the individual letters sit at is at slightly different heights but how the counters change in size as well. For this reason it might be a smarter move to not use this font on too smaller scale, otherwise it may require too much effort for something to actually read and take in the information, I want the viewers of my poster to be able to quickly gain all the basic information they need. So if I were to use this for some text within my work I would need to make sure that not only it is of a larger size as well as there to not be too much of the actual text itself. What I really like about this fonts style that’s so different from the other is the real painterly feel it has with each individual letter looking like it has been created from a brushstroke which obviously ties in very nicely with how it’s an art showcase displaying a series of paintings. It also gives a very bold and thick appearance that instantly stands out that would work excellently for a title. The more organic and less formulaic feeling it gives off is one that is very appealing, due to the painterly look it has, with there being some missing parts of the letters, like when you lost paint on a paintbrush as the paint is removed and dries. So using it at a tiny size would be harder to read because of this effect.
More Than Meets The Eye
More Than Meets The Eye
The font to the right I feel stands out a lot more than say the first one that I looked at, this is due to the style with the individual letters being not only bolder in appearance but more printed in placement as they’re not joined up. This style would definitely be suited for a striking title but couldn’t be used on a smaller scale for all the extra information as it would take too much effort for the eyes to focus on to read a smaller mass of text and/or potentially take up too much space. The calligraphy appearance that this style has is definitely one that fits in quite nicely with the era that my work all comes from as this was very popular at the time. One thing I really like about this is the specific little elements all combined together, such as the lack of curves within the letters but where there are curves they are very prominent along with how very angular they each are with what appears to be a very unique looking serif addition onto many of them as well.
More Than Meets The Eye
This font on the left is very similar to the font I just looked at but I feel like this one has an extra something more too it that makes it look like a balanced cross between the first font I initially looked at and the one above, this is due to it looking more like it’s been hand drawn but still has this more formal print style to it. Obviously it also includes all the features that I previously talked about, but I personally feel like the style of this would be at a higher advantage. Even more so if I’m intending on including some of my own drawings and art within my poster, whether they be traditional or digital as it will create less of an obvious divide between the work I have created my self and other elements that I include within the poster and overall tie things together a lot more and appear like more attention and care has been put into it.
Poster Analysis The use of the font for the text used has been well thought out with the simple type face used for text being clear and easy to understand with the use of bold ‘Portrait’ adds an emphasis to this word and specifically which gallery is being featured. The use of the artists work as the imagery of the poster may seem like an obvious feature to include but it’s still a very important one as it creates a direct link to the viewer on what the exhibition itself will be about, misinterpretation is avoided. It would be pointless to show something completely unrelated to the exhibition within the poster as this would just act as false promotion as to what the exhibition will include. The colour choice of white being used for the text contrasts and stands out nicely in comparison to the the more earthy greens and browns on the selected piece of artwork shown to not only catch the viewers eye but to also stand as a completely separate layer from the work shown behind that allows the eye to separate the two and either focus on one or the other.
Now that I’ve looked at a variety of different paintings that I could use as part of my exhibition, it’s now time to look at actual advertisement and promotion for the exhibition. To start off with I’ve decided to take a look at some already existing art gallery posters to gather some inspiration from for when I start to make my own. Although the basic design means that it’s very clear as to what the poster is informing us so there’s no excessive clutter within poster or confusion which is something to take note of when designing my own about not to include anything unnecessary. Meanwhile the text used for the title of ‘Ruskin’ is a far more stylised font with a Serif design that fits in more so with the classical type of work that the artist produces. I actually believe that the information shown here is actually lacking quite significantly. Yes, we do know where the exhibition is taking place and and what artist it’s focussing on but it doesn’t tell us from when it start and ends, contact information or anything else. This implies that the viewer will have to remember that they have seen this poster and to look up the date as soon as possible so they don’t miss it rather than being instantly told the dates.
Primary Evidence
It’s one thing looking at a style of poster but it’s another thing to try creating my own, so after taking a look at my first poster I decided to try experimenting and creating my own version to see how it goes, and to get a feel for what I do and don’t like. In order to do this I first decided to take some primary evidence to help me out. I had some flowers sitting in my room that are very unusual and intricate looking, and along with being inspired by the nature themed piece of work used in the Ruskin poster, both flowers and nature where recurring elements throughout my analysis of paintings, so it only seemed natural for me to use these flowers as a starting point.
On the previous slide I showed a couple of images I took to help me in creating a potential poster design, for me start to using my images I first have to remove the backgrounds. To do this I simply imported my images into Photoshop and selected the magic wand tool, however, due to varying colours and tones in my images this only selected a certain amount of the image to remove. Although this at first seemed like it would be a more awkward process of removing the background, I actually liked the look of this rough edge and the way the tiny pieces scattered away from the image instead of giving it a harsh and clean cut edge.
I had already decided that what I wanted to do with these images is incorporate them with one of the paintings I’ve looked at so far, I felt like because of this scattered edge it will make it far easier to actually incorporate my images and give and overall more blended look rather than just having a photo obviously stuck on top of a painting.
After preparing my photos ready to use, I now had to pick one of the paintings I had looked at throughout my analysis, there were two in particular that stood out to me as being sensible choices to pick from: these being ’Ophelia’ and ‘The Lady of Shallot’. In the end I chose ‘The lady of Shallot’ as I felt the overall composition of the painting would not only work to a more successful standard being used in a poster format, but also due to how the colours of this paining were more alike to the colours in my photos than the ones used in ‘Ophelia’.
Initial Poster design
I started off creating the poster by importing my painting onto an A3 Canvas, followed by then choosing a fairly muted forest green colour to fill in the excess white space above and below the painting. Having done this I was now ready to start incorporating my own images by placing them over the various green blank spaces I had, rotating them where needed. However, I found the images to be too bright and distracting, almost shadowing the initial painting too much, but I liked in general how this build up of images looked. To solve this issue I simply changed the opacity down on certain layers of the flowers to give a more subtle look that blends in with the painting.
In the poster I analysed a few slides back, although there was very little in the way of text present, there was still the inclusion of a minimal amount. Now that I’ve put together the imagery of my own interpretation, I can now try and include the title using the various fonts I previously looked at. Both on this and the next few slides you will see me playing around with not only the four fonts that I looked at but also the placement of where to the put the text, nothing immediately stood out as working for me in my head so I decided to try playing around with as many different options as possible to see if I could find one that worked.
Even though I played around with a few different options for the text placement in this first poster design, I just found that nothing I tried seemed to work. In every different example it just looked like the text had just been stuck on the top of the already existing image and the two different elements looked very separate from one another instead of working together. This overall gave a very unfinished and amateurish look to the poster which considering as this is an exhibition for a gallery, is definitely something that I want to avoid. As I came to this conclusion it became clear to me that I should continue moving forward and look at some more existing posters to help inspire me further.
In comparison to the previous poster this one is wildly different and it’s clear to see that a lot more thought has been put into it. We can instantly see it jumps out far more to the viewer which is down to various reasons. Right from the first glance we can see that this particular exhibition is about the 1980s and not only have they made this very clear by stating this is a large font in the centre of the poster but all by all the various other components. The top section of the poster, with the use of the white, somewhat more formal text shown here attracts us due to how it’s somewhat different to the rest of the theme of the poster but is actually very important for us as the viewer to recognise as it shows us that it’s part of a series and gives important advertisements to this fact. Having the car breaking through the brick wall, the lightening, the silhouette of Michael Jackson, one of the time periods most iconic music figures, adds power and excitement to the poster and makes the exhibition seem energetic and creates a want for the viewer to go there. The order that the text has been laid out has been very well thought out as well: starting off by naming the gallery so people know the location, followed by the fact we’re told this particular exhibition is part of a series, then specifically which segment of this series it is, what’s involved and finally when. It informs us of everything we need to know to know in the precise order we to know it in while also not including anything unnecessary that we don’t need to know about. It’s short and sweet and makes sure we don’t get overloaded with information and get bored.
At the top here we can see that both the emblem and the name of the gallery listed in both of the main languages that are spoken within the country. This gives us one of the most vital pieces of information of where the exhibition is being held. The bright complimenting yet garish colours that have been used throughout the poster not only are extremely eye catching but also link back to and reflect the time period that the exhibition is focussing on. The use of the triangle shape pointing downwards leads our eye down towards the main imagery shown and creates an emphasis on it, along with this the pink titled effect on that bottom that uses perspective add to this and further adds depth.
More information has been given at the bottom section which not only gives a greater insight as to what kind of pieces are to be expected to be found at the exhibition and to then entice people to come even more so. Unlike the previous poster it also tells when the actually exhibition is running, this is also another extremely simple yet important piece of information, without it, people are more likely to forget about it and not end up going or to not remember in time and miss it.
The third poster I’m going to look at is slightly different from the previous two that I’ve The typefaces used for the title of the exhibition already looked at and quite noticeably stands out considerably more. itself has also been somewhat thought out, as we can see the word ‘Psychedelic’ has been used in a font quite typical linked with the the theme and movement where emphasis has been added to this by then warping the text to give it a ”wavy” appearance. Similarly, with the word ‘Punk’ this has also been used by having a font that’s very much like that of the Sex Pistols, one of the most famous pioneering punk bands. One of the most noticeable elements of this piece are the incredibly bright and garish colours used which although some may think are quite distasteful, the consistent use of these colours throughout ties together the poster as a whole. The use of these colours also accurately reflects what the actual exhibition is about with this being quite a modern, very particular and slightly abnormal showcase. Although there is so much going on with the headdress itself, it doesn’t seem like it clutters up the poster, this is partially due to the consistency of the colours within the poster but also down to how all the information listed on the poster doesn’t interfere with the imagery used. They may be the same colour but they both sit completely separately from one another. This allows us to take in both individually.
The actual imagery used for the poster has been very cleverly done where if you look closer you can see that within the headdress itself is has been made up of various different art supplies in keeping with not only the theme of the exhibition but linking back to the initial topic of art itself. Alongside this the way in which the headdress has been put together has also been carefully thought out. If you so happen to have missed the title of the showcase in the top the left, the way the headdress goes round allows your eye to flow around the poster, enabling you to take note of the information shown in the bottom right and then travel round the curve back up to the title and allowing you to take note of the smaller text underneath the title which informs us of the dates and the location. This is something I should definitely consider when designing my own poster as they way your eyes moves around and the order in which you see various components of the poster is very important.
I’ve now reached a point where after taking a look at some other examples, I can once again have a go at designing my own poster. I was really inspired by the last poster I looked at with the headdress and wanted to see if I could try and incorporate something I took another quick look at the poster and similar within my own design was thinking about the choice of objects used without directly copying it. for the headdress and how I would go about
assembling it if I was to create my own headdress. It quite quickly became an obvious decision of how based on the fact that throughout all my analysis of paintings I have focussed on the idea of symbolism, therefore making a headdress out of various objects shown throughout my paintings made perfect sense. Which is exactly what I started doing as shown from the screenshots I’ve taken. The way in which I actually went about putting together the headdress was by first deciding which specific object to use and importing the painting it’s from into Photoshop. At this point I then rasterize the image and using the lasso tool I draw around the object, inverse the selection and then delete. This removes the rest of the painting that I don’t need, I can then duplicate this layer multiple times and arrange them in the fashion I desire.
Items from the various paintings that I use to make up the headdress: Fabric from ‘The Awakening Conscience’ Green shrubbery from ‘Ophelia’ Front of boat from ’The Lady of Shallot’ Shell and Skull from ‘An Allegory of the Vanities of Human Life’ Wings, Hourglass, Candle, Coins and Clock face from ’Allegory of Vanity’
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Initially I wanted to only use objects that actually stuck out as points of symbolism, however, I found this to be somewhat limiting in my creative process, so I decided to allow myself to use any elements from the paintings and by doing this I feel it definitely it enabled me to create a far more solidly structured headpiece. Examples of me doing this are the inclusion of wings, shrubs, and fabric. When I first cut out the section of the fabric I used, due to it making up a fairly small section of the painting and the quality of the image, once it was enlarged the section had fairly rough edges which made things look fairly shabby and unrefined. To overcome this, using the ’smudge’ tool I smoothed out the edges of the fabric which gave a far softer look and, in my opinion, made the appearance look even more so like a piece of fabric. Alongside this, in order for me to use multiple duplicates of the fabric to all sit in the right places to give a natural looking draping effect I had to use the warp tool on various different duplicates to completely reshape the piece of fabric. This was quite a fiddly process but I managed to succeed in getting the effect I desired.
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To the right is the finished version of my poster and as you can see, in the end I didn’t end up going with any of the fonts that I previously looked at as I found them all to be too stylised and almost overcrowded the poster as a whole with too much going on, making it hard to really understand and not only get the point across but seem appealing at all. I ended up going with the same style of font that The National Gallery uses as their type face as this clearly displayed the text while not drawing any attention away from the main imagery in the piece. By doing this it complimented the use of the gallery name and the image used and really tied it all together to create a finalised looking poster. I also decided that I couldn’t have the image taking up the entirety of the poster and instead where I have the text I used a dark greyish colour that matched the type of colours shown in the background of the figure in the painting ’the lady of shallot’ as this made it far clearer to understand the text used. If I had not included these then I fear the poster would have looked far more informal as well as unfinished, which is exactly the opposite of what I was going for. As this is meant to be an exhibition for The National Gallery it’s meant to look not only finished, but highly sophisticated as well.
From finishing the design for my poster I now need to make the design for the ticket stubs, below are some examples of ticket stubs that I have found. It seems to be clear that all the information is presented on the right hand side of the stub whereas the imagery of whatever sort is on the left. As this seems to be a recurring feature it’s definitely something that I want to take into consideration when I go about creating mine.
On the right is the design I’ve decided to use for my ticket stub. I wanted to keep it quiet simple while still having it look like it goes alongside the poster as part of the same set of promotion and the way I achieved this was extremely simple: I made sure I included the same font as the poster, including the same figure I edited and a strip of grey along with a thin rectangular banner just to set things all in their place and stop elements from just randomly ‘floating in space’ as much.
After doing both my poster and my ticket stub, I now have to do the final portion of my promotion for my exhibition with this being the leaflet that will contain a brief summary of information of all my paintings and everything I’ve previously talked about throughout my slides. To left shows a selection of different exhibition leaflet covers take inspiration from and have a guideline as to the sort of layout that works well. All of them have work of the artist who’s involved in the exhibition as well as text that’s big and bold. Apart from the Brancusi leaflet that has some black text on a dark background which I personally think was a bad decision and isn’t a wise decision as this makes it actually unclear to read the text. As for other information that’s displayed on the front there’s also the Gallery where thee exhibition is along with the dates it running from. Essentially it’s very similar to the poster for the exhibition itself. I’ve decided for this reason to make my poster also the cover for my leaflet, this shows consistency throughout the promotional work as well as it will eliminate any confusion between other exhibitions and their promotional items getting mixed up with mine. It will be instantly easy to spot that my leaflet goes with my poster for the specific exhibition that I am putting together.
On both this and the previous two slides show small versions of each of my individual leaflet pages, as you can see I don’t have a front cover page and this is simply because I decided to use my design for my poster as the front cover the leaflet due to how when I tried to create a leaflet cover that had was slightly simpler, it still essentially had all the same information but just didn’t look as professional. After considering this, it seemed only logical to therefore use my poster for front cover as well. I also made sure to include a introduction into the exhibition, a map and some notes at the back just to make it seem slightly more realistic As for what each individual page looks like, I decided to alternate each page with it being white with the dark strip at the top and vice versa, I also alternated on each side whether the painting would be shown or my small amount of text stating basic information such as the title, artists, date, size and medium as well a brief description about the piece. My reasoning for is just so I could play around slightly with the layout to make it slightly more exciting for the viewer without changing anything too much and stop it from being boring. I then decided to add a little something more and onto the top banner I would cut out a little section of the image and put it in the top right hand edge, just to add a little something more and to make it seem a little more pretty and ”frilly”.
Before starting to create the floor plan and the layout of how my own exhibition will be, I decided to look at some images of the inside of the National Gallery, to give me an idea of the sort of look I’d like my own to have and so I have a basic idea of where to start and what works and what doesn't. To the right was the first image I looked at where I love the actual structure of the room, with the repeated archways to the different rooms as well as dark teal colour used on the walls which contrasts nicely the very warmed toned wood floor, creating a very balanced atmosphere. In general though, if darker colours were used I feel like it could remove a vast amount of light in the room, meaning you wouldn’t get to view the piece quite literally in ‘their best possible light’, matched with how it wouldn’t make in as enticing a room to go into. On the other hand though, if the walls were in far brighter and bolder colours these would instead be far too distracting, lower the sophistication of the entire room itself and make the room somewhat of an eye saw to be in. It would feel very unnatural and uncomfortable and once again, not being an enticing place for the viewer to be. As well as this, I don’t actually like the placement of the paintings themselves, even though there are a number of smaller paintings with big wall space needed to be filled, I feel like the room has been over cluttered with paintings to the extent where your eye darts around desperately trying to look at them all and take everything in, and because of this you may overlook or miss something really exciting or interesting. Considering as the theme of all my chosen artworks is symbolism and paying attention to the finer details and really getting lost into the pieces is important, I feel like having multiple paintings on each wall would be somewhat distracting and would prevent the viewer from really understanding everything possible but also subconsciously rush them into feeling like they have to get round every painting as quickly as possible. This is also something I definitely want to avoid, I want my viewer to have an enjoyable time walking around the exhibition, feeling like they can go at their own pace.
On this slide is another image from the inside of The National Gallery, and I definitely prefer this one to the previous in almost every way possible. Although I spoke about liking the colour choices of both the walls and floors of the previous image I actually prefer the selected ones in the image on the left. The previous colour scheme just seems far too saturated in comparison to the ones used here, the far more natural and calming and to me, give off a more relaxed vibe while still being highly sophisticated which I feel is also added to by the particular pattern of wall paper used that’s very subtle but adds an extra something to the overall appearance of the room. I also love how much larger the actual size of the room is, the amount of space creates a far more pleasant atmosphere to be in and once again reduces the feeling of needing to rush around the exhibition due to it being so small and potentially being worried of standing around a piece for too long and blocking other peoples vision. This larger space matched with the paintings being far more spaced out definitely promotes the viewer to really take their time looking at each piece until they feel like they’ve fully looked at it in its entirety. The use of the benches also adds to this nicely and really suggests the viewer sitting down and having a very thoughtful moment.
After now creating all the promotion for my exhibition, as well as looking at some images from the inside of the National Gallery to get the feel for what a typical layout for the gallery would be like, I’ve come to the position of where I’m nearly now at the end of my project and all that’s left to do is actually create the actual exhibition itself. From what I’ve learned from walking around the museum is that I do not want a complex layout but rather a more simple one that allows for those who are attending my exhibition to focus more on being gently taken around the paintings in an obvious and easy fashion so they can focus on the paintings rather than trying to work their way round the museums. To start off this planning, I first of all digitally created a birdseye view of what I intend for my exhibition to look like, so I can get a basic understanding of how it will turn out. As you can see I have a dividing wall that separates my two rooms out from one another which gives an indication to the viewer that the two rooms should be viewed as two separate groups of paintings separate from one another. As although they may all be similar from being part of the same exhibition, they’re not all completely a-like with my first group being about paintings that focus on time, while my other set are all paintings from the Pre-Raphaelite period. As there is one less painting in the first group than in the second, it therefore makes sense that the first room would be slightly smaller than the second which from the floor plan you can see I have made a slight different between the sizes of the the two rooms.
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Also form looking at my floorplan you can see that I’ve numbered different areas of the walls, these are to display where I will put my different paintings as well as the order that I want people to view them in. I’ve specifically chosen for you to start walking round the exhibition on the opposite side to where the walkway to the second room is, this way the walker will know that they are to enter the second room once they have finished exploring the first. I then have it so you walk round a circle in the second room so that by the time you’ve finished looking round room two, you’re in a position where you then walk back into room one and can leave the building when desired.
This page and the next six slides show a more visual representation of virtually showing how each of my paintings will look within the gallery. With both Ophelia and The Awakening Conscience I managed to find decent quality images that included the piece along with its actual frame, however I was unable to do this with my other paintings where I just had to find some nice frames to substitute.
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’An Allegory with Venus and Cupid’ (created using oil on panel sized at 146.1 x 116.2cm painted in 1545)
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‘Allegory of Vanity’ by Antonio de Pereda painted in 1632 in oil on canvas and the size of w1740 x h1395 cm
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1. An Allegory of the Vanities of Human Life’ or ‘The Vanitas’ painted by Henry Steenwyck that was painted on oil on wood in 1640 39 x 51 cm (small scale).
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’Ophelia’ by Sir John Everett Millais between 1851-2 painted on a scale of 762 x 1118mm with oil on canvas
‘The Awakening Conscience’ by William Holman Hunt painted in 1853 at 76.2 x 55.9cm on canvas with oil 5. 6.
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3. ‘The lady of Shallot’ by John William Waterhouse painted with oil on canvas in 1888 at a size of 153 x 200 cm
‘Thoughts of the Past’ by John Roddam Spencer Stanhope painted in oil on canvas as a size of 86.4 x 50.8cm in 1859