Part 5 Layout Project - Publicity and Marketing
Project: Publicity and Marketing
What to I think I will be exploring here?
- I will be looking at how different layouts are employed in publicity and marketing scenarios.
What skills do I want to develop?
- I want to develop my understanding for how the grid system is used outside of magazine layouts as this has been my primary interaction with grids at this point. Doing this within letters will be particularly interesting as this can often contain some very important information so it will be intriguing to see how the structure changes for these. - I want to be able to understand more about graphic design in advertising and how other techniques, not just layout can change our perceptions of a company. I guess this goes back to the colour psychology points in previous exercises but I want to go beyond just colour. - This is going to also make me separate myself further between designer and consumer to see the designs in both lights and what works. - I would like to try and develop my sketching skills in some ways. Over the module I am getting more comfortable with this and with the remainder of this module I would like to develop this further if possible.
What do I need to make sure that I focus on during my research?
- What layout systems have worked before and perhaps what hasn’t. - These exercises may require me to get more feedback on the designs that I have done in other parts of this section. Gaining feedback from the target audience will provide vital to make sure that I am on the right tracks with this. - Mock-ups are going to be an important part of the process. Although I have used these a little before, within some of the circumstances that could arise, I think they will prove more effective than they have done before.
Posters Research Point
This project was about trying to get people to visit America, how has this been achieved? - Limited colour palette, it is attractive and shows America off to its best in a simple style that doesn’t overcomplicate the landscape.
- People are eliminated. This gives the audience space to place themselves within the setting, placing themselves within the poster will make them want to visit America even more. Giving the series ‘a face’ would have hindered the campaign. - Repeating the same colours on each poster, along with similar fonts (not exactly the same but this does add some interest) helps to keep the concept at the forefront of the audience’s mind. However, for this to be effective, the campaign has to have a very wide outreach where they constantly see the posters. - With the lack of people, there isn’t the possibility of showing off empowering body language that shows the effects of being in America, instead this has been eliminated and replaced with focusing on the rule of thirds. This helps to ease the eye over the poster and makes it seem a lot easier to visit America.
How do these posters portray the messages of war?
- Heavily weighted fonts are key here, they demand attention and portray the seriousness of a situation. - Emphasis on YOU as the audience. Lots of pointing at the audience with direct connection to them as an individual. This is dont through a figure pointing, placing the audience member within the poster, emphasis on the word YOU (underlined or capitals) and then emphasis of the people as a collective. - One message that was particularly highlighted during the second world war was in regards to the importance of women. They seemed to feature heavily on a lot of posters to show that everyone had a part to play. This shows the importance of imagery. The text itself doesn’t highlight their role, but the images change the way in which a selection of text is viewed.
Using red as their main advertising colour has played to Coca Cola’s advantage over the years. What are the benefits of using red here?
- It has the appearance of being nearer than it actually is which means that you can nearly feel the bottle in your hand. Placing a product within the consumer’s hand without it physically being there is a clever idea as they then also get the taste of Coca Cola meaning they crave it and go and buy the product. - 29% of companies use red because it helps to stimulate appetite so using red so dominantly in the advert above functions in multiple ways to the point where you can feel the cold bottle of Coca Cola in your hand. - Blue also features in a few adverts at this has the associations to being cold (most people do drink Coca Cola cold) and it has an element of secuirty, suggesting you can always trust Coca Cola to be there when you want a cold drink. This all helps build up a unified identity for the brand but it doesn’t always feature on the posters. I wonder why red was picked over giving the sense of security and cool.
Looking at a collection of posters like this for the same company helps to highlight how design has changed over the years. One of the key things that I noticed was the varying amounts of text. For example, the 1942 war poster has paragraphs of text! This isn’t a funcitonal poster but with the officer returning home, you feel like it is a significant possession, you need to own that glass bottle. It is an important part of the celebration for your family returning home, and with this importance, you feel like as an audience you should read the text alongside it. There is no set text layout that has made it work. Scipt fonts, Serif and Sans Serif have all been used over the years. The heavily weighted fonts for 1970 and 1974 are the least effective out of them all. They are too heavy and over power the curved logo of Coca Cola. Especially in 1970, the harsh lines contradict the soft, artistic painting approach that has been taken towards the artwork. In a way, this romanticised approach to Coca Cola was continued into 2016 when the soft lighting and bokeh effects were popular in advertising. This time minimal text is used, and the slogan is instead played in a light Serif font that has a more established visual hierarchy against the logo. Advertising since this point has taken on a more minimal approach. There is less text, more emphasis on the red and the concept of sharing when you gave a glass of Coca Cola. One thing I have noticed is that they continune to advertise coca cola in a glass bottle although most people will drink it from a plastic bottle. This is an interesting approach as it brings back connections to the original Coca Cola, the sweet taste and your personal connections that you have to the brand. When chilled, you can feel the cold more from a glass bottle than you can a plastic bottle so this helps to bring back these summer connections to drinking Coca Cola in the sun. This has all been very clever and it is clear to see that there has been more investment into understanding what the consumers are like and what works within advertising. Obviously all these posters were effective during the campaign otherwise the company wouldn’t have celebrated over 100 years but the company is now showing more of an understanding to their consumers making connections to each individual element of a poster. They are also showing that they are understanding exactly what connections can be made so the posters are kept simple, knowing that the understanding is built up from the personal assocications to the signs and symbols within the poster.
Exercise - Posters and Flyers
What visual language techniques are employed by these posters?
- As colour isn’t relied upon here, all other visual communication techniques are hightened in a way. Text is focused on for some posters, trying to play with the merging of the fore-ground and background distinction that is so apparent in other posters. - Otherwise, the text is never too ornate, it is often a Sans Serif or a very minimal Serif font. Black and white is a classic colour combination so to be in keeping with the clean cut lines of the black and white combinaton, more minimal fonts have been selected. - Contrast is an obvious focus with this colour limitation however, some decide to utilise is more than others, or at least make it more prominant than others. Doing this softens the message for the eye but in doing so, sometimes the impact of the message is reduced. - Texture has been introduced in a lot of these posters in order to add a point of interest to the designs. As everything has been reduced down so much, textures and patterns are something that can easily be used to guide the eye around the frame. - Breakages within the design are also frequently used. Because of the minimal designs, even the smallest differences are highlighted and if the breakages are used successfully it can provide a focal point but used too little and unintentionally, it just looks like a mistake so this method would have to be used carefully.
What kind of typefaces are used? - Bold, strong Sans Serif fonts seem to be common. - Ones that don’t have much differentiaton between capitals and lower case letters in terms of height. - Other fonts are obviously used, some do occasionally use a Serif font but this doesn’t seem to fit with the style of the posters on a general basis. - Equally, on a photocopier, bold dark lines are easier to print compared to lighter, more curved fonts. Scripted fonts would therefore be a little difficult to read once printed. Other common features: Geometric forms, music illustrations (although a little cliche), black with an accent colour combinations and clear divisions between sections.
Visual communication techniques employed and what I have learnt: - Clearly contrast is going to be a key feature here. I decided textures can sometimes be a little difficult to print so I would rather use the contrast in simple geometric forms in order to create an impact. - Although I already knew, visual hierarchy needs to be carefully considered in order to show the audience where they need to read next. On this example there was a lot of text that the client wanted on there and so it was important to establish a) what would get someone to read the poster? (The rhetorical question) and b) what other information did they need to know? Sizing was the clearest way on this poster to establish the difference between what information was important and needed to be remembered compared to the more detailed information. - Ideally the DO YOU WANT TO SING? Would have led down to the important information, but the layout of this didn’t work and the space provided wasn’t enough, hence the visual hierarchy has been relied upon in another way. - Using round geometric structures makes the grid seem less formulaic which softens the eyes to the harsh contrast that features across the poster. This takes it away from the more mechanical grid structures that can be seen in advertising and commercial work. - Putting images of singers on the posters helps to put the audience into someone else’s shoes and put them in their place on the course without even realising it to start with. - Emphasis of the word SING in a different colour as well as increased font size makes this a completely different part of the visual hierarchy and transforms the layout. It bleeds over the grid that is already quite flexible but in this case it works.
In a smaller area, there is the possibility to make the adveritising seem more personal. As less information needs to be shown on this part of the flyer, it has the potentional to make it mroe interesting. The grid structure here appears more simple and a little more rigid as no components bleed over different sections. However, placing emphasis on certain words again adds height to the main section of the grid. Changing the typography also has an impact on the grid as the zoomed in music note still has the function of softening the harsh lines and contrast that appears on the flyer, however, more curved fonts being used for YOU reduces this impact to the point where the note almost becomes invisible and therefore, its impact on reducing the harsh tones is lost.
Once again, with the reverse of the flyer, the layout can be more simple than that of the poster. There is still a lot of information to include but this now has the purpose to provide information, instead of catching someone’s attention (that’s the aim of the other side of the flyer). Therefore, the grid selected is that of a more functional layout that differentiates the different levels of information that is required by the audience. Although there is obviously this slightly altered function, the information still needs to look interesting enough to read. The contrast provided by the circle in terms of using different text colours worked well previously and in the right positioning here also worked well. It was important to use the contrast carefully though as the text still needed to be readable and clear to any reader. The form of the circle also softened the linearity that was on the previous designs.
With this exercise, I found it really interesting to see how I responded to just being able to just black and white. These two colours are the fundamentals to most designs and I am accustomed to using them both quite freely. When put next to each other, the two colours have a strong amount of contrast next to each other which has been used effectively in many designs but I found it incredibly overpowering when these were the only two colours I could use on a design. Understandably, this isn’t much different to grayscale and it is possible to have grey tones to act as a medium between the two however, within these designs it didn’t work to have this medium tone and instead it was a case of balancing these heavy tones next to each other. Contrast is something that I am comfortable working with and I have started to appreciate it in smaller amounts so based on my often chaotic work I used to do, this should have been easy, but this time I was going backwards with a more informed knowledge of effective visual design concepts and how to guide the eye through the chaos. Although the visuals may still seem quite busy, the eye is more clearly led around the frame based on the visual hierarchy that has been established. This has been done through quite a simple technique of varying text sizes. Adding more fonts and more varying fonts to the poster like I had done before in order to create a visual hierarchy would have added even more contrast to the frame and there would have been no areas to pause for the eye. At this point, it would have become more and more visual noise instead of anything informative. Although it is a very simple technique, using the circle across the designs helps to soften the harsh lines of the design even though it is this circle that adds the most contrast. Had this contrasting colour been added in the form of a square, the harsher lines would have made the contrast seem harsher. This simple trick on the eye also leads the eye more naturally round the frame in a curved motion instead of changing direction when it is met at a point. With this exercise for me there were two key points that I noticed in my learning: 1 - balance is incredibly important. It needs to be achieved in varying ways between lots of different elements. Some elements can be more complicated than others but it needs to be met with some more simplistic parts of design in order to balance it out. 2 - A3 for a poster seems like a large space but it really isn’t for the amount of information! A poster needs to achieve a lot more than I sometimes give it credit for, especially with what this client wanted. It was about creating a layout that worked not only to fit everything on, but establish a hierarchy that guided the eye in the right way and it also needed to grab the attention of the audience to make them interested in the course.