Poster Development

Poster Development

Here are my first designs I came up with when we started our posters. This first image was the first poster I had designed for this brief. For this I started off playing around with the background. I merged the Background layer to a replacement photo I had got of the internet of the British flag. I experimented with different background colors to see which worked the best with the flag. I ended up choosing a black background to merge together. I mixed them together slightly so it was still a clear image of the flag and didn't make it look overdone. I love the tool to merge the two together. It's defiantly one of my favorites. Once I had finished with the background we got taught how to to duo tone on photos. I grabbed a photo of the internet and began trying the tool out. I mixed a bright blue with black to go with the flag. Using a brighter blue was a better option to me as it stood out from the background and didn't interfere. Also duo tone is another tool I am interested in and hope to play around with it some more to see what else I could come up with. After playing around with the background and imagery I started playing about with fonts. Ariel an Helvetica are two of my favorite fonts as they are simple and easy to read. I prefer not to over do on fonts as yet again I didn't want it to interfere with the design. Once I had done all of this I wasn't to keen of this poster and began moving onto other ideas.

This second design was initially about the business side of the creative industry I was going to place facts on how much money the industry is worth and how many fields of jobs there our within the industry in the UK, hence the British flag. I actually really like this design and thought that it would become one of my final designs once I had replaced the photos with my own imagery and not of the internet. Reasons being, copyright, quality and it's not my own design. After looking into the business side of things I thought I might try out a different approach to the facts with using Graphs and arrows to show the rise of the industry. Overall when I had sketched and played about with the whole idea I didn't think it was a fun approach to the audience.

After doing some poster designs I started reading through the articles I had got about the creative industry. My eyes got caught on the games side of the industry. I thought I could base my work around the 'work ready' pledge so that people who are interested in games design and are wanting to get in the industry could have courses which would help them be work ready. Also I wanted to base it around how far the industry has developed and how much there is out there to do with gaming design. I kind of started exploding with ideas. My first initial idea was to include Mario 8-bit.

Here are my Mario inspired designs I had created using Illustrator and Photoshop also with print screens whilst I was exploring my options. To start of with I created a background on illustrator simply using the square/rectangle tool. I colored the blocks in using the colors which are used in Mario 8-bit. Once I had finished the background I converted it over to Photoshop which then I started to use the pixelating tool to make the background more old school style.

In the end I wasn't really happy with this design. I just didn't feel satisfied with the pixalations and whole plainness of it. Then I had decided I could try another old school came and I thought about using Tetris.

To start of with I searched for images on the internet off the Tetris blocks. Luckily enough I had found an image which had no background and just the blocks, this made it easier for me to use the magic wand tool and select the blocks. I added a black background to my first layer the same as the real game would be. Then I started copying and pasting my selected blocks onto my poster layout and playing around with them seeing how I could position them to look like the game is being played. I took a few screenshots of the process. So far I really liked the idea of my game design poster. The bright colors on the black background made it stand out.  Once I had played around with the layout of the blocks I then proceeded to trying out typography for the poster. I wanted a simple font so it was easy and clear to read. With the blocks being 3D I was having trouble with the font. The title didn't stand out. I knew this was only used with replacement pictures but I liked the look of the 3D Blocks.

Because I wasn't happy with the blocks I started trying out using 2D blocks. I thought I would made a grid like some of the Tetris style games use. Then I simply colored in the squares using the shapes Tetris features using the common colors. I didn't really like the look of this design and thought it wasn't good.


When I was at home thinking about my designs I did some personal research and asked my dad and brother about what old school games I could include in my design ideas. They bombarded me with games and then they continued to talk to one an other about the games. One of the games they gave me was Atari Breakout. I started to look at pictures of the game and actually had a game of it on Google images. This game was actually a good game to use in my deign as it's simple and wouldn't over run the typography on my poster. When I went to college to following week I began playing around with tools to produce the layout of Breakout. I simply used the rectangle tool to come up with the blocks/lines and colored them to be the colors of the rainbow. Also I created to ball and bat with the shape tools. I included the breaks within the target to make it more obvious to what the design was. Breakout turned out to be my favorite idea and decided to use it for my final poster. I really liked the simplicity of the design.