Designing a geometric poster

My first ever design project at UoA, is to design a series of 40cm x 40cm posters, the first one based on the techniques of repetition and geometric shapes, and also black and white colour scheme.

My first step was to brainstorm some ideas, and themes evident in my haiku.

Afterwards I chose a couple of these, isolation and journey and drew four simplified compositions, keeping in mind some of the techniques we had discussed in our lectures and tutorials.

I chose my favourite one, the top right concept, and drew my final poster, using black paint, a ruler and sharpies. I payed a particular focus to the gestalt principle of closure, which means that our brains tend to perceive forms and figures in the complete appearance, despite the absence of one or more of their parts (Sincero, 2013). Our eyes fill in the gaps in the composition. I used this principle to show a path, or a staircase to represent a journey.

After the teaching free week was announced, I decided to head home to Rotorua for the week to see my family and friends, but then the nationwide lockdown was announced, leaving my finished poster in Auckland, before I had taken a photo of it. I took this unfortunate opportunity to redo my poster and re work it slightly from the original (a turning lemons into lemonade sorta thing ) I kept the same basic composition as the original, but added some contrasting elements

My final poster explores principles of closure, contrast as well as repetition. The use of repetition conveys a sense or harmony (Wong, 2008) and contrast helps to differentiate.

#DES101 #process

References:

Sincero, Sarah Mae (2013) Gestalt Laws: Similarity, Proximity and Closure. https://explorable.com/gestalt-laws-similarity-proximity-and-closure

Wong, Wucius (1993) Principles of Form and Design. Van Rostrand Reinhold