Illustration 1: Key steps in illustration- Part 4: Style-Exercise 2: Museum posters
You have been asked to produce three illustrations be used as part of a series of A3 posters to publicise the museum to the following audiences:
Child aged 5–9
Teenager (13–16)
General adult audience
The museum wants to encourage diverse sections of the population to visit and to perceive it as a place of interest. Select one object for each of the audiences and create an image centred around that object in a way which you think best presents it to your market. Go to your local museum or anywhere that has a range of interesting artefacts to gather good visual references. Choose exhibits which are either appropriate for each of the audiences or which you think can be made interesting for the audience through your visual intervention.
Catalogue the exhibits in some way: photograph them, do printouts or make a series of drawings. Organise your images according to the audience groupings.
You are making three illustrations for three posters from the same institution. Will they be a ‘family’ or very different? If they are all different how will the audience know they come from the same place or doesn’t this matter?
Decide on the visual approach you would like to adopt. Do you want to introduce a character and create a visual narrative? Do you want to make a decorative interpretation of the object? Do you want to place the object in the historic or geographic setting in which it was created? Do you want to depict the object to convey some aspect of it that you feel will be interesting to your audience? Will you choose an abstract, representational, or diagrammatic approach? Remember to consider viewpoints and explore the best position for your content within the format. You don’t have to be bound by direct representation of your object but it should be recognisable.
Explore options and make notes in your learning log.
Choose the media and colour range appropriate to your audience – but avoid generalisations and stereotypes.
Working to a scale that best suits you, produce colour visuals for all the posters – remember that for a poster you’re aiming for visual clarity and directness. Posters are often read from a distance so your image needs to be reasonably bold.
Prepare finished artwork for at least one of the posters.
I researched and collated information/images from various museums, focusing on natural history.
The audience is key to this task particularly as the 3 are so different. I need to consider what brings the posters together as a series but still be age specific with the content. I think I will begin with creating a more minimal style poster, adding further content/information afterwards and comparing the 2.
I jotted my initial ideas considering the 3 illustrations- I decided to focus on a natural history museum, something which could be enjoyed by all 3 demographics. I feel it is important to have similarities or at least a sense of brand being conveyed through the 3 posters. Having something be interesting and appropriate for a 5-9 year old and an adult is hard, coming up with at least a cross metaphor/colour/composition will be important to bring the illustrations together as a series.
I collated a few mood boards of childs/teen/adult poster/museum inspiration and went onto jotting down some more composition ideas.
I continued to note ideas for compositions and imagery and looked through various illustrators/artists works for inspiration including Hannah Hoch- whose collage style could potentially work for these posters.
I began in illustrator and sketched over an image of a snake skeleton. I initially had the idea of using simple shapes to represent a silhouette of 3 animal skeletons and fill the silhouette with an image/texture. I wanted to focus on one image/focal point for this task as I tend to go towards a collage style.
Colour is important here as each colour I wanted to relate to either the animal and/or audience. I experimented with different colours and textures to see the difference in the images.
The minimal posters were more ambiguous but probably not as functional as ones with more information. They don’t really have any direct to action elements, or explain to the audience what to do next.
I looked back at research for inspiration and to find some copy text to add to the posters which would describe the event but not include too much information. The poster is not where the sale of the event (tickets) would happen so I feel does not need to include pricing, or location. As the museum is very well known (to be in London) I feel that people would make a trip their specifically for the event so would not mind finding out later if they were unaware that the museum is in London. The website link and name of exhibition I feel should be the information on the poster. I don’t want to take away from the illustration, but need the poster to be more functional than purely focusing on aesthetics.
Looking back at my designs I may’ve played into stereotypes too much or in a not tasteful way. The child’s poster includes multicoloured crayon style type which was intended to be engaging but reflecting on this I am unsure if it is affective or not. The imagery itself also may not appeal to this age range and looks more sinister than intended, perhaps a character or more cartoon style illustration would’ve been better.
The teen poster I feel is the most affective/engaging for the age range, it is a quite scary looking illustration that is engaging with an interesting ripped type face. I am unsure of the colouring of this poster and perhaps could’ve included some more white on the poster or markings around the snake.
The adult poster appears boring and flat, it was intended to look more sophisticated/focus on interesting human history but the colouring and illustration combination looks less appealing. The colours at too flat, a contrast is needed to bring focus to the illustration.
