Communication Studio: Visual Hierarchy

Thursday Sept 10 — Project Overview

The goal of this project was to explore typographic variables in clarifying a message based on the content’s hierarchy. The final goal was to design a poster for a Pittsburgh-based event. The event I was assigned to was the Pittsburgh Irish Music Festival, which fortunately, was going to happen remotely this year.

Background Information

PGH Irish festival is a non-profit aimed to raise awareness about Irish history and tradition. Every year, they host PGH Irish fest, which is a cultural festival that is built around a lineup of musical performances by Irish musical artists. I was lucky to be able to attend one of their performances on Facebook Live. They non-profit also hosts several outreach events throughout Pittsburgh to raise awareness of Irish culture, it is most known for its music festival. Although I wish I was able to attend the actual festival to have a better insight into the mood and feel of the actual event itself, the performance I watched online seemed like a very cozy, semi-professional gathering of Irish musicians.

After some internet sleuthing (a google images search) I found that this was what the in-person would’ve looked like.

It looked like the event is based around a single main stage. The crowd also seems pretty packed here, and most of the attendees are around middle aged. Although the atmosphere seemed really lighthearted and welcoming, it was still very professionally set up. I also found a picture (left) of one of their promotional posters from this year. I really liked the folky aesthetic of the picture, which seems to be consistent across a lot of other aspects of the festival as well. The one performance I attended was also an Irish folk band, and PGH Irish Festival actually had its roots in a Pittsburgh-based Folk music festival.

I found their website and branding design to be slightly outdated. However, I found it quite fitting considering that PGH Irish Festival was a small, local, non-profit organisation. The three adjectives I would give this event would be Local, Family-friendly, and Welcoming.

“PGH Irish Festival is a Pittsburgh based event aimed to celebrate and spread awareness about Irish culture”

Assignment 1: Using type variables to communicate hierarchy

This exercise helped me think through what information I want to emphasise and de-emphasise. The original block of text was organised so that the date comes first, which greatly influences how I went about organising my text.

Tuesday Sept 15 — Investigating colour and scale

I first began my research by looking at the national colours of Ireland. While it wast tempting to just default to the St. Patrick’s green and the Irish national flag, I actually found that Ireland had a very rich colour history, due in part to its ongoing conflict in Northern Ireland.

In addition to the unofficial flag of Northern Ireland being red, I discovered that Ireland’s original national colour, including the colour of St. Patrick was actually blue.

Assignment 2: Using colour to communicate hierarchy

Inspired by the piece of research, I started out by flipping through magazines and pulling out colour swatches that I found interesting. I kept my eye out for different shades of green, orange, and blue.

Building colour palettes from swatches found in magazines

• I wanted to avoid bold, bright colours as a counterpoint to the already flashy website. However, I also wanted to stay true to Ireland’s colour history because I felt that colour plays an important role in Irish culture.
• I also wanted to avoid low colour contrast, as these would not show up very well on print. However, the extent at which I can stretch this rule also depends on my experimentation.

After pulling swatches from magazines, I had a pretty general idea of the colours I wanted to use in my experiments. I ended up building a palette of colours that I thought I might want to pull from when working on inDesign. However, this is definitely open to change. I also want to explore more ‘Folky’ colours which seems to mostly consist of neutral earth tones.

I originally started with the shade of green on the far left. However, printing it out, I found that it was too bright, especially in contrast to the white colour. It reminded me a bit too much of the Duolingo Green. So I went back and added yellow to the green, creating a more subdued, mature tone. From them, I began adding a second colour based on the palette that I had created. I really liked using complimentary contrast (red and green) here because it enhances readability.

Notes, Observations, and Questions

• What is the shape created by the composition when adding colour? How can I use colour to redirect attention to certain areas in the page?
• How can I avoid colour cliches? Is it really possible to convey a specific idea with a single spot colour when our reactions to colours are very personal?
• When I added additional colours, I found that it was important for me to maintain certain patterns in my use of colour. For example, If I had green bolded text against a black background, pairing green with another spot colour in another area of the poster made it seem jarring and inconsistent.
• I really liked how using coloured areas can shape the composition of the page and draw attention to certain areas of text. In my experiments where I blocked a little under half the page with green, my eyes were drawn to the title within that green area. (However, all these observations are a bit biased! I will have to see how my classmates react to these experiments.)
• Important note to come back to: Explore folky colours and experiment more with earth tones!

These were all the experiments I did before Thursday’s class. While I spent a lot of time thinking about shapes, I am going to go back and consider my palettes more carefully.

Assignment 3: Using scale to communicate hierarchy

I looked at online examples of how other designers used scale and tried to apply that in my own work. I definitely had a lot more trouble looking at scale, just because there were a lot of limitations created by the nature of my content.

These were the experiments I brought to class on Thursday. I’m definitely starting to run out of ideas, so I hope that what I see from my peers in class will inspire me to try out new things.

Thursday, September 17

Notes From Class

• Low contrast colours inhibit readability, the use of complements were very effective in making things pop.
• If too much is bolded, you start to lose attention, as you are forced to divide the attention between too many elements.
• Try more simple, formal explorations of how colour can communicate Hierarchy.
• How do we draw attention from a distance and have it pay off when you come closer? Consider looking at your poster from different distances, or pinning it up on a cacophonous bulletin board.
• Go to the Irish design centre and think about how I can enrich my colours to communicate more about Irish culture.
• Try emphasising name of the artist over the date. Think about how your audience is going to read your text in their head.
• Try exploring more with movement, action, and rhythm in your text. How can I communicate the energy of my event with the placement of text in my composition?

Irish Design Center Visit

After Thursday’s class, I was recommended by Catherine to pay a visit to the Irish Design Center. Exploring the store gave me a lot of ideas about how I could further explore colour and imagery in my future assignment. I was really drawn to the Celtic textiles they were selling (I even bought one!). It seemed like deep, natural earth tones were used a lot in Irish culture. I also found more Irish symbolism that I hadn’t thought of beyond that stereotypical Leprechaun and clover. Quilts, Celtic Crosses, and the Irish Harp were among the few that stood out to me.

Assignment 4: Imagery

I first started the assignment by browsing through stock photo websites. The key words I used to find my imagery was Irish, Celtic, Folk, Textiles, Dance, and Music. I had a small inkling of what I wanted my poster to look like at this point, but I really wanted to focus on looking for an image that I felt like had potential.

I found these pretty generic pictures of leaves that I felt would be pretty useful compositional tools. Although I think the colour vaguely points towards Irish culture, I thought these pictures were a bit generic.

I then found images that were a slightly more subtle nod to Irish culture, such as this Irish Harp (left, middle) and the Celtic Cross. I think it would be cool to see how I could overlay text behind and in front of these images to create Hierarchy.

After I was happy with my selection of photos, I printed them out and began to brainstorm how I could frame them for use in my poster. Although this poster really helped me visualise my ideas, I didn’t find it very effective because I wasn’t able to get a good sense of the true size of my text.

I also played around with trying to make different compositions out of a crop I made from the Irish Dancer’s dress.

Variation 1

These were the completed photographic style posters I got from the exercise. I like the first and the third poster the best, because I felt like it really played to the composition of the image and created a nice distinction between the foreground and the background. The second one came about from me trying to look at different ways I could frame the arch. However, I found the hierarchy to be too simple and not visually interesting.

Variation 2

These were the variations I got from exploring different crops of the dancers feet. I wasn’t a huge fan of this process at first, because I felt that the transparent against a white background made the event look a bit formal and sterile. However, after playing around with adding grainy filters to the images, I was quite happy with the effect I was able to achieve.

Tuesday, September 23

Notes from Tuesday’s Crit

• There are some points in the arch poster where the text wasn’t readable. I should try playing around more with using colour and different stroke weights.
• Contrasting rhythms with the slanted image
• The staggered text creates a lot of visual information that might be overwhelming.
• Bottom part of the legs poster creates a weird negative space but the feet is a good direction to go into overall.
• Play more with scale in the leg poster, try leaving more space so the current space doesn’t look more jarring
• Andrew also suggested that I played around with the margins and stopped scaring away from creating empty space within the poster.

Notes from Vicki’s crit

• Experiment with hotter, brighter colors,
• I am at the tweaking stage at this point, so play around with different placements of text. Right now my text placement is very safe.
• Experiment with different text colours and sizes to communicate Hierarchy.
• Overall, the addition of the white in the background creates good hierarchy with the title.
• The two different variations reference Irish culture in two very different ways.
• Vicki liked how I used the image to play around with the foreground and background, but suggested that I tried to break away from the centered composition.
• Maybe try using the grid for the legs poster?
• Two different people mentioned how my Arch poster reminded them of National Geographic. It might be the yellow colour in combination with the window motif.

Final Adjustments

It was at this point where I was having even more trouble deciding which poster to move forward with. The general consensus I got from Tuesday’s crit was that both posters had their own strengths and weaknesses. While people like the mood and the playful, friendly tone communicated in the Dancing poster, overall, everyone agreed that my photographic posters had stronger hierarchy.

I experimented with using larger margins and grids to create more white space in my poster. I think gridding out my poster made it feel a lot less claustrophobic and helped a lot with the rag issue.

Per Vicki’s Advice, I tried to experiment more with using brighter colours. I played around with different colours for the feet. I also added more variation in value by making the shoes darker. However, when I printed out the poster, the grainy texture in the black and white variation made the graphic look unappealing.

I also tried to create more hierarchy in my textual elements. For my arch poster, I thought that keeping all my text around the same size adds a nice simplicity to the poster. For my feet poster, having larger text for each act made the poster feel more dynamic.

Final Posters for Thursday’s Crit

I was still very split on which poster I wanted to present to Thursday’s crit. Even though I spent a lot more time iterating on my legs poster, I still felt like my arch poster had stronger Hierarchy. The biggest strength of the former is that it conveyed the mood of the event pretty well. I liked the playful graphics and the colours I chose. The graphic style was pretty different from what my classmates were making, and overall, it just brought me more joy to work on. However, after reflecting upon the goals of this project, I decided to go with the poster that I felt had the strongest hierarchy, which was the arch poster.