



The non- profit that I chose to design my poster for is an annual carwash held by Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority that benefits Reading Is Fundamental. RIF is a national non-profit organization that helps to put an end to illiteracy by donating books and other materials to children in need, as well as offering services to help them learn to read. Since RIF is geared towards children, I wanted my poster to reflect that. I chose to use the bucket, sponge, and soap bubbles as these are all indexical icons of a carwash and go along with my headline, “Wash Away Illiteracy”. By using live trace, I was able to make the primary visual look child friendly, almost as if a child had drawn it. This visual is the largest thing on the poster, yet my type headline is still large enough that they work together to balance each other out. I rotated the words “help wash away” so that they tilt toward and lead the eye to the word “illiteracy”. I made “illiteracy” 8 pt large than the other words in the headline since it is what RIF aims to prevent, so I wanted it to stand out just a little more. The soap bubbles that begin at the entry point of the poster and are used down through the bottom, provide visual gestalt to lead the eye down the page. Since my visual is focused on the event rather than the non-profit, I wanted to incorporate the non-profit in some way besides the RIF logo at the bottom right corner. To do this I chose to make the letter “K’s” in “Kappa Karwash” look like open books with book bindings as the stem and pages forming the legs. Overall, the childlike feel of my poster appeals to my demographic who are those who want to help out a cause that benefits children.
Choice of Typeface:
I only used one single typeface family on my poster, ITC Legacy Sans Std, as to not overwhelm the overall design. Since my non-profit is about preventing illiteracy and helping children to read, I wanted the typeface to be a simple and easy to read san serif font. I chose ITC Legacy Sans Std for just that reason, but also because the curvature at the tips of the leg of the letter “R” made the typeface more interesting. I used ultra for my header and book throughout the rest of the text.
To go along with the child-like theme of my poster, I chose to use primary colors, except for the gray color of the bucket handle and obviously the black text. The yellow color of the typeface leads the eye down to the yellow sponge, at which point you see the red bucket and follow the red down to the event name, and then to the RIF symbol at the exit point of the page. This use of color creates visual gestalt throughout the poster.
During my first sektches for the logo project I was having trouble finding my stride, and most importantly, finding a logo that fit me and my name. I knew that I wanted to incorporate photography somehow into my logo to represent my future career, however I didn’t want to copy all of the thousands of photo logos out there.
I then sketched a design in my notebook and began free-hand drawing it in illustrator with the paint brush tool. I worked with different weights of the stroke and very loose, flowing lines. I knew that I didn’t want my logo to be rigid and static so the freehand drawing technique really worked for my idea. Then, I decided to add the flash to the camera, which is an element I hadn’t seen before when I was researching other logos.
Next, I searched through suitcase to find a typeface and a font family with varying styles. I’ve always been interested in typewriter font and I found one that fit the style I wanted, ITC American Typewriter. It isn’t very rigid and has little curved tails at the end of the dominant strokes which resembled the lines I had made in my logo.
Also, I wanted all lower case letters in order to maintain some sort of unified line, with the “y” not descending too far. Then I decided to put a medium weight on the first letters of my name to highlight the K’s and also add contrast to the design.
The color I decided to use is a Pantone Solid Coated 2627C. It is a dark purple color which is rich in its saturation and also adds a more formal tone to the logo. I played a lot with adding color to different parts of the camera and decided to just add a hint of it to a detail in the flash to connect the two elements. One thing that I really like is how I tied the font to the design by not only adding color to both, but adding the little curved circles to the ends of some of the strokes in the camera, mirroring those same details that are in the type.
Overall, I wanted really clean and simple lines that were easily read and identifiable. The color adds an additional layer, as does the slight, but not overwhelming, detail in the flash and the camera. I didn’t play too much with the space between the letters, except in the different, horizontal version I used for the envelope. I wanted a unified look througout the business card, stationary and envelope and managed to keep that stability throughout.
For the logo project, we were given the chance to create a logo in a way to represent ourselves. Since I am not a graphics major or a very creative person, I had a rather hard time coming up with an idea I like. I decided this is more of a personal logo, but I do like the colors of my logo. I decided on a heart for my visual part of my logo because I believe hearts symbolize feelings of affection and warmth. I would like to convey a sense of warmth with my logo and show that I do use my feelings along with my head to make decisions. The heart also makes the shape of an uppercase “B” backwards. I brought the “a” over to overlap the “b” so the reader can see both the “b” and the “a”, using the gestalt theory of figure/ground. I liked the idea of having the logo read “bakieft”. I used the pink and the black to bring a little difference to the business cards and to be able to contrast my type with the background.
Type: I liked the clearface font for my logo, and I liked the way the “b” and the “a” matched up together to work with my logo. I used the sans serif typeface for the rest of the type because I like the slight quirkiness, yet sophisticated look of Cerigo. I bunched the contact information together on one side and my majors on the other side of the business cards. The same fonts were used on the stationary and envelope. I used lines down the side ad tope of both of these to bring some color to and similarity to the pieces. Since the business card has the two colors jumping off the page, I thought the pink likes would bring the stationary and envelope to life and bring consistency to the projects.
I designed a logo using my initials that used the Gestalt theory of figure ground. To do this I created outlines of both the K and the B, and using the pen tool I created new closure points for the letters and then deleted the old closure points and the vertical counters of the K and the B. I reversed the K so that the diagonal counters were pointing to the left instead of the right. I aligned the reversed K against the middle horizontal counter of the B. Yellow is one of my favorite colors so I used Pantone 124 PC as my background and made my initial logo and contact information white.
I chose Tw Cen MT Bold for my logo mark because it was a sans serif font that had a very defined K and a bubbly B. For my contact information, Tw Cen MT was difficult to read at such a small size so I looked for another sans serif font and ultimately settled on Helvetica.
I chose to do a square business card because when I experimented with a horizontal or vertical card it seemed to distort the balance of my logo’s figure ground. I went for a size that was a little over 2 inches by 2 inches and rounded the corners to because I thought it nicely accented the soft, warm yellow background color.
The butterfly has a glow and is tilted diagonally toward the sky in order to give the impression that it’s flying. I wanted to let the people hiring know that I will make their company flutter to the top. I used the pink, because when I first think of a butterfly, I think of the color pink. The pink makes the logo look more like a butterfly, and the inner pink is darker in order to accent the inner holes of the letter B. The blue background was used to play the part of the sky. I used green for the caterpillar, because it worked well with the pink and green is the obvious color for the caterpillar.
The font I used for the business card, address, and stationary is Bell Gothic Std. When I looked at this font I felt the sans serif made it look modern, and I felt the type worked well with the butterfly. I put the contact info in the center of the stationary, because it worked the best with the hierarchy of the butterfly, caterpillar, and address. I put the contact info at the bottom of the business card, because I felt it made the card look the least crowded. I put the logo on the back of the envelope, because I wanted to make my logo known, even as the person was opening up the letter. I feel all of my choices were best for me, and I hope they will help me in the future when looking for a job.