Project Two: Poster

Design Strategy:
Project Two allowed me to have one of my first “client” projects. For this project, I had to create an 11X17 poster for an event hosted by a not-for-profit of my choice. I chose the Ryan Cameron Foundation (RCF), which is an Atlanta-based organization that strives to help teenagers make healthy transitions from childhood to adulthood. The poster that I created is for an annual bowling event, which is in its 18th year. The bowling event features top-notch celebrities, and all of who’s-who from Atlanta comes.
After conversing with my client (Ryan Cameron, founder of RCF), I kind of had an idea of where I wanted to go. For starters, the event is hosted on Thanksgiving—so I needed to appeal to that holiday (the season of giving, showing thanks by giving to others, etc). I also had a target age range, 21 to 35; and, I knew that Mr. Cameron is a member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc (which meant I had to be mindful of my color choices. Knowing my target audience, and the nature of the event, I wanted to keep the poster simple and straight to the point.
For my visual, I chose to play off of the name of the bowling alley, Red Carpet Lanes. Thus, my red carpet (created in Illustrator), that starts in the left corner, and pulls the readers eye downward to my heading (with the assistance of the rolling bowling ball). At the end of the red carpet, are the fallen pins (traced in Illustrator), and right under my header is another pin which points downward to the rest of the information the reader needs to know about the event. What the reader is supposed to get from the header is “walk (the red carpet), roll (the ball—go bowling), and give (money, time, etc).

Choice of Typefaces:
For this poster I chose Jazz LET Plain and Aachen STD Bold for my typefaces. Both types have small families (in fact “plain” for Jazz LET and “bold” for Aachen STD were the only choices I had). What immediately attracted me to Jazz LET (the header typeface), was its vibe. I thought it would give the poster great pizzazz without being too much. I used Aachen STD Bold for the body of the poster; I thought it complimented the header really well, without being overpowering.

Color:
This poster really made me think about color, and making the final project cohesive. One color I KNEW I was going to use was RED. Not only is the name of the bowling alley, Red Carpet Lanes, but as stated before, Mr. Cameron is a member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc and their colors are red and cream (which is why his logo is written in red). The red carpet is C=15, M and Y=100, and K=0, and I took it straight from the RCF Logo. In illustrator I used the grain effect to make the red rectangle actually look like a red carpet. Not only did red go well because of the name of the bowling alley, but it is also a warm color that catches the eye.
I chose to make the background a grayish color (C=39, M AND Y=26, and K=0). I chose this color because the red carpet stood out, the white bowling pins popped, and the yellow “GIVE IT” could be seen really well. I chose to make “WALK IT” black, and “ROLL IT” white, because they needed to be seen—but were not as important as the yellow (R=247, G=236, and B=33) “GIVE IT”, which is the whole purpose of the bowling event. I also chose to make the location of the event (Red Carpet Lanes) red, because the color is in the name, and it created contrast amongst the rest of the body text.