Poster Design

I designed a poster for a competition hosted by Drugs.ie. The goal was to create a poster that was based on the theme “Why do some young people use drugs” or “What impact does alcohol have on relationships”.

I’m quite a fan of silhouettes and minimalism in art, such as this:

And this:

I like how these posters portray the theme of the movie in as little wording and imagery as possible, which is what I decided to concentrate on while creating this.

I decided to go for the second theme, as this was easier to represent with a visual medium. Firstly, three mock-ups were created (two of which are minimalist):

Empty beer bottle

The “Pissed” concept appealed to me the most, both with the combination of minimalism and photorealistic elements. Minimalism is an easy style to pull-off. Trying to make something that looks realistic, with a lot of photographs, would be hard to make cohesive and professional in terms of looks, at least at my skill level.

However, in order to proceed, I needed to redact the rather offensive word that I had chosen with something that had similar connotations but expressed in a more PG way. I decided to go with “Locked”, as this is a common word in Ireland that means “to be drunk”. In order to get an interesting double meaning however, I got the same man in a bottle, but placed bars over it to imply that he was trapped in his vice. After a few additional touches, I was now ready to submit a quality finished product, as seen below:

Image Sources:

Forrest Gump

Lion King

 

Graphic Design Learning Outcome 7

Frank Shepard Fairey, known popularly as Shepard Fairey, is an American graphic artist whose work has a lot of political clout, being a social activist. He was born on February 15, 1970 in Charleston, South Carolina. He graduated from Idyllwild Arts Academy in California, and earned his bachelors from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1992. His work is reminiscent of old propaganda posters from communist and fascist regimes of yesteryear, with heavy use of both aggressive colours, such as a deep blood (some would say Soviet) red, and grandiose fonts. His most popular piece is the “Hope” poster that features a picture of Obama that was made for the 2008 election, as seen below:

(Source)

Two more posters of his that I’m a fan of:

(First Image Source and Second Image Source)