Digital Photographing and Imaging / Project 2B Poster Design " Quotes of The Day " (Week 8 - 10)

|| 11/11/24 – 29/11/24 (Week 8 – Week 10) 

|| Tee Zi Tong, 0366165

|| Digital Photographing and Imaging 

|| Project 2B Poster Design " Quotes of The Day "

LECTURER

W9 Lecture - Digital Surrealism

Realism:

Coming from the experiences of everyday life, realism portrayed and reflects the natural realities of the society. It is all about the mundane and does not dwell on the unusual by any stretch of the imagination. It stays very methodical; it does not go for sensationalism or engage in fancy reasoning or speculation.

Surrealism:

Surrealism turns and looks at darkness and explores life beyond the real realm. It is inspired by dreams, and ties together imagery that defies conventional rationality and turns the mundane into the marvelous. Often described as "super-realism," surrealist art is characterized by:

• Hypnotic locations and almost surreal videography.
• Inapposite combinations of ideas and associations with the predominance of the irrational.
• A reality used willingly for the purpose of eliciting marvel or suspense.

Steps to Create Surrealist Artworks:

• Visualize Your Dream: First of all, begin with the idea of a dream or of an idea, which is as yet merely an idea. d raw your ideals more approximately, thereby dwelling more on broad features and not fine features.
• Gather Inspiration: This will lead you to look for pictures that relate to the ideas you are trying to create. Surrealism has always enjoyed flexibility in depicting the imaginary while making it look real but not actually real.

Project 2B - Poster Design " Quotes of The Day "

The followings of this assignment include the requirements of the IVN and DPI modules as well. The IVN module concerns itself with assessing a piece’s text and image combinations, its vectors and typography The DPI module, on the other hand, concerns itself with image composition.

For this project the creation of A4 poster was done using Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop which involved a picture and writing on it. I selected quotes " Chill, take it easy.".

REFERENCES 

DESIGN CONCEPT SUMMARY 

Quotes: "Chill. Take It Easy."

My design concept lies in the synthesis of the stable and the active part of the urban environment as well as the inclusion of the ridiculous in the design process. The large indifferent cat embracing stillness and complacency among the automatically fast city caricature creates that uneasy dissonance. The halo that it casts in its surreal quietude of a disruption on the fast-paced tempo of the city that is represented by Hong Kong creates an appeal to relaxation.

That’s exactly what the stiff and motionless cat symbolizes – the need to find peace in the world that has become too loud. This is why, when creating the layout, I aimed to give the cat the main focus while at the same time conveying an insistent yet unobtrusive call to pay attention to how fast life often is. That is why, putting the relaxed image of the main character with the energetically active city here, it can be noted that the idea of ??such a separation is rooted in the desire to emphasize the need for rest amidst the bustle.

To optimize the design and its message, I decided to use distinctive and passionate fonts for the phrase “Chill. Take It Easy." The body of the word that means ‘relax’ is determined by the same bright and playful letters that are located above the main message; thus the idea of excessive bulk compensates for the main thought and becomes a kind of support to the general concept. All these elements co-ordinate perfectly to create a unique design which automatically grabs attention and makes people think about the importance of the stillness in today’s world.

SKETCHES

ORIGINAL PICTURES 

1. Hong Kong Mong Kok Street I took from google 

2. My cat Duo Duo's picture 

3. Picture when I am walking

 

PROGRESSIONS IN PHOTOSHOP 

1. Setting the Base

• To start with, I pasted the street picture on an A4 sized artboard in Photoshop. I changed the orientation of the piece so that it could fit the flow of the picture better and give me a solid background for the poster.

2. Adding the Cat

• After that I cut the cat’s image with selection tools and placed it to the artboard with precision. Correct cropping was important because seams had to be left clean for a professional finish.

3. Creating Depth

• In order to make the cat fit the street scene, I had to rub some parts of the foreground objects out. This made it possible for the cat to blend with the surroundings right from the substrate and added depth to the formulation of the composition.

4. Adding Myself

• I then took a picture of myself walking and then re-sized and placed the image on to the scene. When it reached the bottom, I reshaped and repositioned the scale to fit proportionally to other components in order balance out the entire artwork.

5. Color Adjustments

• Thus, for the cat and my image to merge with the street background, I corrected the color saturation, luminosity, and contrast levels. This step made all elements conform to a lighting and color scheme that made them look as if they were a part of the urban environment.

6. Adding Shadows

• Lastly, I used the brush tool to paint some shadows for me and the cat adjusting its opacity to make it realistic. This step was objective to fixating one on the ground to prevent floating around in addition to making the entire sequence look more realistic. The shadows added to the depth of the composition, also worth mentioning they made the design realistic.

FINAL POSTER 

DESCRIPTION 

This fun and cheeky poster represents fun and is the message of the city itself: an enormous cat lies in the middle of the road, and a people calmly passes by; below this – the repeated phrase ‘chill’. The surreal juxtaposition of towering urban buildings, vibrant signage, and the unbothered pedestrian highlights a central theme: searching for unintentional, naturally sensed and naturally experienced peace in one’s life when the whole world is full of deliberately planned and deliberately practiced noise, and purposefully intended programs of men, schemes of the devil, and events by default. Relying on the components of irony, the oversized cat that occupies the entire street, and sleeps calmly, speaks to the audience, telling them to take pauses in their stressful lives.

It is great to meet such a strong and bright typography that gains depth and emotional accent in the design. The big and muscular fonts also draw attention to the two messages that the poster conveys, namely ‘Chill’ and ‘Take It Easy,’ and do not disrupt the given layout. All these taglines are a kind of a gentle prod to take it easy on oneself and look after one’s wellbeing even in the heart of a big city. The repetition of the word ‘chill’ arranged in circle around the pedestrian also emphasizes the key concept of carrying personal chill which is inner peace regardless the environment.

In general, the design is a call to discover peace in the chaos and enjoy life in the middle of the constructs of metal and glass. Through rag-doll animation and an almost nightmarish aesthetic it defeats both what it seems to portray and offers a jarringly simple call to focus and breathe in a world filled with stress and anxiety.

REFLECTIONS

EXPERIENCE

This was my favorite assignment because of the way it addressed knowledge from two different modules, namely the DPI and the IVN where students were to design a “Quote of the Day”. I found that when both modules of skills overlapped it was easier but also more difficult at the same time. It forced me to apply and improve my skills in working with Adobe applications while trying the tools and effects I used for the first time.

Perhaps the most thrilling part of the assignment was the exploration of elements such as gradients, 3D materials, warping/mesh and pen tool as learned in IVN. I extend my appreciation to my lecturers who encouraged me to seek feedback on how I could improve my work and how I could make the design more effective as well as adding other important details. In this process, while I experienced rather a lot of academic pressure, I was able to learn a variety of things such as how to explore new techniques on the scope of my imagination and come up with new strategies freely.

The toughest part of the work was probably time management. Quite importantly, it took a considerably long time than I had initially anticipated, that I nearly FAIL this assignment. This underlined the need to have a good temporal structure, perhaps even a timeline that would outline when exactly to do technical work and when it is time to brainstorm creatively.

OBSERVATIONS AND FINDINGS

Although working on this project, I came to understand that composition is the most crucial aspect of design. Every detail thought through is the basis for creating a successful poster because everything should fit into an idea. This is why my work was consistently weak in terms of composition as I didn’t spend enough time sketching and finalizing the ideas during the planning stage. This has helped me to realized that balance and the organization of objects within the design requires adequate and meticulous planning.

Also, I realized that typography is a crucial aspect of poster design together with the poster content. There is no exaggeration when it is said that words are not only used but also expressed in specific styles. Decorative fonts also can add more emotions to the composition and attract people’s attention to the poster. I also noted how use of colors and effects are capable to set a certain tone on the poster and being a good fit with typography and images used.

This assignment helped me to identify areas that I need to improve on, for instance, time management, planning and getting inspiration. However, it also helped me to strengthen the concepts of design principles and forced me to use creative tools and methods. On the whole, this has been quite an enriching endeavor, and I definitely hope to turn in better performance and grow as a designer.