PSA poster

Our next project asked us to create Public Service Announcement posters using only black and white text. The first step was to choose a topic of importance to us and make a creative brief that included information on our topic as well as the text we wanted the poster to include. We were then paired up with a classmate whose creative brief we used to design a poster. This taught us a little bit about working with a client in the design world. This project required skills using InDesign, good communication between the designer and client, and the ability to create a visually interesting poster with the absence of color and images.

After reading the creative brief from my client, I sketched 20 thumbnails with possible layouts for my poster. I tried to come up with a wide variety of ideas for my poster so that I could combine elements from multiple thumbnails when I produced the five compositions for my client.

The five compositions that I presented to my client display a range of different design choices that all convey slightly different feelings and messages. I chose these five as my compositions because they all have a clear visual hierarchy and they are interesting to look at, even though they are made up of type only. I eventually decided to work with the composition on the bottom right because it very clearly conveys the message of the poster and the layout mirrors the serious nature of the topic.

Between 1945-1999 America has bombed or invaded 32 countries, can you name them all?

Learn more at https://tinyurl.com/2p8m2vf9

STOP

AMERICAN TYRANNY

American Taxpayers have been robbed of their wealth and financial security at the price of not only their sons and daughters that are sent to fight for these people but at the lives of over a million other souls. It has been far too long that Americans have sat not only in compliance with these decades of war but it is your everyday American who loses up to 35% of their income to fund this atrocity.

End the forever wars and bring back our troops

For our in-process critique, I printed my poster on both red and yellow paper in order to see which color would be the right choice for my final product. While the yellow paper creates wonderful contrast, the red seemed to be much more harmonious with the topic of the poster, and it was bright enough to still be attention-grabbing. My final poster was printed on this bright red paper, and I think that it made the poster much more impactful because people are naturally drawn to color and using colored paper was the only way to introduce color in this project.

Between 1945-1999 America has bombed or invaded 32 countries, can you name them all?

Learn more at tinyurl.com/american-tyranny

STOP

AMERICAN TYRANNY

American taxpayers have been robbed of their wealth and financial security at the price of not only their sons and daughters that are sent to fight for these people but at the lives of over a million other souls. It has been far too long that Americans have sat not only in compliance with these decades of war but it is your everyday American who loses up to 35% of their income to fund this atrocity.

End the forever wars and bring back our troops

For the final poster, I made a few minimal changes that helped create a more polished feel. For example, I decreased the leading on the text at the very top of the poster, which makes it seem more cohesive. I also personalized the link so that it would have a memorable name that readers could more easily type into their phones or computers. In order to make the body text seem shorter and less heavy, I separated it into two columns, decreased the text size, and italicized some of the most important, attention-grabbing phrases. Finally, I changed the layout of the bottom text slightly so that it would feel like a more empowering call to action.

PSA poster reflective writing

At first, I was very nervous about being limited to type only because I am someone who tends to be drawn to photography and illustration when I look at posters and advertisements. However, once I started sketching thumbnails, I began to immerse myself in the creative possibilities of type. I enjoyed using different techniques to emphasize certain pieces of text. This also taught me the importance of making sure the words on a poster are able to hold their own weight and get their point across without the help of any illustrations. I used knockout text to call viewers’ attention to the heading and the subheading/call to action on my poster. I bolded certain sections to show their increased importance, and I also made use of italics to emphasize certain words in the body paragraphs of the text. The heading and subheading are scaled up so that they hold more weight on the poster. The body text is split into two similarly-sized paragraphs in order to create some sense of rhythm. My poster does not have a lot of negative space, but I made sure to leave sizable borders around all the text so nothing felt too crowded.

In this project, I learned the importance of creating a visual hierarchy in order to guide viewers through a body of textual information. I also strengthened my InDesign skills, learning new features to change a text’s leading and make sure everything is properly aligned. Going forward, I will be more conscious of the power of working with type only, as well as the merits of using only black and white. These new ideas, along with the new skills I learned while doing this project, will allow me to create more effective posters and advertisements for future classes, clubs, and my career.