Evaluation

This has been a tricky one all year round with Maps and Journeys taking the cake. To make something that can an audience engage with as an instillation piece was difficult to come up with. So many ideas coming to mind yet not enough time or knowledge to carry them out. 
To start with my original idea was kept quite small and easy to manage, using a small room to project a landscape upon too and have an individual take part in a relaxing experience or journey through that landscape. Calming noises and the smother camera movements allowing the experience to be relaxing. Of course after many meetings with tutors the idea changed or evolved over time, becoming more immersive, yet there was something missing to make it good. 
After a lecture with a Kathleen and hearing other peoples ideas I was ready to evolve mine own again, but Charlie came up to me asking if she could combine ideas with her and Katherine and become a group. Of course I took the offer as our ideas put together could make a interesting piece. Later, with lots of possible ideas passes between us, we came up with what wanted to create would be too hard. With the lack of coding skills and little time we just couldn't it. The tables turned after having a Skype meeting were we came up with the idea to do a scavenger hunt in Farnham. And with Nick joining our group we could in cooperate all our ideas together. With little to go on but rough ideas we had to make a plan that could still relate to our original ideas but in a way that was flexible enough to change into something encapsulating. We had the idea to do a student related challenge possibly held in the SU, based in and around Farnham, were 4 groups of 3 take part in three big challenges over the course of the term. However as time went on and we tested the website we found that no one was particularly interested in the event. We changed it quickly to a load of smaller, easier challenges that could be done whenever people wanted, so when deadlines came closer they were still doable for a bit of fun. 
However, it took us a long time to reach this point and far too late in the year to get it completely developed and finished before deadlines. With other things taking up time, like the studio shoot, meant that advertisement didn't make out as soon as it could, and the initial worry was that deadlines would have people not doing the event in time, so we changed it too last for a longer period of time, till 17th February, which meant that for assessment, the work that we'd be showing is a presentation for the work laid out on the table in a mini layout of how the gallery piece will look. And with the new website up and posters out, we received emails from people who want to do our event, which made us change the date and encouraged us to keep this going and push it even further.
What I could of done to improve the overall project and process was too plan as much as possible when the idea is new so we're not changing the initial idea over and over again. And as soon as the base for the idea is complete, contemplate the advertisement and get it out as early as possible. Also there's the time of the event, if it was set during freshers or re-freshers in January the hype for it could be a lot higher and it's during the start of term where courses haven't got a lot of work to do. I could have done better time management, with the amount of things happening at once, I need to spread the work evenly so I don't end up favouring specific projects at times. The communication between our group was good, using the Facebook group to help each other, Skype calls for group discussions and planning, then we used texting for emergencies and general contact. However at one point, after the studio shoot, I was creating the posters and posting prototypes on our Facebook group for feedback, yet only one person replied to me on the night that I needed it. Due to the studio shoot everyone sort of crashed and lost motivation to do work for the next week, leaving me to struggle a little bit the posters and preventing them getting out on time.

Overall, this term was difficult but I managed to get done what I needed to do, and have managed to make things works within the project. If we do get a space in the gallery I think the piece will be worth all effort and really set off the event in motion. 

Logo

Charlie recommended I create a logo for the website to replace the plain looking one that was on the website already. Looking back at the poster colours, I made a simple design that looked good and used a readable font, then coloured it to the palette I had, with colours that fit.

I showed this to Charlie as she is the one that wanted it for the website.

Taking her advice I looked at the website and took a screenshot so I could use the eye drop tool the colours, using that colour scheme.

I also decided to change the font to something a bit easier to read and the colour change also made it clear against the circles.

After approval from Charlie I exported it to a .PNG file and sent it to her, however she had to make the background translucent as I forgot how too.

Poster Update

After printing off a tester for the poster it came out that the text on the back was upside down compared to the image on the other side. Also the fact that A4 paper seemed way too big size wise, specially if we were going for leaflet like posters to be placed in the SU. 

We settled for A5 as it's a suitable size to work with as it would save paper by having 2 posters on one sheet.

I printed these at home however the paper I used not of good quality, so I waited to do it in the library. Yet due to personal reasons I wasn't able to print out the posters till Monday 8th. Which sadly didn't go as planned either. 

Once I got into the library I had a few problems with printing it through a laptop, so after that kerfuffle I moved to a PC and tried again. YAY, it finally worked, but this it was the posters themselves that were the issue.   

On the back where the basic information is put had some errors on it due to the fact I print screened from the original .pages file. So after ridding the posters of errors I could finally print these off, and get them around uni.

But because the hassle with the posters took longer then I hoped we barely managed to get the posters into the SU in time for lunch. In which case we stuck some on notice boards throughout the uni and used the ones we had left on the student village. We weren't able to cover much as the cost of the printing was quite high for a small amount, however we managed to print off 40 posters in total.

Surprisingly this hasn't put me off making posters in the future, it just means I know what to look out for and what not to do again. Also PDF's are a bitch.

Final Poster

For the final poster I used the map and urban part of my research to inspire this final piece. I searched for a urban colour palette just to see what it gave me, and to my surprise I found a nice selection of colours that stand out but aren't an eye sore.

I then had to think about what I was actually gonna put on the poster, and looking back at the research I had done I decided to try something new with a map of Farnham.

Taking this screenshot of Farnham I rotated it 180 degrees so it fit into the portrait format. Then, with a lot of patience, I used the magic wand to highlight the main roads, cutting them from the image and filling them with a different colour. I also added a texture over the top to give the poster some texture rather then being plain bold colours.

With the colour palette in mind I went back to Text Giraffe to find some suitable logos for this new poster. Returning with many logos, I had to put them of to the base of the new poster and flick through each one of them to see which looked good and which ones I had to get rid of.

Not sure on what title was being used at the time of making it, I made doubles just in case (Urban Quest being the final choice). 

After much umming and ahhing about which one to use, I remembered that I could change the colour using the fill tool in Photoshop. Switching out some of the colours for the ones in the palette, only one came out looking worthy enough to be on the poster.

But then came the font for the slogan and website. I needed to find something decide that would stand out clearly from the background as well as sticking with the theme.

Looking through Dafont I found some that seemed to fit, and I decided to test them out just in case.

I created two different coloured ones just in case someone in the group preferred one to the other. In which case we could have both. Posting these up on Facebook to get some general feed back, I got that the in yellow poster, the roads look like veins or arteries because of the colour. Also I was told that the text in the same poster, was difficult to read.

So I changed it.

I later got some more feedback saying that the background colours were too vibrant or harsh, so to change that I added a complete white layer over the top of both of them and set the opacity to about 35% to lessen the harshness of the colours.

I then added the QR code to the corners and the website underneath (for people who don't use QR codes) to finish off the posters. Of course they were not fulling finished as I needed to get more feedback on the 'final' posters. My group replied with, the font showing the slogan and website were too difficult to read in the background. So in response I changed the font to a thicker style in hopes that it stands out more and clearer.

These two images above, are the finished, final posters.

Correction, the two images above were the final posters, till things got changed around.

Poster Creating

To start off my poster, I looked at a load of different styled poster through Google for a bit of inspiration. Looking through my artist studies again to see if it would trigger anything. I looked into map like posters, finding some really good posters that I wanted to do, however with the time limit I had I wasn't able to make them in time. I also had to factor in that I needed to make these posters simple and eye catching with out being tacky and cliche.

An image I found that interested me and also gave me the idea for the finished product.

I also tried looking for a simple, eye catching logo for it. I found a nice website, called Text Giraffe, which give you ready made logos to choose from and you can edit what it says.

These are the main themes of posters I looked at using key words from our project.

1. Winter

I tried looking into winter themes as it's near Christmas, however I the poster in which I started to make didn't look right for what we were trying to advertise. After seeing some simple posters with a winter theme I tried to make one.

         

I used some colour palettes to help with the general colour scheme.

After looking at colour schemes I search for a logo that could fit in colour wise and theme wise.

2. Film 

I tried to look into film posters as it relates to our course, and came with some interesting results. Some inspiration from Alfred Hitchcock and his famous yet simple posters. A lot of red and yellows, silhouettes and almost cryptic text to pull people in. 

3. Maps 

Seeing this image I liked, I wanted to use this style in the posters, yet came across a problem when Farnham doesn't have an underground train system or a complex looking railway line. So instead I kept looking round for these sorts of posters to see if I could find a way to recreate Farnham in this new fashion.

I then came across this artist, who I believe is called Jazzberry Blue (real or stage name i'm not sure), who's work was just what I needed to help with this project.

  

5. urban 

To add an urban spin to this work I looked up some urban posters which gave some very varied results. Sadly the posters that I wanted to create were not only too complex for the time I had but I also needed knowledge of Illustrator which I don't have, yet.

My Poster Attempts 1 and 2

Attempt 1

Starting off with some winter inspiration I looked for sample colour palettes to help narrow down what I could use on the poster and keep it so the colours didn't clash.

Now I had the colours I could look for a logo with the same palette to put on the poster, using the website Text Giraffe I found a few logos that could be used. 

Using them all in different layers on Photoshop I judged how each of them looked against the back ground of this poster. 

However, the background was proving more trouble then I hoped, seeing as I didn't have Illustrator, I had to improvise with my knowledge of Photoshop to create what I had in mind. About halfway through I got a bit stuck, not with how to make the design, but more with how the design looked. 

After showing it to another group member for an opinion we both discussed that it wasn't the right design we were looking for, so I scrapped that idea and tried another.

Attempt 2

Aiming for the theme to be based more around Farnham, I looked up photos of Farnham to see what I could use, as this attempt was going to try and silhouette a part of Farnham, again Illustrator style. 

The only problem being that a lot of the photos I found were landscape rather portrait which is what I was working.

I tried to work with a couple of them, however some didn't look right in the portrait format so I gave up on those. The ones that didn't look too bad I tried to silhouette to see what sort of effect it had.

Yet, with each image I couldn't silhouette much of it's content leaving very little to look at, also that made it difficult to make out what is in the image and where it's located.