Week 6: Jasuta

Design strategy and client information

Delta Gamma’s national philanthropy events sponsor Service for Sight, a program dedicated to the vision impaired. Delta Gamma is a female social fraternity; Syracuse University is home to the Rho chapter. AnchorSplash® is the annual philanthropy that Delta Gamma holds nationally. It features pool games, synchronized swimming, and wacky relays for collegiate fraternity and sorority members. I am the Director of AnchorSplash and Mr. Golden Anchor (our fall philanthropy event) for the Rho chapter. Our parameters aren’t extremely limited: Delta Gamma colors should be represented, the theme should be nautical to some extent, and the name of our philanthropic organization should be on the poster.

The poster I created is very much possible to realistically use for our April 17^th event. I was trying to create a poster that was eye-catching and simply appealing to a college student: bold use of contrasting colors, simplistic design, and easily accessible information. I took artistic liberty with the use of Delta Gamma’s colors from blue and bronze to blue and the contrasting yellow. Delta Gamma’s crest is featured in place of a logo, since Service for Sight doesn’t actually have a logo, but operates under Delta Gamma.

Choice of typeface

I used the poster-style Stencil Std typeface in the main headlines of my poster to keep it bold and loud. The salute of the sailor girl is echoed in this militaristic font. The juxtaposition of the “Dive In.” title out of whack with the yellow box adds dynamic to the titling, creating an interesting use of space rather than a predicable one. The blue of the font stands out dramatically from the yellow of the textbox. It’s an all-caps typeface that is bold and sassy, much like the college audience I’m trying to garner attention from.

The Optima and Optima bold fond of the detailed information provides legible information in a typeface that compliments the rest of the poster design.

Visuals

The sailor girl was traced with the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator. There are a total of eight shapes that make up her form: the hat, her upper body, the swimsuit, the right leg, the upper left thigh, the lower left quad, her right shoe, and her left shoe. She acts as the main visual in the poster, popping out against the dark background in as a teal-and-yellow figure. I kept the outlines on her form in order to add even more contrast and visual gestalt.

The background was created in Adobe Photoshop, using a navy blue background and a spray paint effect to create the look of a splash or explosion of water, which in turn adds a dynamic to the poster in comparison to a plain navy background.

Only three colors are used throughout the poster, with the exception being the Delta Gamma crest in the right lower corner: Yellow (Pantone 107 C), Blue (Pantone 297 C), and Navy (Pantone 2748 C). Many different shades of each color were experimented with before these final swatches were chosen. They work in harmony with each other, the navy isn’t too dark, the yellow jumps out with the perfect balance of intensity, and the blue meshes well as an intermediary color.