Week Six: Davis Reiter

Design Strategy and Client Information: The not-for-profit organization I chose is Colorado Service Dogs. This organization helps train and provide rescued dogs to assist people who have disabilities. Therefore the demographic of this organization has a lot of people with disabilities, and many children as well. This is why I tried to make my poster a little more friendly and not so formal.

The event is being held in Washington Park which is a really popular park in Denver, CO. Very active people go to Washington Park so this venue is perfect for dog walkers since the park is always filled. In general, people are very laid back so I wanted to make a poster that portrayed this happy go lucky feel.

I knew that I wanted my design to be very simple and ‘cute’ for lack of a better word. Washington Park is a very family oriented place. I also did not want too much text on my poster, which was difficult because I wanted to get all the information there and it was hard to choose what details were important and which were not. One thing I did struggle with was the amount of free space, which is why I decided to add the leash.

Choice of Typefaces: I chose Carolina std as my typeface because I felt that it was very easy to read. Originally I was going to use a really fun curly font because it was a little more playful but I was worried about the readability. I tried to keep the fonts consistent throughout the poster as well. Fuzz is capitalized only because it is capitalized in its formal name. I tried putting a shamrock in the o of spot but it seemed too busy.

Visuals: The visuals were a little frustrating at first, but after a little time practicing tracing images it became better. I tried free hand drawing the dog’s tail end in Illustrator but it was messy and did not look like a dog. I then decided to google a picture of the dog, a leg, a shoe and trace each one. I used the paint tool to get the spots onto the dog, and then freehanded the leash. I really wanted the images to go off the page. I think it works well because the viewer can image a person walking a dog. I wanted it to appear kind of messy as if it were hand drawn which is why some of the lines aren’t fully colored in. I also really wanted to use a bright color because I thought it would draw the viewer’s attention. I chose green because it is like grass and also because this event also celebrates St. Patrick’s Day.