Week Six | Picini

Design Strategy and client information:

Ten Tons of Love is a not-for-profit, university-wide donation drive that occurs at the end of semesters, when students are packing up for home and throwing away old things. Items donated are sorted by the First English Lutheran Church and distributed between eight organizations in the Syracuse area. I want to design a poster that will draw people’s attention to the event and show it as an easy, logical event to partake in. The demographic for Ten Tons of Love is mainly college students. Although it is open to the outside community, the event is based in the students of Syracuse University and SUNY ESF. In general, students don’t have a lot of money to donate to non-profit organizations, but Ten Tons of Love accepts almost any sort of donation, making it realistic for college students, wealthy or struggling financially. I think the title of the organization is incredibly clever, so in designing this poster I wanted to utilize the title and emphasize the ideas of ten tons and of love. Weight scales usually have negative connotation, especially among women, so I thought it was refreshing to show a scale in a positive light, associated with giving to those in need. Also, many people weigh themselves on a daily basis, so it seems like a natural thing to do. I wanted to make a simple poster that emphasized the easiness of the drive and inspired people to take the step to participate, knowing how achievable it is. One parameter was the low budget since Ten Tons of Love is a not-for-profit organization and run by volunteers. Because of this I decided not to use special ink or paper, and kept the color scheme simple. The budget wasn’t the only reason for only using one color though; I wanted the red to stand out especially and to portray something simple and readable.

Choice of typefaces:

For my typeface I chose Antique Olive Std because I liked the modern feel of the sans serif font and I like the large counters in the lowercase letters. I chose to use all lowercase letters because I think it makes it less intimidating and thus more natural, which is the theme I was trying to subtly convey. I also thought it made the font more readable (the counters especially), which is important because people rarely take the time to read posters that take effort to decipher nowadays. All of the type was the same font in varying sizes except the title of the event on the scale which was the same font but a different family, because I wanted that to stand out and look like part of the scale. I originally had a lot more type on the poster because I put the information about what could be donated, drop off locations and recipients, but I decided that it made the poster too busy, so I kept it simple.

Visuals:

I created the picture in Adobe Illustrator before moving it into Adobe InDesign. I found the scale on Google and traced it using the pen tool and I found a picture I had taken of my feet and traced them using the pen tool in Illustrator as well. I chose to add a heart because hearts are the closest symbol tied to love and I turned it sideways to speed up the eyes across the page and keep it from getting boring. I also made the subtitle, “university-wide donation drive” and date on the line indicating the top third of the paper, because we see in thirds. The heart I drew freehand with the Illustrator pen tool, and went back after to edit bumpy spots with the pen tool options and white arrow. I made the feet on the scale pointing into the poster to draw the readers’ eyes into the information and placed the title of the organization in the part of the scale that tells the weight, because naturally when I recognize a scale my eyes go to the reading displayed. Finally, I included the Ten Tons of Love logo in the bottom right corner, because that’s where the eyes naturally flow. I chose to use red because it’s the most attention-grabbing color, and it also indicates love. My final balance was C:8%, M:100%, Y:90%, K:18%, which was lighter than the original color I chose because the printer didn’t print it the same as I saw it on the computer.