Design Strategy and client Information: My poster design is for a SU student association, not-for-profit, called The Residence Hall Association. The event “Condom Casino” is an annual, sex education cocktail party that is targeted to any resident of the SU residence halls. This is a fun, and quirky event and I attempted to tailor my poster design to this. I wanted the design to incorporate a strong, witty visual that would capture the audiences’ attention and still convey the casino fun and educational aspects of the event. This organization typically does not have an extensive printing budget, so I limited the color as much as possible.
Choice of typefaces: I decided to use Script MT Std (bold and regular) and Adobe Jenson Pro fonts for this ad. I feel that the serif is readable and that the script is reminiscent of type a vintage Casino’s may have used. I also chose to use a script for the title and headline, because it portrays the feel of the event. I realize that script is usually not as readable as a serif. However, I feel that the young audience will have no problem reading it and that they are expecting a font with a distinct style.
Visuals: I wanted the visual of the ad to be playful and incorporate both sex education and casino games. I noticed the phallic shape of the spade card suit and capitalized on it. I created the spade image by tracing an Internet image in Illustrator. I then used the paintbrush tool in Illustrator to create the condom image stretched over the top of the spade. I also used the paintbrush to create the “f” in the headline, because I wanted there to be a graphic tie-in to the bottom part of the design. By changing the opacity of the interior color of the “condom” I believe that I was able to convey a bit of the transparent latex feel of the object. I decided to use a shade of yellow for the condom, as most people seemed to better identify my portrayal of a condom in this color. Red was just too “breast”, “nipple” or “hat” like so yellow (Pantone 121 M) it is! The bottom forty percent of the design has a background color of green (Pantone 356 M) as I was trying to mimic the green of a card, or casino table. I also thought green contrasted well with the other colors used.
I think the simplicty behind this is what makes it work so well. It's a clever idea, but one that I think could've been overdone easily. The visual is very strong and definitely creates a hiearchy, and had I seen the poster at a glance on a wall full of posters, it would be sure to stand out. Also, the information is all in large text so it can be easily read even from a distance, my only problem is the grouping of the date and time above the Condom Casino; I just think it would be logical to see the name of event continue down and read time/date, but that's not really a big issue anyway.
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