Week 6 Poster Project/ Darra Markland

** this is not the finished product. I accidentally forgot to open the original document as a tabloid so I have to fix the proportions/placement of the text and image

Design strategy:

I immediately knew that I wanted to design a poster for the Polar Bear Plunge, a not-for-profit event that annually occurs in Rehoboth Beach, DE (and in other states as well) to raise money for the Special Olympics. I decided to have an exiting image of a polar bear diving as my visual, and that I wanted my design to be as simple as possible while still conveying the importance of this event. This event is a family-fun day that attracts people of all ages, so I wanted the poster to be bright, friendly, and casual. I used colors from the Pantone Solid Matte collection under the "Beach" category. I incorporated a gradient effect to visualize the polar bear diving into water and to enhance the visual hierarchy of reading down the poster for information about the event.

Choice of typefaces

I used two very different fonts; a serif font called Marker Felt and a script font, Handwriting-Dakota. I liked the contrast this difference supplied to the simple poster. Also, they are both extremely casual and fun which I feel appeals to the audience I am aiming to attract. I played around with leading and kerning of typefaces, and surprised myself when I realized that I actually liked the way the headline looks without my changes. I like the space between the letters in PLUNGE (especially to allow room for the snowflake), and the imperfections between the letters in the script font emphasize the visual of handwriting I wanted to form. While I know adjustments in kerning and leading were a part of this project, I honestly felt this was the best solution for the overall intention of my poster design.

Visuals

The image of the polar bear is something that I knew I wanted to draw imperfectly. To me, this symbolized that the event is open to anyone (you don't have to be a trained swimmer to dive into the ocean and be part of this event!), and it also reflects the heartwarming aspect of this event, since it almost looks like a child illustrated this bear. The snowflake is also not perfectly drawn for this exact reason. I chose to bleed off of the page instead of setting margins to enhance the visual of water. The Special Olympics logo proved a difficult task to incorporate into the poster, as it did not easily allow me to create a transparent background. But I wanted to include it, and fixed it the best I could.