Project Rationale

Poster Placement

After arriving at my final concept I started to out my poster into real world environments to see how it would look.

Final Poster Design

After developing my 'Break the Chain' concept I have arrived at my final poster design.

I am incredibly happy with my final design, as I think that it effectively conveys the message of my chosen topic - social media is anti-social. I learnt a lot about my own design process and the importance of initial ideation and trying to find inspiration from everywhere and anywhere. These were some things that greatly influenced the development of my design style, and are parts of the design process that I will definitely continue to put more emphasis on in 

my projects.

Further Concept Development for Interim Two

After talking to Lee at Tuesday's class we came to the conclusion that my poster needed a tagline to really drive home the message that social media is anti-social, as just 'Break the Chains' is a bit too vague. I decided on the tagline 'Just Logout', as it is straight to the point and a good follow on from 'Break the Chains'. So today I started exploring ways in which I could add this tagline to my poster.

Colour Development

After deciding on my font I moved onto working out what colour I wanted the font to be. I tried many different colours but the three that worked the best were Black, White and Navy Blue. Overall I thought that the white was just too overbearing against the white of the Facebook logo. The navy was my initial choice until I did print tests where I found that the black was more effective than the blue, thus black will be the colour I continue with.

Font Development

After converting my concept to digital, I began experimenting with different fonts I could use for the main text of my poster. I decided that the font needed to be clear and bold to get across the message of the poster and tried fonts like Arial Black, Days, Intro Inline, Mezzanine and soft sugar, but in the end i felt like Abadi MT Condensed Extra Bold was the font that worked the best with the imagery of the poster.

Poster Development

Over the past two days I have been converting my hand drawn concepts from the interim critique to digital and trying to decide which concept I want to move on with.

I eventually decided that I would move forward with my 'Break the Chains' concept, which I changed to 'Break the Chain', as I felt this gave the message a metaphorical meaning to break the chain of daily social media use along with the literal breaking of 

the chain.

Interim Critique

Today we had our interim critique and sat down in groups to discuss our poster concepts up to 

this point.

I got some great feedback from my peers and tutors and I came to the conclusion that my 'Break the Chains' concept was strongest, followed by the 'Strangled by Social Media' concept, so moving forward I think I will continue to develop these two (and possibly a third) concepts.

Developed Concepts for Interim Critique 2

Here I began developing the other two designs for the Interim Critique

In this design the idea was to have an arm of Facebook logos strangle or suffocate the person, portraying the hold that Facebook and other social media sites have on our lives.

This concept was inspired by one of the posters I had on my Inspirational Examples pages. The Facebook logo represents a cross that has impaled a brain, conveying the idea that Facebook has taken over the minds of people today. The rhetoric message is 'Join Facebook' in bold but on closer reading the full message reads 'Join the army of Facebook drones'.

Developed Concepts for Interim Critique 1

 Today I began developing the first two concepts for the interim critique on Monday. I added extra some elements including colour to the initial designs and I am interested to hear the feedback from everybody on which design I should move forward with.

The idea behind this concept was to have the snake with a skin pattern of social media logos to strangle a person, surrounded by a room of smashed technology to add to the idea that social media is taking over.

The idea behind this design was to have a person literally chained to a Facebook logo (much like in movies where someone is chained to a immovable rock or object) with the message 'Break The Chain' behind him/her. This plays on the idea of breaking the literal chain and also the figurative chain of the daily cycle of social media use people these days 

are addicted to.

More Initial Concepts

Today I worked on some more initial poster concepts and I have narrowed down the four strongest designs that I will be developing for the interim critique 

on monday.

Inspirational Poster Examples

After the initial concepts I did earlier, I decided I wanted to have a look for some inspirational poster examples to try and spark some creative ideas before I did any more. I found a large range of examples that ranged from the political to the environmentally motivated.

Design Elements

After the work I did on defining different design principles, I decided I would take it a step further and look into the different design elements I would need to be aware of when designing my posters.

Design Principles

Today I decided to do some work on defining the different design principles I will need to implement while designing my posters.

I felt that this would give me a better understanding of what I need to be conscious of when working on my concepts.

Initial Poster Concepts

Today I began working on some initial poster concepts. I drew a lot of inspiration from some already established poster styles, while also adding my own taste to the designs. 

Social Media Research

Today I did some research on social media statistics both in New Zealand and Worldwide. I found that Facebook is by far the most used form of social media, and I also found that while the younger demographic makes up the biggest percentage, 

the ages of Facebook users are widespread up 

to the ages of 60+

Social Media Brainstorm

Today I drew up a brainstorm focussing on the different forms of social media and terms that are associated with each.

This will help me when I come to do my initial concepts as it will give me a database of themes that I can base my posters on.

Rhetoric Analysis

In today's lectorial we went over examples of rhetoric posters and analysed what features and elements made them effective.

I got some interesting information about things I can do to add to the visual rhetoric of my own posters, and I will be trying to implement this when I start on my initial concepts

Chosen Topic

Today I chose the topic I will be exploring for this project. Social Media being Anti-Social.