Given Quote:
“There is frequently more to be learned
from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men” – John Locke
John Locke,
born August 29, 1632 – October 28, 1704 was a British philosopher as well as an
Oxford academic and medical researcher who was widely known as the Father of Classical Liberalism, regarded
as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers.
Common Questions Children Ask
·
Why is the sky blue?
·
What is infinity?
·
Where do babies come from?
·
How is electricity made?
·
What are black holes?
·
What is infinity?
·
Why is the sky blue?
·
Why do we have a leap year?
·
How do birds fly?
·
Where do babies come from?
·
Where do you go when you die?
·
Why do people kill each other?
·
Why are some people born with disabilities?
·
Why are people gay?
·
Why does cutting onions make you cry?
·
Where does the wind come from?
·
Why is the sea salty?
·
How big is the world?
·
Is God real?
·
What makes thunder?
·
Why do you blink?
·
How do planes fly?
·
What is time?
·
How does Father Christmas get down the chimney?
·
Where does water come from?
·
What comes first, the chicken or the egg?
·
Are aliens real?
·
How much does the earth weigh?
·
Why is water wet?
·
Where do birds go in winter?
·
Why is the moon sometimes out in the day?
·
Where does water come from?
Poster
The
poster design is centred around Locke’s quote, which describes the innocent,
naive questions asked by children are the hardest for adults to answer without
being stumped by them.
The Design:
After
drafting up various designs I chose to go with a design that would be visually
simple yet effective and apparent to the viewer.
The
design contains some of the many innocent questions asked by a child that
adults find difficult or fail to answer and when in doubt generally respond
with the default answer “Nobody knows the
answer to that”.
The
questions would be arranged in diagonal orientations (I experimented with
horizontal orientations and it didn’t look visually appealing, instead it
looked rather bland. I tried a vertical orientation and it was just too hard to
read, negating the point of the design.
I
chose for the type to be enclosed with the profile of a child, making it more
visually apparent to the viewer that the topic relates to a child/children.
I
experimented with and without the usage of a background colour and colour usage
within the profile image.
After
designing a poster involving a boy’s profile I decided to adapt the same design
but involving a girl’s profile, feeling it would appeal to both the male and
female demographic (possibly stronger for parents).
Potential Imagery Fonts
I
wanted the font of the questions within the image to represent a child-like
hand writing, so for this I tested out the following fonts from my font library
within Illustrator:
·
Handwriting – Dakota
·
Marker Felt – Thin
·
Marker Felt – Wide
·
Chalkduster – Regular
·
Ballpark Weiner – Weiner
Experimenting with
these fonts I made my own conclusions on each font to justify my decision:
Handwriting - Dakota
I feel that this
font is too thin, italic and strung-out. When compiled within the image the
typographic composition is too visually stressful.
Marker Felt - Thin
This font is better
but still too thin, making the typographic composition too busy and
distracting.
Marker Felt - Wide
The wide version of
Marker Felt works a lot better than the Thin version, delivering the effect of
a child’s pen handwriting and still clean enough to read clearly. This font
also looks a lot better in the typo composition too.
Chalkduster - Regular
Chalkduster
delivers that handwritten effect in the font design but I got the feeling instantly
that it would over-complicate the design, making it look messy and chaotic.
Ballpark Weiner - Weiner
This font is one of
my personal favourites but admittedly it’s not best used for every design
piece. I felt that over-usage of this font would make the piece unreadable, and
negate the purpose of the design.
I chose to use
Marker Felt – Wide font as the font within the imagery and the main typographic
focus.
Designed by Pat
Snyder who is an art teacher and son of a master sign painter. Marker Felt is
exceptional in its combination of casualness with clarity and definition of
form. It is particularly useful for delivering onscreen presentations to large
audiences.
Quote Font
For the quote I
wanted to use a font that was more serious visually but not too harsh or bold.
I chose to use my personal favourite Century Gothic – Regular. I feel this font
has a certain elegant, visually tranquilizing and sophisticated design about
it, Like a statement being told a serious yet subtle tone. The right colour
usage for this font would justify it furthermore.
Colours
I
wanted to use a soft, subtle, child-friendly colour scheme that would be
suitable and relevant for the topic’s design.
I
chose to use a mint, eggshell-blue for the boy’s poster with a C.M.Y.K. of:
·
C
= 48
·
M
= 6
·
Y
= 27
·
K
= 0
For
the girl’s poster I chose to use a subtle pink with a C.M.Y.K. of:
·
C
= 0
·
M
= 38
·
Y
= 8
·
K
= 0
I also
experimented with using a light-dark grey for both the boy and girl’s profile
image, acting as a bold contrast between the type and background. I decided
against this design though, feeling it was darkening the image too much. The
C.M.Y.K. used was:
·
C
= 0
·
M
= 0
·
Y
= 0
·
K
= 75
I
wanted to make sure the design wasn’t loud, bold and too in your face and using
these colour schemes gave the poster design a warmer, subtle yet striking
effect to it. I used a plain white swatch (C = 0, M = 0, Y = 0, K = 0) with the
design too; this was to portray a sense of innocence within the piece, relating
to the innocence of children and their questions.
Evaluation
I will
admit that the final design isn’t anything unique, finding similar typographic
design pieces online after idea drafting but the idea and adaptation is
completely my own and I feel it works very well. In the beginning I was quite
sceptical about the fact that what I thought was my own new and original design
had been completed numerous times before but with the time given for the
completion of this project I’d of rather produced and completed something
similar to already existing designs than not being able design or complete
anything.
Overall
I am happy with the finished results. I feel all the elements used within the
design do the poster and the quote justice. One thing I would change in the
future is for the posters to be printed on a higher quality, heavier paper,
similar to matt watercolour paper.
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