Studio Brief 4 - Poster Development

Image Development

Below is the process i went through when creating my 3 poster designs

At first i was looking for an image of a women, especially a women who had an expressive shock look to her face as this would help my face mask seem more natural when i took out the eyes and mouth.

I removed the background from her face.

I cut out the eyes and mouth to make it look like a mask. I also used liquify in Photoshop to thin out the face and give the effect of sag.

I then went and used plastic wrap in the filter options in Photoshop to get a surreal effect on the face and make it look plastic to add more depth and give it a bit of a gruesome/scary look, as the whole point, was to make the face undesirable.

So after finishing off the mask, i finally found the perfect display cabinet to display my mask in.

The stand that would hold up the face mask, giving it support.

Next i put all these parts together and this was the outcome at this stage.

I added a few reflections to the case, just to make it look like the mask was inside a case and not just placed onto of it.

I knew i could use colour in the image, as the brief was no more then two colours. I converted the image to black and white, which did in fact help the idea of a ill looking image.

Example of one of the labels i used to promote the sale of the facemask. All the colour choice for the label helped it pop and complimented the black and white colours.

Another example of a label i came up with. This one worked better for me as it was more genuine and could be attached to the mask and not looks like a sticker stuck to the case like the other example.

Tag line "How far will you go for cosmetic surgery" The tagline explains that how far will somebody go in order to look "perfect". Also cosmetics is on such a raise that it would be that abnormal for people to start buying or selling whole faces in stead of having bits done here or there. The message as a whole is just to make people think about the risks and how gruesome and grotesque surgery can be. It can make you feel or look better but is it worth the risk? With the typeface I was aiming for a personal down to earth type. This typeface to me represented a typewriter, which is personal, as the people would have to type it themselves.

For my image only poster, I wanted to use Barbie as the main focus using her as a representation of what perfection looks like.

At first i made Barbie black and white to fit in with the guidelines of the brief. I then used Photoshop to make Barbie to look like she had been crying out her mascara. This adds emotion and should get the interest of the audience.

I then went about making Barbie’s face sag and melt by using Liquify in Photoshop to communicate this. I think it worked well and does indeed look like her face is melting off. To me the melting face represents a botched surgery and I'm communicating what can happen if a surgery goes wrong.

Close up look on Barbies melting face.

Just having the melting face wasn't clear enough that i was representing cosmetic surgery. So to make it clearer i wanted to place in hands to represent interaction of a doctor or surgeon.

I used the hands to make it look like they were holding Barbie’s face together, almost stopping her face from melting off completely.

Added cosmetic lines are the perfect feature in order to visually communicate cosmetics. These dotted lines are a common thing in surgery so anyone who see these lines will almost straight away know that this image is about cosmetic surgery.

I wanted to show pain on Barbie’s face and try to get through to people considering surgery that no matter how many surgeries you get, you will never be happy with the outcome and will end up getting more and more.

I wanted a strong typeface to represent my message, so using Gotham was a strong and readable typeface, which would be great to use for when i start modifying the structure of it.

To represent change whether its right or wrong, i went about modifying the typeface. So using eraser tool i cut away some parts of the letter to get the effect of ugliness, grotesque and imperfection looking type. 

Closer look at the typeface.

To show what happens under the knife, i modified the type further by giving the effect of slicing and cutting open the type.

I also used cosmetic surgery dotted lines to back up my slicing effect so the audience knows what I'm trying to show.    

Tagline reads "It's not worth the cut" giving of the impression what don't risk cosmetics as you could end up looking like the typeface. Sliced, jagged and unattractive.

The type and tagline altogether as one piece of design. I decided to tilt the tagline to show imperfection and unbalance

Using the textured background to give of a jagged, rough look to make cosmetics look untidy and undesirable.

Type at another angle

At this angle the type look a lot bigger, so more dramatic and in your face

*Update*---------

After receiving feedback from the final crit, i got feedback on my type only poster and John mentioned that using a textured background counts as a image, so i wouldn’t be able to use it. Also using the dotted lines is also not allowed. After receiving this feedback i went back to my type only poster and made some changes.

I didn't change much in terms of the design layout. I realised early that my type wouldn’t be as strong on a white background. So i made the background black with the type white. I also removed the dotted lines and made a few more slices in the type to compensate for this. i think it works better then the original.