(Above) Before and (Below) After Critique

My team is designing a campaign for SCCA’s Summer and Evening Program. Though I’ve had my two cents for the other designers on this project on their assignments (we divided the work so that one of us does poster/print ads/web design– I got web design) my work has come out stylistically different than the other material. Our concept is called “Boot Scouts” and our reference for the look and feel is WPA posters, especially by Lester Beall. It’s a good thing that we went for that era because we don’t have a photographer in our team (the other students do for this project). We’ve been using Library of Congress photos.

The critique: I presented the design on the left to Chris and Jill and it was pretty much a hierarchy lecture. What should I read first? Everything is the same size… yada yada. It’s funny how clear it is to me now, but when I was working on it, it made so much sense to me. It seemed obvious and went with our other material. A sticking point for them was the loss of elegance. All of these elements are jammed in there and there’s too many images. And what’s with the angle?

So, I cleaned it up a bit. (see the Right screen image) I feel like I’ve done that with a lot of projects. Going crazy collage-style and then stepping back and taking away until I have my design. I don’t know how efficient that is but I think it generates new ideas. It’s kind of like trying out everything at once.

(Earlier Post Relating to This Project)