THE PROCESS

After figuring out my target market and what my focus was on the project I began to select from my thumbnail sketches what I wanted to use for my poster design. After choosing the ones I liked, I decided that I could create a narrative poster that would follow one character and there experience of drugs in a simplistic and powerful way. My idea was based on the idea of drinking campaign "you wouldn't start a night like this" I decided to use a character that my audience could relate to and her experimentation of the drugs and going out scene, leading to her fatal end.

The image poster

For my image poster I wanted to use a teenage, modern styled girl that my audience could relate to, so I looked on the blogging site tumblr which is known for bloggers to post images of themselves and there style and found three girls that stood out to me.

I decided to use the second girl as I thought the composition of her in the frame would work well with the design I wanted to incorporate around her and also her eye contact would be effective, as she looks right at you clearly.

I began tracing her adding in other elements of facial features to make it my own and came out with these designs.

I also decided to keep the printed image underneath when scanning the image as I felt it added a depth to the picture and a nice undertone.

After scanning in the image I played with effects on Photoshop and due to the project having a serious tone I wanted to keep to using serious colours. I chose to use black and blue as the connote a sense of death and seriousness.

I  also experimented with using warmer tones to see how it would look, I used a pre-made green and orange gradient and set the opacity to 72%, but compared to the first image I felt it wasn't as striking and the detail of the image was slightly lost behind the colour.

After deciding upon the colours and setting I wanted to use I developed my design further by adding more drugs around the girls head as if she was thinking about using an arrangement of legals highs and ketamin, then scanned it in. I used the exposure layer mask adjusting the levels to

Exposure: -0.02
Offset: +0.0059
Gamma Correction: 0.23 

I felt that the image looked to harsh and darkened parts of the face too much so I experimented with the opacity and brush tools, which lead me to my final design.

 Final design

 The type poster

From my research into the project I was inspired by the artist "cartyis.me" and the design he did on drugs which was like a check list of drugs that had been tried. I wanted to recreate this but put into my narrative context that my target audience could relate to and decided upon creating a 'To Do' night out check list.

I then experimented with the composition and layout of the text and prefered this design to the previous one, as I felt it was more aesthetically pleasing.

I also experimented with the gradient used in the previous image to see how it looked.

After sticking to my blue and black them I decided to experiment with the placement of the colours to make them stand out.

Final design

The image and type poster

For the image a text poster I wanted to create a really striking image of the girl compared to the first one. I looked up images of people of who had been affected by drugs and decided to create a decomposing face design. I wanted it t be controversial and powerful, to shock my audience and portray the damages of drugs.

I decided to hand drawn over the previous sketch I did and came up with this final image.

Also through my research I came across a statement that drug users are more inclined to use other drugs once they have tried one, so I looked up the name of the most popular drugs and legal highs to stick within the context of my project and decided to create a brainstorm of drugs the character was inclined to try.

I also wanted to send out a strong message and included more rhetorical questions that spoke directly to audience to engage them.

I also again experiment with a gradient to see what it would look like, but felt the blue design was stronger.

FINAL DESIGN

I wanted to make sure that image really spoke for it's self among the words, and again experimented with it further by using paint brushes in Photoshop. I blacked out the eyes further and added colour to the veins and decomposing tissue on the girls face.

FINAL SET OF POSTERS

The designs completed ready for presentation.

<photo>