And a poet will know it..

Part of studying ‘Issues in Publication and Design’ is obviously, being given various documents and redesigning them, using the knowledge we have gained about publication and design throughout the course thus far.

This is a rather enjoyable exercise, and a productive way of putting our knowledge to use. This week we were given a poster aimed at poets, informing them that the magazine ‘Piping Shrike’ is taking entries of poetry and will be publishing the work of the winner in their magazine.

The poster is aimed at university students, which is a consideration I took into account when redesigning the poster. We were allowed to change colours, pictures, anything that is necessary so long as we included the information needed.

Poetry has been defined as:  

“an imaginative awareness of experience expressed through meaning, sound, and rhythmic language choices so as to evoke an emotional response.”  (http://contemporarylit.about.com/cs/literaryterms/g/poetry.htm)

My aim was to create an elegant artistic design, as a representation of the magazine and of poetry itself. While poetry comes in all different genres and various forms, it is a well known fact that poets are creative so my intention was to reflect this.

I chose to use grey, black and white, but in a way to make the poster look elegant, rather than boring, which can be associated with those colours. Using Google images I found the image with a pen, and a definition of ‘poetry’ underneath it, which was written as a poem itself, using poetry to define poetry. Which I thought was a relevant creative image to use. 

I used the font ‘Edwardian Script’ as I believe this reflects creativity, as block fonts such as ‘Calibri’ seem ‘inside the square’. They do not leave room for imagination and do not grab the attention of a person walking by, which is the aim of a university poster; considering the pin boards are generally crammed already it is a strategy in making yours stand out from the rest. I also chose this font as it was similar to the font already used on the image to define poetry and therefore would suit nicely.

In order to have the white font stand out against the grey, I lessened the contrast of the image, therefore making the image a duller, darker grey.

While some may interpret my redesign of this poster as feminine, my aim was to make it elegant and artistic.

 

Here is the original poster on the left and my redesign on the right:

                        original:                                                               Redesign: