Project 2: Visual Hierarchy

11/2/19
Pittsburgh Shorts Film Festival Experience: The event that I got to attend was the Pittsburgh Shorts Film Festival at SouthSide Cinema. I watched the Saturday 10:30AM “All Ages” series. Honestly, I did not have much expectations or excitement because I underestimated the depth that a short film can have. However, I found that each film touched me internally in different ways: some recreated my childhood memories, some made me tear up thinking about my parents, some allowed me to reflect about adulting, and some made me genuinely laugh. There were two films in particular that I think I will remember for at least a couple of years: “Riceballs” & “Rock Paper Scissors”.
“Riceballs” was a film about a young boy whose father was Japanese and his mother who passed away was Australian. He had a hard time embracing his father’s culture especially after his mother passed away, as his father only knew how to make Japanese food such a rice balls for his school lunch. The film showed the process of the young boy learning to embrace his father’s culture and the rice balls after his friends at school were amazed by the different characters the father made the rice balls into. The film was moving because it portrayed the difficulties of learning how to fit in Asian cultures into his American/Australian lifestyle, which is something that I struggled with as I was growing up.
“Rock Paper Scissors” was a film that used only music and sound to display speed, intensity, and drama. It was about a boy and girl in two separate cars that play rock paper scissors in the car to get to know each other. After finding a connection, the boy does everything he can to get the girl’s number before the signal light turns green and the two cars separate. He went to the extremes of even ripping his friend’s birthday gift (a racing car with a remote) so that the racing car could follow the girl’s car. In the end, they find that they were at the same birthday party, where the boy and girl meet again and are successfully able to exchange numbers. Although the storyline was a bit cheesy, I was really intrigued about how music and sound could keep me so focused in the film and was even more engaging without dialogue.
Lastly, “Dream Homes According to Kids: Zamaya” was a cute short film that was dialogued by Zamaya as drawings and illustrations of her dream home was being described. As I was watching this film, I believed that this was a good introduction to the film series theme that I chose to watch: All Ages.

11/1/2019
Part 1: Stroke Weights, Linespacing, Horizontal Shifts (two flush-left & three flush-left)
For part 1 of the project, we were assigned a minimum of three options for four exercises each. Each exercise gave certain restrictions and limitations, forcing me to think as much as I could about how to visually categorize and show the hierarchy of importance through each limitation. Honestly, it was hard to show hierarchy just through stroke weights because I wished I could add a line space or an indent to make the hierarchy clearer. Because I produced around 5 different options with the Light 45, Roman 55, Medium 65, and Bold 75, I eventually made 42 pages in total for part 1. Below are some of the effective ones from each exercise.

Exercise 1: Stroke Weights

These are 3 of 8 options I made for Part 1. When looking at these three pages, I realized that bolder type for the titles of an event or more important information such as the time and location is better to emphasize (1st & 3rd page) than using bold type for secondary information such as the time and event of a specific part of the Pittsburgh Short Films (2nd page).

Exercise 2: Linespacing

In the linespacing exercise, I tried using three different types of fonts. These are the top 3 linespacing options that seemed to be most efficient. As seen in all three pages, I separated the first two lines and bottom two lines because those are the main information of the event (event name, duration of event, location, and contact info). Then, I separated the content of the event into three different ways. For me, the last page logically seemed the most sense in terms of separating content through linespacing, but I believe that there were too many linespaces between the content where it made me hard to see which information is most important. On the other hand, the linespacing on the second page was a bit unclear because “Opening Night: Heart & Soul” and “Thrills, Chills, & Giggles” were names of the themes of the films for that time period. By not putting a linespace that separates those two theme titles, I realized that it could be unclear for viewers without context of the film event because they could think that the theme titles are part of the film titles. Therefore, I believe that the first page shows linespacing that makes the most sense in terms of dividing context and grouping them together to show the right information of the event.

Exercise 3: Horizontal Shift (two flush-left margins)

For the horizontal shift (two flush-left margins), I feel like this exercise allowed me to show hierarchy the best because there was a physical change in the location of text through the distance of margins. There were two main changes that occurred: the main information aligned to the left margin while the secondary information was placed in a new margin (a bit more to the right) and vice versa. I found that the secondary information being placed in a new margin to the right made the content easier to see and be organized a bit more (1st & 2nd page). I wished I could use stroke weights to add a bit more emphasis on the most important information.

Exercise 4: Horizontal Shift (three flush-left margins)

For exercise 4, these were the 3 main shifts that were most dramatic and experimental. The three margins gave me the most freedom to logically group information and use shifting to display hierarchy. However, when I look back at these three pages, I wonder is it necessary to have three shifts. It could be the way that I organized it (especially page 2 & 3) but I feel like having three margins was unnecessary. Maybe 2 shifts were enough… When comparing these three pages, I believe that the 1st page makes most sense in its organization and looks comfortable. The 2nd and 3rd page looks awkward and seems off because of the intensity of the shifting margins. The margins seem to be too deep into the page, and when I look on the 3rd page, the way “November 1–7, 2019” and “Friday, November 1” has an awkward alignment of the “N” and “1” (lines 2 & 3) make it uncomfortable to see, as if it was a mistake.

11/5/19
Part 2: Color & Everything Before; Size Change & Stroke Weights
When we got assigned Part 2, we were told to consider the history, mood, emotions, etc. in order to create a palette that fits best with the event given. In class, Annalisa, Jina, Jamie, and I created a “word dump” that made clear what type of mood to create through the colors we choose. It was interesting because Annalisa, Jina, and Jamie attended the “Opening Night: Heart & Soul” series while I attended the “All Ages” film series. Because they went to the opening night, they described that their experience was very grand while mine was very casual and approachable. This affected the way I chose my colors because the “All Ages” series was more reminiscent of my childhood as there were lots of films with characters and storylines of babies and younger children.
Word Dump (between the 4 of us):
-variety
-emotional
-passion
-empowering
-community
-contextual
-approachable
-relatable
-casual/grand (depending on the series attended)
-personal
-friendly
-honest
-inclusive
-expressive
-unique
-modest
-supportive
-goal-driven
-diverse
-dense/compact
-local
-comfortable
-vibrant

When reading this short description of the Pittsburgh Shorts film festival introduction, the event seemed to emphasize local, unity, and innovative; something just seems so new, modern, and unique.

Exercise 5: Color & Everything Before

These are three different pages of color palettes that I was mix&matching with. When I was making my color palettes, I wanted to stick with my personal emotions while I was watching the “All Ages” series. Most of the films I viewed displayed a reminiscence of childhood, innocence, and purity. I tried to show this mood by using colors that remind me of a baby’s room/nursery room such as the pastel color arrangement as seen on the 2nd page. Then, I tried to mix in darker, bolder colors with the pastel (1st & 3rd page) because I realized that I can’t put an emphasis on only the “All Ages” series; I have to create a poster for the Pittsburgh Shorts film festival as a whole.

I started off by making 28 pairs of color combinations that seemed to portray the unification of different ages & cultures into one palette. As I was working, I seemed to be focusing on the target audience of local Pittsburgh people with their wide range of ages from toddlers to elders. I wanted something friendly yet sophisticated; approachable yet empowering.

Based on the local aspects of the Pittsburgh Shorts film festival, I wondered if I should represent this by the city’s main colors of black, gold, and white. However, I wanted to add a bit more fun and diversity to this palette because the films are from around the globe, embracing different cultures.

These are two pages of color palettes that I developed after playing around with the pairs of colors in the previous step. The page on the left shows five colors within a palette (shown vertically) while the page on the right shows three colors within a palette (shown horizontally). I wanted to see if I could make a color palette made up of less number of colors to portray a similar mood. I don’t know if it’s because of the weather but my palette seems a bit dull. I am considering if I should have a point color…

I tried using colors from my two types of color palettes to use these colors on text. I learned that some colors are easier to see than others, and too much of a contrast between colors makes it not appealing to read. The last page, for example, uses three different colors. Experimenting with 3 colors rather than 2 made it visually unattractive and the hierarchy of information unclear.

These are sample pages of my full bleed colors with text. Through this experimentation and exercise, I realized that I like the darker green background or even the light pink background. The darker green adds a sense of sophistication to the overall mood of the poster while the lighter pink grabs attention (but not in a striking way like the purple on the last page). I am a bit worried that my colors overall are too dull, but I am trying to pursue with the colors I chose so far to see if I can make up the “dullness” with scale of text, images, and stroke weight.

Exercise 6: Size Change & Stroke Weights

Personally, I feel like I had the most fun organizing the text. In order for higher contrast, I mainly used the 75 Bold for titles & 55 Roman for most of the other secondary content-related text. I believe the freedom in positioning, size, order, etc. of text allowed me to think of creative ways to organize the text even though it might not be the most visually appealing or easy to understand. As these were my attempts and explorations for the exercise, I hope to establish a clearer path in how to continue towards the final poster after our in-class discussions tomorrow.

11/7/19
Part 3: Image

In class on Thursday (11/7), we posted everyone’s printed exercises on the wall categorized by the four events, with color on one wall and text arrangement on the other. Viewing everyone’s different approaches to color was interesting because the Arts & Lectures group seemed to have similar color palettes while my group, Pittsburgh Shorts Films, had a bit of contrast (due to which series of films we went to). After the discussion about color, I wanted to explore…
-solutions that don’t fill the whole page with color
-rounded/curved shapes > rectangular squares (too common)
-colors that aren’t commonly used (blue background with lighter blue text; unique royal blue color in Caroline’s poster)
-for my teal color: explore more shades of the teal b/c it seems to be the most effective color
-thoughts after Dan’s comment: If there is a shift in physical arrangement of text, do we need another signal of color? double-signal pros & cons
→ how much is “enough” visual cues?
-explore light shift of colors
In addition to color, it was interesting to see different ways each person from each group organize their text hierarchy based on size, alignment, position, stroke weight, linespacing, etc. We mainly talked about the ones that were unique and stood out such as Annalisa’s “Pittsburgh Shorts” being on the side and Elizabeth’s diagonally aligned text. These obviously grabbed our attention because they were the most dramatic in terms of difference from other text arrangements, but we also discussed the conflicts of being too dramatic.

notes from discussions about color & text arrangement

Exercise 7: Image

Before starting to search for random images, I wanted to see the importance and variety of different image being used by posters already in-use. When I looked at the bulletin board in MM, I realized that text stood out to me more than images, except for the poster on the bottom with the Martin Luther King, Jr. picture. The text surrounds his image, which made me assume that the poster would be about something related to him or embracing black culture. The Carnegie Mellon International Film Festival “GET IN VOLVED” poster was also different in terms of using both images and text because the “GET IN VOLVED” was almost submerged with the image in the back. Looking at this bulletin board made me realize that images don’t have to necessarily fill the whole page & that the placement of the image can impact the location and proximity of the text followed.

To begin with, I wanted to look for images that show unity, beauty, fun, inspiration, and time. I used unsplash.com to look for these pictures. When I was first choosing pictures, I didn’t really focus on whether the pictures were horizontal or vertical, and I didn’t think much about where the text should go. I wasn’t sure if I would use the image as a whole like a “background”, or if I would be using it to fill only a part of the page. I just wanted to find pictures that would enhance the overall mood of the event for the poster.

Initial image search compilation

11/8/19

These is a picture of the different artboards I had in my Adobe Illustrator. I tried putting in the images into the tabloid size paper, and found that some worked better in terms of size & resolution than others. I chose the top 3 pictures to apply text into it.

11/9/19

These are 3 pictures that I wanted to try adding text.

I chose the first picture because I related the different shades of coffee as different races; thus, unity. This could be a stretch in the interpretation of the image and was not very helpful in terms of advertisement of the Film Shorts, so I moved to a second image.
The second image was interesting and difficult to work with because of the colors and shadows of the image. There was not much negative space and I had to move all the text to the left side of the picture because there was a bit more room to put the content. After looking at the image with text, the image itself reminded me of the stairs at the beach and the green seemed too strong. The exterior aspect of the image also did not relate to the film shorts so I tried using a third image.
The last image I used was in my opinion the most effective. I wanted to incorporate a sort of witty yet play with the time aspect of these short films. Although each film is short, the series as a whole was a similar duration as watching a movie (~95 minutes). I did this by using an image of time and the blurriness of the minutes make the image almost seem alive.
As seen in the first and last poster, I had some fun with the letter “S”, but I don’t know yet if I’m allowed to do that… gotta talk to Vicki & Sherry about that!
After these poster drafts, I focused on experimenting with the last image.

11/10/19

Iterations with different layouts of text & experimentation with color

Below is a link to the PDF files of each iteration:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1wPbUZLscT_e3uKmXc3_ppYzSpU-w1iV5

Through the process of iterating and constantly making subtle but necessary changes, I found that I really liked my idea of the “S” being shared with both “Pittsburgh” and “Shorts”. I tried different layouts of the main content, and I feel like the exercises we did previously really helped in the organization aspect of hierarchy, clarity, and aesthetic. After making the first five pages, I showed few of my non-design friends what they see first and what they see last. All of them said that they saw the “Pittsburgh Shorts” first, and then it was divided between the actual image and the date of the event. Surprisingly, most of them told me that they would rather know what type of films were playing than the date duration of when the event takes place. For me, I always want to know the date and then the content, but my peers seemed to be the opposite. This made me realize once again that everyone expects and wants different information in terms of priority in a poster. Considering these facts, I experimented with color to highlight different texts that would make some of the information pop out more than the rest. I am still experimenting with which color to use because I am not fixed on how I want the text to be arranged.

11/11/19

Virtual Feedback from Vicky: I couldn’t make it to the office hours over the weekend, so I emailed Vicky, Mason & Sherry about the posters (shown above). I thought it was very helpful because it allowed me to take a step back from my posters and my thoughts about them, and hear feedback from people that have never seen it before.
Below are some questions that Vicky addressed to me:
(1) Which of your chosen images enhance the content and which challenge it? One image in particular makes the content very difficult to access, almost camouflaging any hierarchy you had already established. In your mind is that a good option?

(2) Likewise, does enhancing the S that is similar between Pittsburgh and shorts add any meaning to the content? Or is it just a visual trick to add depth to the page? Good decision?

(3) In many of your iterations, the image and the text fight each other for attention. They are of equal size or value on the page. How can one dominate and one recede? Try some where the image dominates. Try other options with a text dominates and the image is quite small. For example with the Digital clock image: are you able to expand the background? I think that image has a lot of potential. How can you modify the photograph In order for it to work more effectively with the words?

Vicky’s questions allowed me to rethink about my image, text, and layout decisions. In terms of images, I know Vicky was talking about the second poster (the turquoise “beach steps” picture) when she mentioned there is an image that makes the content very difficult to access & almost camouflaging. Honestly, I did not use this image because I thought it was a good idea. In fact, I kind of wanted to test/challenge myself to see if I could make the content and text visible & easy to read even with the bold background. I could have found a solution if I decided to pursue that image, but in terms of time and the amount of work I had to get done to move further with the project, I chose to make versions with different images.
In Q2, I am still debating whether enhancing the S is necessary. I know that it’s not the most important element to have on the page and in fact seems to almost compete with the large scale of the clock image since both are big, bold, and centered. I think I wanted to keep it while making my iterations because it was unique & somewhat clever. I believed that it brought my attention to the title of the event, but I feel like I have to play with the scale of the event title and the image because both seem to stand out too much.
The enhancement of the S leads to Vicky’s third question about text versus image. I agree with Vicky that the digital clock image has a lot of potential, which is why I made the most iterations using that image. I want to continue making more versions with this image and the text. Instead of making subtle changes, I decided to make more dramatic changes, such as changing the image size smaller/full page. I found that it is necessary for me to try versions where image dominates over text & where text dominates over image.

These were the start of my experimentation with the images being bolder than the text. Not sure if allowed, but I also played around with cropping the image & the spaces between each letter in the event title. In this round of iterations, I feel like the posters seem more unified. I will continue making more iterations, but I also have a business test coming up on Wednesday so I wanted to make sure I had time to prepare for that too. Also, I will make versions where text dominates over images & versions where the image fills the whole page. I need to ask Andrew tomorrow in class about “content-aware fill” in Photoshop to make the image full page… After these versions, I plan to try to figure out color for text or if it is even needed at all! Right now, I feel like the monochrome expresses too much seriousness, intensity, and coldness while the actual Pittsburgh Shorts Film series were heartwarming and emotional. Therefore, I am thinking of using warm colors, even if it is not a bright hue.

11/12/19:
In class, we had everyone put up their different versions/iterations of their poster. From there, we each chose our own “best” poster to talk about. When doing this, I realized how my poster did not attract even me compared to the other posters because of its color & text hierarchy. It seemed too quiet and dull. I had the most trouble with the time image. I really wanted to incorporate it well in a witty way, but the boldness & dynamic of the image competed with the text too much. I tried shrinking the image & even making the background full page, but I could not escape the “quiet” and “cold” vibe that the poster showed. After talking to Sherry, I decided to go back to image searching and re-do some of my text hierarchy exercises. I really struggled with using negative space and being ok with having empty spaces… I always seemed to have the instinct to fill the page.

After going back to image searching, I found these three new images. Overall, the colors are brighter and the content is more fun to look at than the rather literal clock image that I used before. However, I realized that the pink balloon image could reveal “baby gender reveal”, “girls’ birthday party”, and more feminine expressions than “fun”, which is what I was aiming for. The last image of the bird kites seemed to have a lot of potential for me. It leaves some space for viewers to think and reflect on the image.

These were my initial experiments of incorporating text with my new images. I decided to follow my intuition regarding the images. Although it was really hard to let go of the clock image, I decided to stick with the blue bird kite image to better embrace my adjectives of inspiration, reminiscent, embracement, unity, etc.

After sticking with this new image, I did not have much time to consider color & text hierarchy on the page. However, I made subtle changes along the way (especially with color) and printed each one out to put it up on the wall and observe from far rather than only working on it digitally. As you can see in the last three posters, I marked up notes of what I had to fix from those three versions and combine it into one, such as switching colors or removing some spaces or reducing the text size.

11/13/19 Final Poster

Final Poster: Overall, I believe my final poster is more successful in grabbing viewer’s attention. I used the pop of orange color from the main bird in the image so that the viewer’s focus can shift towards the center at first glance. By grouping the duration & location of the event to the same orange color, I did this in hopes of indicating that those are the main, general information. At the top, I used a blue color that still pops out but does not compete with the orange red. I debated a lot about keeping that part’s text orange & blue instead of just blue, but I decided to keep it all blue so that viewers can group that information as one, since the shows listed are only from that specific day. In my opinion, I used color as a way of organizing the text hierarchy. I want viewers to see the orange, blue, and the white so they can group the information together. I also really enjoyed how the bird in the middle catches your attention with the orange event title, and then the direction of the bird kite flying upwards leads viewers’ eyes to go to the information about the films.

11/14/19: Final Crit & Last Revisements

In class, we got to put everyone’s poster on the wall and go through each one to see what is effective and ineffective. As a whole, it seemed like everyone could use a bit more tweaks and last adjustments before declaring it as their “final final”. For mine, I decided to rearrange the text and hierarchy so that there is less of a “border-like” outline that my “final” version had & so that there is a clear understanding of the indication of the opening night film series and the Pittsburgh Shorts event as a whole. After some adjustments, below is my FINAL FINAL poster.

I decided to rearrange the date and location of the event towards the bottom. Since I grouped this information in the same color, I felt like it would be nicer to place it more towards each other so that the opening night film series and the Pittsburgh Shorts Film Festival event as a whole could be distinguished clearer.

Overall Reflection: Personally, I struggled a lot with this project. When we started with the exercises, I really enjoyed doing each part separately and finding out what works/doesn’t through iterations. As we got to Part 4 where we had to combine the text with the images, I feel like I struggled the most at that stage for many reasons. I became too attached to my clock image and I realized that my text stroke & hierarchy exercises was not enough for me to apply that well into my poster. I really struggled with leaving negative space on the page and how to relay the content of the event clearly and easily. Honestly, my self-confidence dropped as I was making changes because I seemed to not reach a point where I was fully satisfied. Also, for me personally, this last week was tough because I had to manage my time wisely between my Global Business midterm and figuring out this poster. As hard and challenging as it was, this project taught me A LOT and although my poster may not be perfect, I hope to receive constructive feedback from the guest designers and my classmates tomorrow for our final critique!