Project 2: Visual hierarchy
Pittsburgh Art & Lectures has various lecture series and among one of them is the New & Noted program which brings authors that are touring Pittsburgh to talk about their newly released book as well as answer questions and sign the audience’s book.
Pittsburgh art and lectures 9/5
On Thursday, I visited the Carnegie Library Lecture Hall to listen to the lecture by the author of the book called Hungry: Eating, Road-Tripping, and Risking It All with the Greatest Chef in the World. The book itself is adventurous and full of joy as it is about the author traveling with René Redzepi, one of the most notable chefs in the word. It is a rather breezy read yet descriptive. The lecture was very engaging as the people there were attentive and willing to find out more about the book as well as the speakers.
The lecture was overall very inspirational as I only associated this book to be related with cooking but it was actually so much more. It helped me to take a step back and look at things in a different way and enjoy the freedom.
Some memorable quotes/ paraphrases from the lecture were:
- “Every action serves a purpose”
- Unity of mind to focus on the mind and body”
- “The simplest things are often the hardest to accomplish”
Afterwards we talked to one of the coordinators and were able to know more about the Pittsburgh Art and lectures in general and some things we found out were:
- People of various backgrounds come to give lectures
- The demographic of each event varies as it depends on who the speaker is (e.g. demographic today was mostly elders)
- Number of people that come changes as well (e.g. Jonathan van Ness lecture tickets sold out in a couple of days)
- Events are usually biweekly
Some prominent words that describe this place and the lecture series is:
- Intellectual
- Inspirational
- Knowledgeable
- Curious
- Relaxing
9/8 Type exercises
Stroke Weights:
By playing around with the different stroke weights helped me realize the effect that weight contrast has on viewing the poster. The higher the contrast between stroke weights the easier it was to spot out the bolded information which made it easier to navigate the page.
Line Spacing:
I started with separating the information by each event then by time and event and lastly, time, the title of the book, and speaker. I noticed that the first option looks more cohesive, and the ones more towards the right start to get disjointed.
1 Flush Margin:
I first started with aligning the dates together and the rest of the event information together. I find this option to be the most effective as it is easy to spot out the dates and feels more connected. As I increased the indentation for the groups of information I found it more difficult to navigate through the text. I originally thought by separating the information more with indentations it would be easier to find information but it was actually more difficult as the composition seems to be at disarray.
2 Flush Margins:
The same thing happened with the 2 flush margins as well. The composition seems more busy and disjointed with the increase in identification and variation
Color & everything before
I created this color palette based on what colors reminded me of the words (knowledgable, curious, inspirational).
I used different shades of blue to create a sense of hierarchy using a monochromatic color scheme.
Experimenting with color:
In order to further emphasize the importance of the title of the address I used rectangular shapes.
Size change and stroke weight
9/11 Color and scale lecture
9/14–15 Revisiting Scale & Color and putting images in poster
I used the basis of these two layouts to further develop my layout for the poster.
I started with textures as they have an artistic aspect to them as well and I edited this one to a darker blue which represents intelligence with a bold orange font which represents humanism.
However, it was too symbolic and the texture served more as a pattern/ background than a prominent element in this poster.
As I was reformatting my iterations, I realized that highlighting the title fo the books was not as effective as these lectures are more focused on the speaker itself. Even on the website the focus is not on the title of the book that these authors released but rather just on the authors themselves. Additionally, I remember during the Jeff Gordinier lecture that the speakers did not just talk about the book but also on the speaker’s personal life as well as the life of the guest’s speakers.
I used these newly created layouts for the posters and moved around some parts to fit the image accordingly.
By changing the hierarchy in the text, I was able to know specifically what type of images that I wanted to incorporate inside the poster. Before, I was more focused on the overall atmosphere of the place and the fact that they are lecturers they are rather then focusing on the versatility and individuality each person portrays.
Abstract approach:
My main focus for these images was on how the audience enters and exits the speaker’s world in terms of a lecture.
I found this image to be very effective in essentially navigating through the page as the zig zag motion of the stairs leads the reader’s eye towards the title, then the body text.
Despite the image itself being captivating, again there is not a lot of negative space in the image. Therefore, I played around with the alignment and spacing of the body text.
For this iteration, like some of my previous iterations I cropped the image and added the body text at the top but it disrupts the balance as the top sector is very plain compared to the vibrant image of the staircase.
Likewise, this pathway also uses visual cues to the navigate through the page and the path serves as a gateway toward’s the speaker’s story . about their life.
Traditional / Literal approach:
Since these lectures are focused on the arts I used different types of textures that represent art.
I really wanted to use this image as the light was captivating just how the lectures are intended to be as well.
But, it was difficult to make the text be more visible as there is a lot going on in the image itself as well.
Still wanting to make use of this image I resorted to play with the negative space in order to make the text more visible
For some contrast/ variety I used an image of books flying everywhere as books are more of a literal representation of lectures as the rest of my images were more of an abstract approach.
There is a lot happening in these images and not a lot of negative space.
Despite the body text being fairly small the text only added onto the business of the image and was hard to read the context.
For this iteration I cropped some of it and again used negative space to put the body text in to make it easier to navigate and read. However, it disorients the balance in the page as the part with the image is very busy while in contrast the white space with the body text looks very empty.
9/17: Image hierarchy critique
- Revisions :
- add description about type of lecture
- identity subtitle by making it smaller
- Think about whether want Pittsburgh art lectures to come forward or new noted
- fix spacing
- put into 6 column grid structure for red one
- add strong complimentary color for red image
- align image with the pole or move the image down
- make hungry more smaller’
Although the atmosphere and theme of these lectures seems intellectual and knowledgable this program is about touring authors with newly released titles.
After making a couple more iterations with Pittsburgh Arts and Lectures, I decided to use New Notes as the title instead of Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures as changing the hierarchy of the title fit my focus on the people more as they are participating in this specific lecture series.
To give further contrast I used orange and yellow for some of the text as they are complimentary colors.
After deciding . to stick with New and Noted I played around with the placement and alignment of the body text. When creating them on my computer I was pretty satisfied with the overall format of these poster iterations. However, once I printed them out these iterations compared to the orange staircase ones seemed empty and lacking in terms of strong impact. It did not grab my attention as much as the orange staircase poster and therefore I decided to stick with that image for my future iterations.
Peer critique
I resumed to make more iterations based on the revisions suggested during the critique. After printing them fellow peers helped critique these iterations as I had a hard time choosing which image to focus on for my final poster and some suggestions:
- Focus on the orange staircase as more unique
- Make text stand out more: add more negative space by photoshopping image
New Iterations:
Since the image for the orange staircase was not cropped I photoshopped it by adding onto the stairs going in the upwards direction as well as lowered the brightness and saturation to reduce the attention going towards the image.
Then I experimented with the placement of the stairs inside a 12 column grid structure. The one on the left has the staircase take up 2/3 of the space and the image on take up 7/12.
After printing the images out I have come to the conclusion that the poster with the staircase taking up 2/3 of the space to even out the balance between the text and image.
I tested out more different colors to see which color would give the right amount of contrast and help create hierarchy particularly in the body text.
Despite trying several variations, I decided to print this poster out , which had mainly one color for the entire body text for the final critique as I thought it helped created balance between the image and text which still being legible.
9/19 Final poster critique
The general response about my poster was that the image fits very well with the context of the Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures and is bold that it is easy to spot even from far away. However there were several revisions to be made before the submission:
- The text hierarchy is unclear
- Title could be bigger, play around with placement of the title as well.
Final revision
Instead of editing the format of the body text directly onto the poster, I made several variations on the same page so it is easier to compare and see which one is the most clear and effective in terms of legibility.
Then I proceeded to use the two formats on the bottom right of the page and decided to stick with the iteration on the left as having the date in the middle was confusing.
