Project 3 Synopsis

After the Dadaism project, I definitely found myself eager to stay in "historical mode" for a while and this project was, luckily, a way for me to continue that. I love history, and I love referencing it in my art and designs whenever it fits, so I knew from the beginning that I wanted to try a classical, traditional design style for this project. This is what led me to choose Garamond Premier Pro as my typeface: I knew that Garamond had a long, rich history--and I also simply like how it looks--so narrowing my selection of current revivals of historical typefaces down was fairly simple.

The reading on grids was very helpful when I started to set up the proportions of my brochure. I initially went with the very traditional 9x9 grid, but after guidance from Prof. Fender I decided to go with a modified 13x13 grid... this allowed me to retain the look and feel that I wanted while giving me ample room to work with text. There was initially a lot of disconnect between my poster and brochure designs... I intended for the brochure to showcase Garamond as it was originally designed (for body copy) and for the poster to show the progression of Garamond into the modern, multi-use face of today. The only element that really remains from that original poster design is the sketchy, hand-drawn letters that I was intent on using from the beginning. They became the uniting factor between the poster and brochure and I think they are a successful design element. I certainly got a lot of interested questions from my classmates about how I created them, followed by compliments on the idea, and that was encouraging!

Overall I'm very pleased with how the finished poster and brochure look, feel, and work together. I think the choice of cream paper was a good move for me, and I love how thick and rich the ink looks printed on it. I also love how the red color shows up... I was iffy about it when I saw it on regular white paper, but I think it works so well with the cream and I'm very happy with it now. I think there is a strong unity between the two project pieces and that they work well as a promotional set for the typeface. After living with them for a few days, I do see a few things that I may choose to tweak in the future, but I am content with how they both turned out and I'm glad I made the design choices that I did.