Poster design

As the imagery for the poster had to be paper folded I decided to do some origami of a swan, I thought this would relate nicely to designing a poster for an exhibition at the naturall history museum.

To get some inspiration I looked at bird related posters done for the natural history museum exhibitions and I came across this (see image bellow) which I really like, I think it has a nice vintage feel to it and I hope to create something similar with my design but making it more contemporary.


. 

Typeface

I wanted to use a typeface which the natural history museum would approve of therefore I did some research into what typeface they use on their website and other publications. I found out that this was 'relay'

Relay reaches back to the middle of the last century for inspiration. In England, Edward Johnston and Eric Gill applied humanist proportions and shapes to the geometric sanserif and established a trend within European art deco. In the United States, CH Griffth and W.A. Dwiggins achieved a similar effect with Metro, influencing American lettering from the diner to the comic book. Cyrus Highsmith, a lifelong fan of the comics, has designed a spirited new series within this American tradition.

However I don't have relay on my laptop therefore I decided to use PT Sans as it is very similar to the typeface used for the Natural history museum logo yet it is thinner in weight.





I took the image of the swan origami I had done and removed the background from it so that it was more usable.






To create a colour palette for my poster I found an image of a real swan and swatched the three main colours of it: orange, white and black.



As a lot of the natural history museum posters I had looked at were very light in colour I wanted to use black as my main colour to contrast this.



I decidec to create a tick black frame around my poster and fill the centre of it with a shade of orange swatched from the swans beak to represent this feature of the bird.



When I added my swan onto this it looked a bit lost therefore I decided to repeat the swan multiple times to add more excitement.



I chose to have the popping out over the frame as this looked better visually, it makes the swans look more free and like they are swimming away rather than trapped behind the frame.



I then added in the NHM logo which was already in its own black square, I liked the added angle this gave the frame therefore I decided to use this as a design feature rather than trying to get rid of it.



I then added the same 'treasures' caption that was on the poster from the NHM that I had originally liked. I chose to place it in line with the NHM logo but in the opposite corner.



I then tried to add a date onto the design however I think this weakens the overall look therefore I have decided that the only text to feature will be 'treasures' and the logo.

Here is my final design on a blue/green background to make it pop