The Rise and Fall of German in Texas Posters (TGDP)

I was tasked with continuing to work on the Texas German Dialect Project retractable posters. These posters had already been in the works, and I had to adjust based on client feedback. The client wanted 3 vertical posters with an icon key. Additionally, the client wanted the dates on the timelines to be proportional to the actual time (for example, if the date is labelled “1930-1934”, it should be clearly indicated that the event took place over that span of time).

Here are the posters that I was given to start with:

Changes I had to make:

Creating Icons

This first thing I had to do was develop a visual key. The client wanted icons that represented 5 different types of events: society, immigration, schools, newspapers, and key event. I used Illustrator to draw icons, staying on brand with the colors given to me.

Redesigning the Posters

Now that I had icons, I could move on to putting the posters themselves together. The main thing I wanted to focus on was how to show the date range. I settled on added a transparent box behind the event description and using arrows to indicate it’s date range.

After using this technique and adding the icons, the posters ended up looking like this:

Second Drafts

After sending my designs to the client, I got feedback to make sure that the events were proportionally distanced from each other and to add photos + captions to the poster.

Project status: Waiting for feedback