This week’s and last week’s focus has been STA posters as we finished up the cut outs. I began finalizing my portion of the poster, and today I finally submitted the final files. I will show my process below of months worth of progress.
I was tasked with designing the poster for the classroom support STAs inspired by the “Guess Who?” board game. I decided to go straight into Illustrator and start designing.
Inspiration and references
First prototype. Students shown are placed as placeholders, they are not current classroom support STAs
My art director and I were happy with what I produced, however this was not the initial idea for the design. They wanted the game board to be displayed with the students as the game pieces. So, I recycled what I could (such as the title and background) and scrapped what I didn’t need to start a new version.
In hindsight, it was not a good idea for me to immediately start in Illustrator without sketching up a few different concepts and confirming with my director. In future projects, I will always produce several concept sketches before moving on to more details.
Second version
I liked the playfulness this version gave with the angled board and varying game pieces, I feel like it gave it a more natural feel. Unfortunately, this would not work for this group of STAs since there were between 15-20 students. So again, I recycled what I could and made another version.
Third version
I angled the board to face more forward and added several more game pieces. We were getting closer to where we wanted this poster to be. I tried to keep the playfulness and natural feel to the board, however I could not figure out how to line up the game pieces properly while using Illustrators 3D and bevel tool. So, for one last time, it was back to editing.
Final reference photo
Final design
We finally decided on changing the board to face head on. It would make organization and unifying much easier rather than worrying about getting an accurate perspective. Since I had to redo many things in this project, I’ve learned to keep designs simple until there has been confirmation to move on. It was a lot of repetative work, but I’m satisfied with the end result.