Marissa Myhill's Portfolio

42nd Annual Sawdust Art Festival

 

After carefully reading the Art director’s comments and Client’s comments, noting that the design for this assignment would be duplicated for merchandising, I created a relatively eye popping design. I used the repetition of two main colors that were found on the Sawdust Festival’s website: blue and green. This allowed for the ad to be cohesive. The blue and green were relatively homogeneous in nature and allowed for the ad to be further cohesive, in addition a yellow was added to create some contrast as well as tie the present colors together even more. The ad itself is extremely readable, using easy to read fonts as well as having them bolded. By varying between the bold and regular typeface font, it allows for readers to be drawn to specific aspects of the ad as well. The text was also strategically placed not directly on the sun design as to be easier to read. This design appeals to the intended audience because it is creative, appealing to the eye, and informative of the upcoming events. If it didn’t draw the eye, the ad would be in itself ineffective.

 

As I was creating the ad, I changed many aspects of it repeatedly. Originally I thought stripes would be a good option for the piece, eventually I found out that didn’t work for the style I was going for. I then started messing around with the starburst/polygons and ended up created the palm tree and similar starburst. This worked with my idea because the festival not only takes place at Laguna Beach in California but the trees are cohesive with one of the festival’s main colors. Adding the blue starburst as a contrast, I knew I needed to add something more to the piece to fill it and make it really pop. I had toyed with the idea of adding a sun or sun effect but didn’t really try it until the last minute. Eventually I ended up with a large sun that spread its rays over the entire piece. This to me created a very summertime feel as well as added to the creativity of it, it also reminded me of various ads I have seen from back home around solstice time. I also made this sun in a contrasting soft yellow to play off the gradient background and green palm tree. All the fonts are the same as to not make the design look too busy and unorganized, however they differ in size and typeface to add some sense of contrast between the text portions. Overall, the design elements and features I chose satisfied not only the assignment guidelines but met the criteria of both the Art Director and Client for an eye catching and compelling ad that could be duplicated for merchandising.

 

The Red image is the original working image, while the green image is the final image which was submitted for credit.  The change in placement of objects and color of background made an immense difference in the final outcome.