Project 5: Designing Campaign Systems
(51–261) Communication Fundamentals Design
Intro
This project focuses on the topic of biofuels and aims to present information about it in a way that is more accessible. This semester, I’ve had a lot of technical projects in my other classes where I chose to focus on researching biofuels. A lot of the source material that I used included length scientific journals or official data that was dense to read through. I wanted to create a series of posts that transformed this topic into something everyone could understand, even younger audiences. The goal was not necessarily advocating for the use of biofuels, but providing more information on it.
For the colors, I chose blue since it was associated with credible and and professionalism, but wanted to avoid it feeling to formal so the colors were kept muted. I then chose orange and yellow as accents, partially because they are complementary colours, and also because I knew I had to add something bright and fun to the mix.
Initially I kept the fonts sans serif and simple to keep it simple. That changes later however. I also decided to keep the most of the text left aligned and consistent in terms of formatting. The first two slides that I created are below along with my first attempt at vector drawings.
From first impression, the first slides comes off a bit flat and cold. The header font I chose was thin and had extremely low contrast, making it seem a bit boring. Because of this, I decided to choose a more interesting header font. The header font was changed to Cooper Black (which was thicker and high contrast) to provide the slides with a bit more personality and dimension. There was also a lot more layering added in between the accent lines. My instructor also included that she enjoyed the lines because they felt dynamic and represented energy.
As for the vector drawing, the fire above was extremely detailed and didn’t fit in with the rest of the elements because it was rather sharp compared to the soft and round-ness of the rest. I decided to switch it to a little sapling instead which I thought was still fitting with the theme and friendlier. I added a highlight to it to make it feel softer and rounder which is something I was reminded to keep up in later posts.
The two versions of the first slides are shown below. From first glance, the second version looks so much brighter and visually appealing.
I carried these ideas into the rest of my slides, like continuing the white curved lines of energy. Although I realise now I might have reverted back to sharper drawings for the second slides (but I couldn’t bring myself to change the corn and the tulips). I also wanted to introduce the idea of using white text boxes for text and definitions. The white borders was an attempt to differentiate body text from the introductory slide, as is normally the structure in the papers I read.
The second set of post revolves around a case study of how biofuels were used for a community in Ghana. In here I created a vector drawing of a spoonful of shea butter on the first page, which led to me deciding that all my front slides would have the same elements: one large vector drawing, one title (white Cooper black with dark blue shadow and dark blue Gill sans on top), circular orange and white lines, and one white line to continue dynamic movements. Other elements I continued was the use of white border and white text boxes.
With this post, I focused a lot more on placement of specific elements in relation to each other. For example with the second slide, the initial idea was to keep the text in the horizontal centre and alternate the descriptions. However, it just looked awkward I think because of the asymmetry. I just decided to go with more of a kids’ storybook structure where the text goes on top, followed by illustrations and details. This is also why I wanted to have the labelled drawing and the definitions connected to words that were underlined with a handwriting feel to it.
Somehow the last slide of this second post turned out to be my favourite even though I put the least amount of time and effort into it. I literally just copied the background, border, and placed some text on it. I think it has to do with the spacing between the two bodies of text; it feels comfortable and purposeful. The hierarchy is very straightforward and the text is laid out to be convenient for the reader. Of course, I don’t think I could repeat this for all my slides because it would be too text-heavy and defeat the purpose. The formatting definitely reminds me of another ad or campaign but I can’t quite put my finger on it, let me know if you figure it out lol.
The last post was the least informative and the most “graphically based”? It also has the weakest first slide. The first slide is quite basic, it has all the elements I mentioned earlier but the placement is nothing special. With the second slide, I created the two rocks and the leaf first and blew them up, and it turned out to create quite a nice image so I decreased the size of the text and made them not the focus on the page. The header of this slide was smaller compared to the rest and placed in the corner. The third slide also focused a lot more on the rainbow than the actual text. Someone else had pointed out that the grey text on the third page was hard to read against the blue, so I darkened it a little. I don’t like the two shades of grey in the post but do agree that legibility should come first.
After that I compiled the posts together to make sure that the consistency was still there. This includes the use of the white text boxes, some posts were missing borders, and double checking the font sizes especially on the same post. Oh, there was also missing highlights on the Jatophra fruit that I added into my final submission.
That’s all for now! Thank you to my instructors Amanda Sanchez and Hannah Kim for teaching us and being so incredibly supportive the entire time. Wish you guys the best, keep in touch :D #corngang
