Poster Design Process in Adobe Illustrator (Part 2) - During Halfterm -

During half term i continued to work on my science poster, and after finishing the key graphic and briefly worked on the female drawn graphic i decided to go back and make it look a little neater and a bit more detailed, adding a few assets like the gear ear rings and cog/gear hair clips to add to the steampunk theme. I also added some nails to the female to give her a more feminine and elegant look towards her.

Afterwards i wanted to create a pattern of some sort that I'd use in the background of the actual poster so i created a few different science related silhouettes then made a brush out of it so I'd be able to use it as a repetitive pattern in the background. The reason why i made it was i wanted a cool pattern which helps to add to the poster and re enforces science with the patterns but is subtle and not too strong or over the top so i was thinking i would change the opacity when i would make my poster.

After getting my main assets all ready i then created a A1 sized Illustrator document and then placed the key, and the woman and then began adding a background and border, then adding the science art brush pattern and the typography i was going to use as well.

I decided to add an extra tagline kind of which is '...And unlock the door to the world of science' at the bottom of the poster underneath the 'Apply' for science section which helps to relate to my main tagline 'science is key!' and i think it sounds and works really well with the overall poster.

After doing all this i then thought of the composition of the woman and key again so i could use more of the empty space and i'm now working with it like this. I think it makes the most of the space and stands out and very bold and visually appealing.

I then needed to fade the woman's feet and it was going over the text at the bottom and looked messy so i used the gradient tool and matched the colour to the background and had the gradient close to her feet so her bottom half would fade. This helped to make the poster neater and more tidy.

I then began adding extra little details and assets like the underlines and the gears in the corners of the poster to add more of a steampunk type of border.



After looking back and the patterns i used i was thinking of creating a gradient around it so the outside of the pattern wouldn't just stop but fade into the background so i used the oval gradient and then matched the colour it would fade into with the background colour so it would work how i wanted it and this is the current appearance of the poster.

I continued to experiment with the way i wanted to make my text look through colours and even trying to create a slight 3D look about it. The way i did this was holding Alt on the text and then making the one behind it a darker colour to give a more 3D look. I then used 'Create Outlines' on the back of the text to mold the back of the text more to make it look more 3 dimensional. But i did make it subtle and not too crazy as i still wanted the imagery to be the main focal points.

I also changed a few things with colour on the other type as well as messing around with the brush strokes on some of the assets to see if it looked better. Overall at this point of time i felt proud of my work and was almost done completing it. I'm currently tweaking small details making sure i think its perfect and i'm fully happy with the final outcome.