USC vs Cal – Sierra Lodge Football Poster – Part 2
Previously, I talked about my efforts in making a particularly difficult component (water on people) look good. In this post, I’m going to speed through the other areas of the poster.
The base elements
As usual, much time was spent in looking for good stock photography. Perusing Flickr, it wasn’t long before I spotted the USC football player. Once I saw it — even in the thumbnails — I knew that was it. Beautiful lighting with a dark background. Menacing. In short: amazing. Finding a similar photo for the Cal Bears was another story. In the end, I settled for the one above. Even though the time of day didn’t match, the most important thing is making sure that the light source is similar. If you look at the two photographs above, you’ll notice that the light seems to be coming from “behind the camera” and to the left.
Compositing
In the rough poster above, I’ve masked the players, adjusted their levels slightly, and slapped on a cloudy background. Since the light source is similar, it’s more believable that the two of them were taken in the same shot (except the USC player is humungous compared to the Cal). Unfortunately, notice that the USC dude is cut off on the bottom. The cheap and easy way to solve this problem is to simply allow him to dissolve into the background. However, that method is very difficult to pull off professionally; that trick is used so many times that it’s become rather amateurish. The solution I chose is to incorporate typography as an element within the poster.
Typography: an element, not an afterthought
I still notice many designers using typography as an afterthought. They do their basic designs with their photo elements and brushes, but when it’s time to enter in text, they seem to slap it on rather than treating them as elements. In the step shown above, I’ve used the text treatment to cover up the USC player without it looking awkward. However, the text is more than mere fig leaves; words were carefully chosen, placement and layout were thought out, and font-families hand-picked (Aachen and Avant Garde Bk). In other words, don’t treat the text as second-rate citizens. They’re the elements that communicate to the audience; without the text, it’s just a meaningless poster. Learn more about typography. Use them well.
Blue and gold used here goes without saying.
Grids
I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying this over and over again. Grids are your friends. Back in the day, designers would have to manually draw out their grids with pencils and rulers. (Even further back, they would have to draw out their fonts!) Nowadays, it’s as simple as hitting apple+’.
There’s no excuse to be lazy. Use grids (and guides).
Final poster design can be viewed here.
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Tagged as process + Categorized as Design