Poster Design

Analysing Posters

Advertising the production is essential as this obviously is the way any company can show their creative work to the public and make a good profit depending on how successful the advertising was. Also, without this, students will not be aware I have researched images of posters from the internet as this will help me design my own version. First of all, it was important to recognise the codes and conventions for poster design. Click on the image for a larger view:

Looking at the posters I researched I found many similarities. For example, the colours that frequently appeared were black, green and red. These are powerful colours which show relevance to the story line as Little Shop of Horrors contains red for blood, green for the plant and black for the dingy lifestyle. Therefore, I have decided that I must include these colours for a greater effect. As well as this, the typography font used in most posters are spooky looking with dripping effect. I think this is great because it is eye catching to read. The information must be organised into sections and the layout of the image and text should be clear and balanced. Some colours such as yellow may be difficult to read unless placed on a darker background. Therefore it is important to remember to pick colours which complement each other. Because the performance will be in school including students as actors we have decided it would be most suitable as students and their families to be target audiene. To persuade people to come see the performance posters must look relevant to the target audience. These posters will be stuck all over the school building to attract as many viewers as possible.

Copyright Considerations:

It is important to have permission from the person who originally owns the script to reproduce their work. Companies can be sued for a lot of money if they copyed someone else’s work without permission.  As the performance will be to members of the public underneath the poster I will include a copyright attachment. 

Poster design ideas:

These are typography examples that i produced experimenting with paint and pastels to see which font and colour i prefer and which style will be considered whilst making my poster. 

I drew two sketches of what the final poster can look like. I like the first idea because it portrays the poverty backstreet in 1950 with the brick background. It also includes musical notes to show it is a musical with some of the characters who look scared and screechy as they appear to look at the giant plant. The information is positioned at the bottom as school students are most persuaded visually by looking at a larger scale image which can hook their interest. However, if I was to develop this by adding colour it may look too overcrowded because there is a clash of too many images.
In the second drawing the main prop of the performance is the plant therefore it is positioned in the centre looking frightful. Surrounded by it is the 1950 vintage floral wallpaper which will be slightly torn apart to show cheap maintained in that time period. The readers will be able to view the information positioned in the bottom. To develop this design I would create the title with a shadow effect as this was a popular feature as I researched posters for Little Shop of Horrors. In addition, people will be aware that this musical is quite tense. Also, as the main key is not to bore of the young teenage audience with too much text I can add short and snappy phrases to hook them to watch the performance. As well as this the use of relevant colours that will stand out which will make the performance a must see and excitable.

This is the poster of my final design which includes aspects of my research. This includes, the balanced layout, copyright consideration and the effective style. As I was inspired by the shadow spooky font I like this as it represents horror with the red unsteady letters. The picture of Audrey the plant is presented in the centre of the poster which looks sharp and scary. Surrounded by the image are short phrases as I have written to communicate in the way which teenagers can feel comfortable reading by demonstrating it is a must see performance. As the text are all coloured differently I decided that the main background should be black because it will highlight the text but also shows there will be a dark side to this horror performance. If I was to re design the poster I would create a more creative layout, maybe the shape of the poster could be the plant and also have photo shopped images which looks cool and appealing to the target audience.