The Good & The Bad - What Do Your Eyes Think?

Good Choices = Happy Eyes

This "Wanderlust Yoga Festival" poster, the use of color and images conveys the overall “feel” and “vibe” of the type of festival it will be and how the atmosphere will be. The earth tone colors gives off a comforting and calm appearance and the use of the mountains, trees and large cabin is aesthetically appealing to the eye, again creating a calming, earthy appearance which will appeal to the type of demographic this festival is intended for. They used a sans serif font for the body of the writing on the poster, which makes it easy to read when people are perhaps passing by the poster on the street. The headline is a serif font, which stands out and draws people in. toward the bottom of the poster you will see that there is a silhouette of a pine tree upside down over what looks like a slab of wood, which draws the eye down to where it lists the musicians and events that will take place at this event, and in turn also creates an abstract appearance that draws even more interest. The writing is not too close to the edges and instead is centered toward the center of the page which makes it easier to skim the poster rather than reading far left to far right over and over again.

The “Jo Jahre Haldern Pop Festival” poster immediately upon looking at it, it gives off a dark, spooky, dramatic feel. Most of the graphics and images are black, cream, and gray, except for the vibrant red apple. Without the pop of red color in this poster it would be easy to overlook or pass by. The imagery of the large apple and the person sitting on a slice of apple gives the poster more interest upon looking. The name of the festival is large and at the top and center of the poster, immediately notifying the reader what the poster is for. The last name, “Haldern” is the largest word on the poster indicating to the reader that the last name is well known rather than the full name of the person who the festival is named after. The wheat framing the name of the festival, as well as the wheat in the field which the apple is sitting on, is an early, country, western, touch which indicated the overall feel of the type of music being played at this festival. The use of cream color rather than paper white makes the poster easier to look at, instead of using two extreme opposite colors.

Mountains, stars, trees, and the moon, oh my! By looking at the “Firefly Music Festival” poster, the visuals and simplicity of the poster, makes the reader actually want to be there. It appears desirable. The large hot air balloon with vertical striped trails the eye both up to the sky to see the moon and the mountains, and down to the ground to dray the eye to the name or title of the festival. The tops of the mountains are sharply pointed which works well next to the vertical stripes on the hot air balloon, and it creates the illusion of the hot air balloon rising. The lower half of the poster is mostly all open green space and trees, which decreases any amount of clutter, thus sticking with a simplistic layout. The angling of the tree line to a vanishing point bring the eye in and back, so that all elements are pointing to each other. The use of the sans serif font allows the reader to see clear and understand immediately what the event is about. There are not too many words on the poster rather there are hardly any words on the poster except for the name of the festival.  

This poster immediately screams summertime. The creativity behind the word placement of “Hangout Music Festival” almost brings a little bit of humor to the poster. Imagery of the sunburned girl with tan lines of her bathing suit and name of music festival are relatable to most beach goers who stumble upon this poster. All of the colors that are used are “happy” colors, with the use of pink, yellow, cream, teal, and light blue, together they all resemble a summer time feel which vibrates a feel good tone. The words written on the bikini bottom is a creative way to display the music artists being featured. With the words getting smaller and smaller as you get to the bottom of the poster, it resembles a vanishing point which draws the eye down to read all of the artists. The font usage is not basic and simple, rather is it more of a fun serif font which, visually, will take the reader a little longer to read the poster, but partnered with the use of the colors it makes it easier for the viewer to read and comprehend, almost like they want to, or will enjoy reading the entire poster. The visual in front of the woman wearing the bikini resembles people cheering with their hands up in the air, which draws the eye up and balances out the poster, rather than weighing heavy at the bottom where all the words and information is.

These two posters are the exact same thing only with a different image as the background. Both of them are very appealing, almost as if the designer used a different image background that pertains to where the poster will be hung or perhaps if the music artist was playing at a different location or venue. The simple use of banners and shapes to display the information breaks up the poster into different parts, rather than spitting all the information together in one block. It aids the eye through the entire poster, from top to bottom. The white lettering and background of the shapes makes the poster look clean and simple to read and adjust the eye to. It’s almost exciting to look at due to the use of lines and shapes and different font sizes and the way the fonts are stacked. With the banners being placed on either side of the poster at different heights, and pointing in different directions, it does not give the illusion that the poster is object heavy on one side opposed to the other. The poster is equally weighted and the words do not run to the edge of the page, which creates an easy and attractive concert poster.

Bad Choices = Sad Eyes

“Haunt & Scenic Design”. To put it simply, this poster is a mess. It appears that the designer’s ideas were all over the place and had a difficult time creating something that would be comprehensible. For instance, there are so many different types of fonts being used, and with those many different fonts, there are also so many font colors and effects. The placement of the words is very poor, it appears that the designer placed the words wherever they saw any open space to do so. The color use is dark and the image used appears busy and so detailed that it is difficult to read the writing that is over top of it. There are several random images that either done seem to make sense to what the poster is about, or they are not cohesively placed. There are no clean lines or sensible lines that will lead the eye from one bit of information to another. Everything seems jumbled and it causes the eye to be all over the page and prevents the reader from being able to find something to focus on first.  There is no clear format of the poster what so ever and the font used is not easy to read at all, especially when the font is smaller, it appears blurry and scrunched together. Overall, this poster is awful!

Although this poster is not as busy as the ladder, it still has a poor format as far as word placing, font, color, and image use is concerned. To start, the words go to almost the edge of the page, which aesthetically is not appealing at all. The font usage is generic and almost child like in appearance. There seems to be three different fonts that were used which may be fine in some instances, however the fonts used for this poster are not appealing or attractive to the eye. At the very bottom of the page there is a font and a banner with colors that do not match anything in the poster and appears random. The rest of the font color is neon and bright, which can catch attention, but there are far better and cleaner ways to catch a reader’s attention. Without seeing the word “wrestling” the first thought the viewer would have, judging by the background image, would be that this poster is for a body building competition or something along the lines of that. The image usage is very poor and the designer could have used something more appealing and relevant to the event. Also the image seems a bit pixeley. Overall the look of this poster is very immature and appears almost like a middle school student could have created this.

The “Bling Event” poster seems to have some structure but its rather poor. First, all of the words go to the edge of the paper, and because there is so many words and information it instantly makes this poster overwhelming to look at. The thick black banner at the top of the page is an eye sore and almost looks to be yelling at the reader. There is a outer glow on all of the words, some thicker than others, as well as different sized fonts. The outer glow makes it difficult to read or skim through the poster and crates a busy effect around the information. The snowflakes at the top of the page are falling behind the wording also which makes it difficult to read the word “Bling”, which is written in a diamond effect font. Skimming down toward the middle and bottom of the poster, there is a thicker outer glow where it gives information about a “FREE engagement portrait session” and just below that there is no outer glow around the words that tell the important information like, the cost, location, time, name of facility, etc. All of the most important is overshadowed by all of the other random information surrounding it. The use of a light blue background and white outer glow on the fonts, and the white snowflakes makes everything look like it’s fading in together. The only things that seem to boldly stand out is the man’s tuxedo and the thick block banners with the sponsors names. The dancing man and woman graphic is confusing because at first glance it looks like a poster to a high school winter formal rather than a bridal showcase. However the only balance there is within this poster is the dancing couple and the snowflakes, and possibly the black banner at the very top and the banner of sponsors at the very bottom.

The “Activesg Launch & Open House 2014” poster at first glance looks like an art event rather than a “Floorball EXPO”, due to the graphic of the rainbow colored paint blotches and, rainbow colored stars.  The white lettering over the rainbow paint creates reading difficulty because the only thing separating the words from the paint, and the white background behind that, is the slight drop shadow behind the words. By looking at this poster it seems that it would instantly give the viewer “readers-anxiety” due to the busy nature of this poster. The white wording in the multi colored stars makes it difficult to read not only because the font is white, but it is small lettering too; in order to really read the words in the stars the reader has to squint or stare for a few moments. There are way too many colors happening on this page, including the color of the fonts. The use of outer glow, outline, and inner glow in all the words in lower half of the poster makes it extremely difficult to read. The only “easy-to-read” part of the poster is, nothing!  The logo or sponsor of the event is placed in the center of the poster, where it should really have been placed at the bottom of the poster. The poster hardly gives the vital information about the event and only focuses on the events that are happening, and the people who are sponsoring the event. This poster is busy, difficult to read, and does not provide any important information pertaining to the event.

At first glance of this poster, there couldn’t be one person that would think that this is for a mountain biking event. Immediately this poster looks like it could be for a little girl’s birthday party, or an advertisement for the Candy Land game. There are way too many colors happening on this poster, including the font. The colored outer glow on top of the colored font hurts the eyes rather than making it easy to read and understand. The use of visuals is extremely poor. The unicorns do not resemble anything having to do with mountain biking and almost makes this event look like a joke. This poster is hard to take seriously. The important information for this event is typed in bulky, thick, fat font and is colored dark purple that is angled on top of 3 different colors, which causes the eye to have to readjust every time the words are being read over a different color. The vertical rainbow colored lines as the background of the entire poster make it that more difficult to look at, aside from the rainbow colored unicorns and the angled multi colored fonts. Initially to the viewer of this poster, it would seem like it would be a struggle to look at, let alone read. This designer should be fired!