'Not Your Mother's Postcard'

Whats so significant about postcards anyway?

The postcard project is an essential exercise in design communication because it is the only project in which the designer is allowed total freedom to design a piece of work that is solely about them. There is no, “tailoring the postcard to reflect a company, business, or random individual”, it is completely about the designer, the colors, the font, the images, graphics, etc. By having the freedom to create a postcard that is only about the designer helps to enhance the freedom of creativity, which then allows for great work to be done.

In my postcard I used earth tones, as you might already notice from my past blog posts and descriptions of design, I am a sucker for earth tones. I am not an obnoxious, loud, or “in-your-face” kind of person, therefore bright neon, or fluffy girly colors such as pastel pinks, purples, and neon yellows, greens, blues, and pinks, would be a poor representation of my personality. I enjoy subdued, calming, “earthy” colors it is a true reflection of who I am. For instance I am constantly outdoors and my vacations usually are consumed of doing things outdoors whether it be camping, hiking, or kayaking. And I feel that the postcard is a clear reflection of that.

The font choices were difficult for me, I am picky with my fonts, as now looking back on the project, I’m sure there were other fonts that would have worked a lot better with this postcard. But nevertheless, I decided to go with s sans serif font for my larger words, like my name and my quote. By using the sans serif font for my larger words it makes it easy to read and initially reflects my laid back personality. Where as serif fonts tend to reflect a serious and more structured personality, which is why I used that for my body text. The appearance of using both types of serif fonts creates a balance between the two and clearly separates the main points from the body copy.

Lately I have been obsessed with the triangle shapes and clean lines. This is why I decided to create a graphic made of multiple triangles, and used both solid and dotted lines around the boarder of my postcard.

The image of the world inside the circle with a quote typed over top, reflects my desire to travel the world (wow, what a cliché), but really! It also reflects my desire for opportunity, knowledge, and understanding, through travelling we learn to understand more than just our own social norms. The image of myself that I used was taken in Colorado a year and a half ago, in the Garden of the Gods. In the photograph I am overlooking the entire city of Colorado Springs, I felt on top of the world (yes pun intended), and because that’s how I felt, I though that it was only appropriate to actually place this image of myself on top of the world.

As for my postcard pertaining to the design hierarchy, I believe that I fulfilled the creativity criteria by placing the image of the world into a text circle, and using my image over top as a metaphor for “being on top of the world”. I also think that the placement of my intertwined triangle graphic was placed appropriately, which created balance between each side of the postcard.  I also fulfilled the usability criteria. Although I feel it met creativity standards, I also feel that this was a simple enough layout that is forgiving and easy to design. I believe that I could have increased my level of proficiency, perhaps being slightly more detail oriented to reflect a level of higher proficiency and professionalism. Although I believe my postcard could also reflect a stable and consistent design, and it meets the basic needs of the project, I do not feel that the postcard was of low or little to no value.

This postcard is well balanced in terms of image and word placement. The size of the font types work cohesively together and do not over power one over the other. Through the body text is small, there is enough text so that it does not get lost behind the large text of my name and quote.