Avatar Risograph Poster Design__Group Project

Introduction

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In this group project, employing different medias including painting, detail drawing, photographics and photomontage, each group member created a poster art with avatars and words inspired by certain art styles. The posters were created for the Halloween Dog Parade happened at East River Park located at East Village. The media I decided to work with in the group is photomontage with which I designed a background from paper collages out of the silhouette of East River Bridge. Inspired by Art Deco, I filled the background will this geometric, circular textured paper. Through thumbnail sketches, I decided to personify the dog avatar by applying funny costumes. Due to the iteration of the artwork style. 

 

 

Fonts

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The follows are the considered fonts characterized by Art Deco Style. As my group selected the final font, we thought about the factors that whether the font would be readable and interest the audience. 

 

Inspiration 

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The BMW poster is the inspiration of our color choice which enhanced the unity of our posters as a collection. The colors also perfectly applies a feeling of Art Deco for our designs. The images that inspire our collection are photos from the dogs’ parade. Inspired by the accessories like glasses and hat dogs wore, we developed the idea of applying personification to the dog figures on our posters. 

 

 

Digital Development 

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Placing one photo I took from the Dog Parade event, I made a dog avatar through Illustrator and added to the background that was changed to black and white. In Illustrator, I created a clown-costume collar with curvy lines. 

 

 

Readying to Print 

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In the file I created for readying the digital printing, I created three layers titled “cornflower”, “metallic gold” and “black”. 

 

Process of Risograph Printing

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First attempt of printing through the channels:

In the first attempt printed earlier, my group tried printing through the channels with Magenta, Cyan and Yellow. However, the fonts were too dark to be seen and the prints have a bit of yellow that was obvious to be seen. Therefore, we changed the method to have one single color for each layer and reprinted the poster. 

 

 

Second Attempt of printing through created layers: 

In Photoshop, we used Magic Wand to extract the elements with the same color in our original designs. The colors we used to unify all the pieces are cornflower, metallic gold and black. 

 

Digital Poster of the Collection

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The other elements my group designed to unifying the pieces are a touch of blue splatter of paints on every poster. The color palette maintains the same in every post. Besides, the application geometric shapes and the same fonts is designed not only to unify the pieces but also to give a sense of Art Deco style. Last but not least, the use of negative space in every post is equivalent and balanced. 

 

Risograph Pints of the Collection

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Reflection

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With the practice of this project, I got more familiar with the use of the risograph printer which can create a different texture and feeling to the designs that other printers cannot do. Besides, working as group is also a fresh experience to me. Communication on ideas with others, coordination to make four pieces into a unified collection and, most importantly, the team spirit of doing my best to not affect others’ efforts are what I acquired from this group project.

Reflection questions I will raise for myself:

• What can be improved on the efficiency of the teamwork?
• Through the experience, what can be done or evaluated to make designs like a collection in a group project?
• How can the Art Deco Style be applied to other designs in the future?