Hope For Our Students

 

My poster design was for the organization Hope Austin. Hope Austin is centered in Austin, Texas and strives to make sure students in low-income families have meals to take home on the weekends. 

Throughout this process, I have learned how to attract the viewer's attention and also learned the importance of "less is more." When we first started this unit and were reading Golombisky and the design principles, I was quite surprised about a few things listed. For example, I didn't originally think about how centering everything and using bullet points could look bad. 

However, the longer I read and viewed examples of Trinity's posters in class, I was able to understand what a clear, easy to read poster was compared to one that does not have a clear focus. Focal point and eye flow was one of the most important things I tried to work on in my poster. I was eager to make sure I had the viewers attention and they were able to understand the points I was trying to make. 

I am hoping the viewers' eyes will first direct to the circle in the center, that inside states Hope Austin. At a first glance, the organization's name can seem very simple, however I believe it has an emotional tie to it. Throughout Austin, too many students are left hungry. By having enough volunteers to help donate food/money and help bag meals, our city is in "hope" we will continue to grow in number of students and schools that will have food when they head home for the day. My reasoning behind the colors green and purple is because these are Hope Austin's colors and I wanted to make it as realistic to what Hope Austin would create.

From a creator's perspective, I have more value for even little details in my poster. For example, my original poster had the time and location at the top right corner and it made it a little difficult to read for viewers. It was also important that I changed the placement of these two things so that I could combine this information with the date. At the bottom of my poster, I also had a description of what the organization consists of and a link of where to learn more. 

However, these two pieces of information were not horizontally aligned and looked unorganized. By these little changes, I already saw massive improvements in my poster. In the beginning of this process, I thought by adding more details, photos and color would make the poster look more successful, but looking at it from a consumer point of view, it makes sense why "less is more." Consumers most of the time are just having a quick glance and so it is important to make it easy to read and simple. That is what I wanted to incorporate for my poster.  

Although I believe my edits from my draft to my final poster made a big difference, one thing I believe I could have worked more on is modifying the focal point. While I believe the focal point is the Hope Austin circle, viewers may direct their eyes towards the photo of bags full of food. So if I was to work on it again, I probably would have played more with these two key items and see how to better implement them onto my poster so that there is one clear eye flow.