The objective of this exercise was to create colour visual for three museum posters, and then prepare finished artwork for at least one of them. Why three? Because I also had to attract a different age group for each poster:
Children aged 5-9
Teenagers aged 13-16
A general adult audience.
To do research we took a couple of trips as a family to the Historic Dockyard in Portsmouth. There are a few different attractions/museums there, so there were lots of potential options. Unfortunately, with a 6-year-old in tow stopping to do any sketches on site was nigh-on impossible, so I opted for photos. My son's excursion stamina (or lack thereof) also meant I didn't get a chance to see all the exhibits, which limited my options a little.
Once home I organised my photos into the three categories, and studied them for inspiration and ideas.
Adults
The photos curated for adults involved a lot of content from HMS Warrior - my wife and I loved the ship and it was so pleasantly surprising. It felt old yet modern at the same time.
Kids
The Dockyards had just started a special exhibition of Horrible Histories: Pirates. What I also discovered whilst I was there was the tradition of submarine crews to adopt the Jolly Roger flag as a representation of their wartime exploits, and to reflect their role as the killers of the sea. This game me some interesting thoughts about how I could combine that notion for children who might be more used to the swashbuckling reputation of the pirate character.
Teens
For the teen section, I tried to bring together images that reflected aspects of adventure, daring and hands-on action. The Action Station interactive exhibit was a great place for teens, especially those who might be thinking of joining the naval forces. It gave them a chance to walk in the shoes of the men and women who are in service today. I also included a comic strip from the submarine museum which emulated the comics of the day which informed and celebrated the actions of those at war for teenagers back in Britain.
Visual Approach
When deciding what visual approach to take for the posters I considered how to tie them together My idea was to use the same palette for each of the designs, and then use the official branding to pull them together as a family.
I had also considered how I could have used typography and layout to make them all identifiable as from the same place, but as I started to explore thumbnails for each age group, I realised I wanted to explore the character of each poster in its own context, and so did not want to be limited by the constraints of typography or design cues.
I made sure to experiment with at least three thumbnails for each category, and really challenge myself to not get too obsessed with one idea and try to think of alternatives. When selecting which ones to take forward, I struggled. There were some options which I felt were very strong compositionally, but I didn't feel that I had the technical capability to execute the idea. I especially felt this for the teens category, where I really wanted to choose the option of teens commanding a submarine, done in a way that emulated British propaganda posters from World War 2.
I made my final selections, and then I processed to create some coloured visuals electronically, so I could play around with the colour palette between the three visuals more easily. I also found that doing this during my last assignment was very useful, and allowed me to not feel guilty when being more free and loose.
My favourite option to take forward was the adult poster of the pistol rack. I noticed this when I was aboard HMS Warrior, and it really symbolised the duality that really made me enjoy the ship and its exhibits. The ship embodies a transition from the old, romantic idea of ships to the modern warship we recognise today. The pistol racks are near each gunport, ready for the crew to defend against enemy boarding actions. And yet they are stocked with revolvers which would not look out of place today.
The unique perspective of viewing the rack from above magnified the ship-shape order of everything on board, but also had a wonderful geometric quality to it. From a distance it would also be easy to mistake the shapes for a ship's wheel. I didn't mind this - people could still identify it as nautical, and it did look quite similar in that regards to the ships wheels. I liked the idea that someone could make that mistake, visit the ship and see the gun racks just as I did and have a little "lightbulb" moment - like it was our little secret.
To aid in the precision and accuracy of the actual subject, I decided to use vector illustrations for the final render.
Top Left:
This was my original attempt. I tried to get some clean shapes and geometry. However I was not sure about the amount of space and lack of definition. I showed it to other OCA students on the Visual Communications Discord server, and some liked the clean lines, whilst others felt (as I had also expressed) that it needed a sense of texture and/or depth. I also noticed I had missed out the metal ring that the revolvers rested on.
Top Right:
I rectified the missing metal resting ring, and then looked to address the space I felt in the previous image by filling in the space reserved for text, so I could see the image in its context. It definitely improved the situation but I felt there was a lot missing. The image was "good enough" for the exercise, so I decided to leave it for a few days and review things later.
Bottom Left:
Coming back to it later, I decided to message around and experiment with how to use masking, textures and pixel shading with vector graphics. I also fell out of love with the title font choice - it seemed too safe, prim proper. A bit too "Horatio Hornblower"! So I decided to try something a little rougher, but still the feel of period text. It was definitely more successful than the first option, but still I thought I could push it more.
The textures really worked well, and I really enjoyed experimenting with textures and half-tone masks to create a sense of order and disorder. I was able to find the official logo of Portsmouth Historic Dockyards, and prepare it so it had a transparent background that would work on the poster. I was conscious about copyright when doing this, but deemed it would full under the purview of educational use.
Bottom Right:
I played with the darkness of the background and added/removed colour and texture to see what would work best, I ended up coming back close to the first alternate. I swapped the font for another option, but it still wasn't working for me. I decided to try and embrace HMS Warrior's identity as a bridge between an old world and a new world. How could I do that with a modern context? So I embraced the industrial feel I had been developing with the texture, and applied that to the font too.
Final Render
I changed the shading from being radial based around the hub, to a linear one. Making it darker at the bottom had two advantages - it was easier to darken the text of advert and logo, making it more powerful, contrasted and useful at a distance as a poster. At the top I opted for a more modern-looking font, but one that could have been used in propaganda posters of the time.
Overall I am really proud of this piece and I am really pleased with what I have learned. Not only from the point of view of increasing my knowledge and skills in digital vector illustration, but I am really pleased with how I pushed and continued to refine the image. Stepping away from a piece can sometimes be useful to get the perspective you need and this is something I will reflect on.
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