GRAP5060 | Project 1: The Fundamental Principles of Layout | Exercise 1

Alignment and Hierarchy

​Our first task involved exploiting the principles of alignment and hierarchy. Using given assets we had to experiment and explore to create a poster for a theatre production.

I began first by doing a little research to get inspired and then quickly sketched out a couple of thumbnail ideas for the layouts, thinking about which pieces of information were the most important and remembering to include rough grid lines.

I then jumped straight into Illustrator and using the template provided along with a grid system, I started to experiment and arrange the assets in a few different ways, remembering the goal was to explore the use of the concepts in as many ways as possible in the time given. 
Mostly I started off with slight variations of baseline grids and then added freelance grids where I felt the design needed it, such as ranging lines from the images. I also briefly used Photoshop to colourise the images to add more variation.

Here is one of my final posters. I decided to rework this one slightly by making the main headline and its surrounding elements diagonal. This way it creates a more dynamic look without comprising a lot on readability. I also added some more white space to the other important areas such as the time and place of the event, creating more emphasis to that area. I used a splash of colour to enhance the other important elements and help create more of a line of sight. 

For the second final poster I made just a few little adjustments; enlarging the title of the production, rearranging the logos and adding the same green colour to an area of text to emphasis that element more as it was just floating.

Here are some mock ups of the posters in action: