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Part 4: Style

Exercise: Museum Posters

Brief

You have been asked to produce three illustrations to be used as part of a series of A3 posters to publicise the museum to the following audiences:

Children aged 5-9

Teenagers aged 13-16

General adult audience

The museum wants to encourage diverse sections of the population visit and to perceive it as a place of interest. Select one object for each of the audiences and create an image centred around that object in a way which you thinks best presents it to your market. Go to your local museum or anywhere that has a range of interesting artefacts to gather good visual references. Choose exhibits which are either appropriate for each of the audiences or which you think can be made interesting for the audience through your visual intervention.

Catalogue the exhibits in some way: photograph them, do printouts or make a series of drawings. Organise your images according to the audience groupings.

You are making three illustrations for three posters fromt he same institution. Will they be a ‘family’ or very different? If they are all different how will the audience know they come from the same place or doesn’t this matter?

Decide on the visual approach you would like to adopt. Do you want to introduce a character and create a visual narrative? Do you want to make a decorative interpretation of the object? Do you want to place the object in the historic or geographic setting in which it was created? Do you want to depict the object to convey some aspect of it that you feel would be interesting to your audience? Will you choose an abstract, representational or diagrammatic approach? Remember to consider viewpoints and explore the best position for your content within the format. you don’t have to be bound by direct representation of y0ur object but it should be recognisable.

Explore options and make notes in your learning log.

Choose the media and colour range appropriate to your audience – but avoid generalisations and stereotypes.

Working to a scale that best suits you, produce colour visuals for all the posters – remember that for a poster you’re aiming for visual clarity and directness. Posters are often read from a distance so your image needs to be reasonably bold.

Prepare finished artwork for at least one of the posters.

Choosing a Museum

Due to the Coronavirus pandemic I was not able to visit any museums in person and therefore had to rely on online resources,

I began this exercise by look through a list of London Museums and narrowing down my choices to a select few, which I thought might have potential. In the end I decided to choose Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum. I have never been there, but I do like tennis so thought it would be an interesting option.

Researching the Museum

Unfortunately there are not many pictures of the actual exhibitions/objects on display at the museum on the official website, but I did come across some Youtube videos that take the viewer on a guided tour through it.

These videos were useful in giving a general overview and feel of the museum. I also created a board on Pinterest of posters related to Wimbledon. I noted that most of these had a colour scheme of mostly green, purple (the official colours of the tournament) and yellow. The majority also incorporated a tennis court, ball and/or racket into the design.

Ideas for Poster

The brief stated that the poster should be based on a particular object from the chosen. museum, but as previously stated I was not able to visit any museums and there were not many photos of the objects in this particular museum. This caused me several days of procrastination until I decided to base my ideas on both some of the exhibits I had learnt about and/or the general theme of the museum/tournament.

Other Poster Examples

Before moving onto my own ideas, I looked at some examples of different posters aimed at a range of ages and created a Pinterest board for some of these.

Mind-Mapping Ideas

I drew out mind-map with my thoughts about the three age groups and what might characterise a poster for that particular range. I then considered what aspects of the museum could be aimed at the different ages.

Mind-mapping (click on image for larger version, opens in new tab)

I then tried to refine my ideas in a second mind-mapping session.

Mind-mapping (click on image for larger version, opens in new tab)

Thumbnails

I then started to sketch out some rough ideas as thumbnails.

The ideas on the first thumbnails page, below, and which age group they would mainly be aimed at, were:

  • close up of the trophy being held up (adult)
  • Rufus the Hawk tormenting pigeons (children)
  • vials of blood, sweat and tears being poured into the trophy (probably teenagers)
  • Hawk Eye (in Rufus the Hawk’s eye) (unsure)
  • a male/female player as an ‘action figure’ in a box (children/teenagers)
Thumbnail sketches of initial ideas (click on image for larger version, opens in new tab)

The ideas on the second thumbnails page, below, and which age group they would mainly be aimed at, were:

  • fashions of Wimbledon – with three sections, each with a different era of clothing (adult)
  • tennis racket face (children)
  • raining tennis balls and strawberries (adult)
  • some representation of the Batak Wall (interactive coordination game at the museum ) from the museum (teenagers)
  • three test tubes – blood, sweat and tears (teenagers)
  • a strawberry being splattered by a tennis racket (children)
Thumbnail sketches of initial ideas (click on image for larger version, opens in new tab)

Refining Ideas

Next, I worked on refining some of the ideas to see which would be worth taking further.

Although I am always keen to include characters in my illustrations, I decided that the hawk/pigeon idea was not relevant enough to the brief for advertising the museum.

Refining ideas (click on image for larger version, opens in new tab)

I would also have been keen to explore the idea of fashions with my divided idea, below left, but did not feel my drawing skills would currently have been up to the task. I did think it would also have been interesting to explore the use of collage for this idea.

Refining ideas (click on image for larger version, opens in new tab)

I decided that the below three ideas had the most potential for this exercise. I created larger versions of the first two.

Refining ideas (click on image for larger version, opens in new tab)

I thought the idea of splattering a strawberry with a tennis racket would be quite visually impactful and entertaining for children.

Idea 01 (click on image for larger version, opens in new tab)

However, the idea I was most drawn to was the one below of three test tubes containing blood, sweat and tears – with the accompanying title ‘Discover what it takes to become a champion‘. I thought it would be quite fun/humorous and eye-catching. It relates directly back to the the museum through the word ‘discover’. This was the concept that I decided to carry forward and develop.

Idea 02 (click on image for larger version, opens in new tab)

Developing the Poster

I moved into Illustrator to create the poster, the process of which can be seen below.

Process of creating the poster

The poster up to this point can be seen below.

The design so far…

I was fairly happy with the poster, but thought it did not look professional enough and too simplistic. I decided to improve certain aspects including: the grass which looked to uniform and non-grass like; the white line, which I tried to make look more like the line on a real tennis courts; adding bubbles to the ‘tear’ tube to represent all those emotions bubbling up; adjusting the sweat dripping down on the grass; adding a gradient to the background to make it look less flat; and adding ‘fluff’ to the tennis ball.

The final design can be seen below.

Final design of poster (click on image for larger version, opens in new tab)

Final Thoughts

The fact that I was unable to go to a museum in person and select an object was quite a stumbling point for me when beginning this exercise. However, once I decided how I would work around this, as explained previously, I started to come up with various ideas, which were all possibilities to take forward. I was pleased with the final result and felt that it did fulfil the brief of advertising the museum to a younger age group. I still do not think it has the finesse of a ‘real’ poster and this is something I have to work on. Also, I realised that, actually, there is an object in my design that must be present at the museum…a tennis ball.

Reflection After Tutor Feedback

Following feedback from my tutor I returned to this exercise and took the advice of adding another tennis-related element as suggested. I chose to add a tennis racket in the background. This also meant I added a purple block behind the text at the top of the poster to cover up the strings, which were reducing the legibility of the words. I felt the result was definitely an improvement and made the poster more complete visually.

Revised version of museum poster (click on image for larger version, opens in new tab)

References

Firecracker UK, (2014). Step Inside Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum. (video) Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kq6XnnpiKww [Accessed 11 October 2020].

Tennis Gallery, Wimbledon, (n.d.). Wimbledon [online] Available at: https://tennisgallerywimbledon.com/collections/wimbledon/posters [Accessed 11 October 2020].

Wikipedia, (n.d.). Cinema Museum (London). [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_Museum_(London) [Accessed 10 October 2020].

Wikipedia, (n.d.). Grant Museum of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Museum_of_Zoology_and_Comparative_Anatomy [Accessed 10 October 2020].

Wikipedia, (n.d.). List of museums in London. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_museums_in_London [Accessed 10 October 2020].

Wikipedia, (n.d.). Museum of Life Sciences. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_Life_Sciences [Accessed 10 October 2020].

Wikipedia, (n.d.). Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrie_Museum_of_Egyptian_Archaeology [Accessed 10 October 2020].

Wikipedia, (n.d.). Pollock’s Toy Museum [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollock%27s_Toy_Museum [Accessed 10 October 2020].

Wikipedia, (n.d.). Postal Museum, London [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Museum,_London [Accessed 10 October 2020].

Wikipedia, (n.d.). Ragged School Museum [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragged_School_Museum [Accessed 10 October 2020].

Wikipedia, (n.d.). Royal College of Surgeons of England – Hunterian Museum. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_College_of_Surgeons_of_England#Hunterian_Museum [Accessed 10 October 2020].

Wikipedia, (n.d.). Royal Observatory Greenwich [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Observatory,_Greenwich [Accessed 10 October 2020].

Wikipedia, (n.d.). Sherlock Holmes Museum [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_Holmes_Museum [Accessed 10 October 2020].

Wikipedia, (n.d.). St Bartholomew’s Hospital [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Bartholomew%27s_Hospital [Accessed 10 October 2020].

Wikipedia, (n.d.). Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wimbledon_Lawn_Tennis_Museum [Accessed 10 October 2020].

Wimbledon, (2011).Visit The Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum. (video) Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yprZ6wl3cA [Accessed 11 October 2020].

Wimbledon, (2020). Pat Cash Explores the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum’s Treasure Trove. (video) Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHBrTUfPqTY [Accessed 11 October 2020].

Wimbledon, (n.d.). About Us [online] Available at: https://www.wimbledon.com/en_GB/learning/index.html [Accessed 11 October 2020].

Wimbledon, (n.d.). Explore Wimbledon [online] Available at: https://www.wimbledon.com/en_GB/visit_and_tickets/explore_wimbledon.html [Accessed 11 October 2020].

Wimbledon, (n.d.). Museum and Tour [online] Available at: https://bookings.wimbledon.com/stadiumtours/booking/default.htm [Accessed 11 October 2020].

Wimbledon, (n.d.). Primary Programme [online] Available at: https://www.wimbledon.com/en_GB/visit_and_tickets/primary_programme.html [Accessed 11 October 2020].

Wimbledon, (n.d.). Poster – The Official Poster of the Championships 2019 [online] Available at: https://www.wimbledon.com/en_GB/atoz/poster.html [Accessed 11 October 2020].

Wimbledon, (n.d.). What to see at Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum and Tour [online] Available at: https://www.wimbledon.com/en_GB/visit_and_tickets/what_to_see.html [Accessed 11 October 2020].