During the last pre-critique, some of the major areas that I needed to fix were the hierarchy and background. It looked as though the illustration of Danny Harley was more important than the band name and it actually became the focal point. "SXSW Austin, TX 2014" was also very dark and difficult to read. The mountains in the background did not make very much sense in relation to Danny Harley or South by Southwest. Above is how it looked during the last pre-critique.
I actually forgot or might have misheard some of the feedback given during the last critique. I was told to change the background and to look on the SXSW website at some of the new technology and bio-mechanical or bio-molecular objects. I might be wrong, however, and am either remembering wrong or misheard entirely. Still, I knew I had to look at current events going on at SXSW for inspiration. I noticed under the "music" portion of the logo, the colors were green and black with circular shapes. I was not sure if the circles would go with the typeface or triangles. I tried creating a single triangular shaped background, as seen above. I even tried keeping the lines dividing them, similar to how the "interactive" portion of the logo looks on the website. The problem with that was how much it distracted from the band name and body copy at the bottom. I wanted to triangles to tie in Danny Harley's illustration more. Overall, the colors here still need worked on, along with hierarchy. It feels a bit empty towards the middle-left. The overall purple color scheme did not seem right, as it lacked depth. It made the blue on his shirt stand out a bit too much on its own.
For this one, I blurred the background and layered multiple ones on top of each other, as well as changed up the colors in Illustrator. I think this is a step up from the previous design I had. At this point, I tried a multitude of other things, from taking Danny Harley's illustration and stripping it down to just it's frame again, overlapping those, and changing the colors entirely. Overall, none of them worked, and I did not take any screenshots of them unfortunately, but they all appeared cluttered, messy, and did not seem to express his music style at all. Here, the color scheme seems to be working better. The blurred background adds a nice depth of field effect, while bringing forth and illustration and body copy, making them more legible.
After many trial and errors of different designs, I eventually decided to try shrinking down the illustration of Danny Harley. I realized that one reason why he was constantly competing in visual hierarchy was because of not only his size, but also because of the highlight on his forehead. By making him smaller and changing the blend modes and opacities, I was able to make him blend more into the background. Enlarging the text made it more visible and demand more attention. Here, I also applied the "color dodge" blend modes to all of the text. The colors are used fairly often in his video "Given the Chance," and I wanted them to appear as lights shining onto him and the background. I asked Professor Mata what she thought of it, and she said that it did indeed seem a bit busy with the lights shining onto his face. So suggested that I try removing him, and it actually made the text much more readable, which is what set me up for how I laid out the next design.
Again, after quite a few trial and errors of moving things around, I decided to go back to one of my previous layouts. By aligning the text on the top-half to the right, and then aligning it to the left, it moves the eye across the page as it moves down. I think one of the reasons why it seems to work now, is because I got rid of the triangular shapes in the background and made it flat. I then took Danny Harley's illustration, and by making it large enough to take up the entire background, it beings to stand out much less and becomes less distracting as it sits behind all of the text. I changed the green to a blue color, because the blue seems to express his music style much better with all of the calming and slow sounds. The red helps to express his more upbeat or quicker songs. I get somewhat a dance feel from the song, which is evident in some of his songs. At the same time, I get an electronic feeling, which is also similar to his music style. It is a shame that I missed critique today, because it would have been interesting to see how people might have felt about the poster, and if they would indeed receive the same feeling as I intended.
Overall, I am still not entirely happy with the design, and I think there could be areas of improvement. However, I do think it is better than the original poster that I designed, especially in expressing what South by Southwest is all about. It was risky using the "color dodge" blend mode, and then placing the picture of Danny Harley behind the text, because it actually was different than if I would have placed Danny Harley in front of the text. Placing him behind the text and in combination with the blend mode, somehow made the text harder to read, but it also allowed more of the background to show through in the individual characters' strokes and fills. It adds interesting variations in value, which is one of the main reasons why I went with it.
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