Project 2: Visual Hierarchy
Row House Cinema 2021 Drive-In
Research: The event I am assigned is the “Row House Cinema 2021 Drive-In”, a pop up drive in theatre which is going on for 5 weekends of the month of October in the strip district. All movies which are featured are classic horror films all in theme of halloween. The Row House Cinema, different than the drive in, is an intimate, single screen movie theater in the heart of Lawrenceville in Pittsburgh, PA which offers customers a wide selection of classic and contemporary films spanning all eras, genres, and styles of cinema. “Movie goers can enjoy an extensive selection of craft beer bottles and drafts, popcorn with real butter, world-famous chocolate popcorn, and exclusive discounts for students and Lawrenceville residents.” Based on this information the target demographic is assumably 21+ as the amenities offered are liquor.
Furthermore, the sponsor/partnership company of Row House Cinema’s Drive-In event is The Terminal. The Pittsburgh Produce Terminal, formerly the Pennsylvania Fruit Auction & Sales Building, is a building, alike to a mall, including food, shopping, fitness, etc. Since this is a fairly newly opened place, there are 6 current stores offered at the terminal: Aslin Beer Company, City Grows, Envy Premier Nail Spa, Fine Wine & Good Spirits, Onpar Now, and Pip & Lola’s.
Liquor: Aslin Beer Company, Fine Wine & Good Spirits
Services: Envy Premier Nail Spa
Recreation: Onpar now (indoor screen golfing)
Shop: City Grows (gardening products), Pip & Lola’s (handmade soaps)
Based on the information of the sponsor, it can be further understood the target audience for this event is individuals in their mid 20’s-30’s (interest in gardening, services such as nail care, golfing, soaps, beer, spirits, etc.).
The Row House Drive-In event information through the website:
When: Friday and Saturday night in October. Doors open at 6:30 and the show starts around 8 pm.
Where: The parking lot at 21st and Smallman St. in The Strip District near The Terminal
Cost: $34.50 per car
Exercise 1:
Working w/ Typography on Paper:
I wanted to utilize white space in my poster to allow words to feel less crowded and look visually less text heavy. Since the target audience is young millennials I want to use visualizations which heavily attract towards them.
Color:
Starting Iterations(InDesign):
Utilizing indesign I began to create iterations of the poster. As the concept of the row house drive in cinema is a pop up, I used capitalization of the key points to grab attention and almost have a pop-like feeling. I also played around with the overlapping of text within the capitalization. Later after printing out an example page, I realized the legibility of the dates became way too thin.
Iterations (Illustrator):
3 Iterations for 3 Images:
After receiving review for the 3 iterations for 3 images, I realized the most effective poster for this project would be the top left image (middle left on the physical board). Using this poster design, I began refining the poster. I also enjoyed the bottom heavy design as it breaks from the classic reading left to right, top to bottom.
Refinement:
Feedback from Yoshi:
- darken background image
- play with spacing between the text
- match font size of website link and “pop up” info
- align the side text with “cinema”
Refinement Cont.
Final Editing:
(Yellow indicates audience’s order of eyes when looking at the poster)
After choosing the top heavy poster, I refined and made final changes such as alignment, color, spacing.
I moved the sub-text to between the “row” and “house” since from afar view, it doesn’t take away from the boldness of the title and up-close it provides more information in the middle right away. I also connected the I and N in the drive-in cinema text to give context clues of a road which you drive through. I also considered that adding this made audience’s eyes go up and down the poster smoother. For the information about the movies I separated each text as I wanted a custom spacing between each weekend. I aligned all 5 of these text boxes with the Beginning of “S” from house and aligned the top of Weekend 1 with the top of “cinema”.
Final:
Reflection: During this project in designing posters with the emphasizes on hierarchy, I was able to prioritize only that aspect of design and really learn in depth about it. For example, rather than using images to grab attention, it was utilized to play around the text and information. In this specific project, the whole point was to design a poster which uses hierarchy as the main source of being distinctive among other posters. I think I did a good job following that as we were restricted in the fonts we can use, so I instead capitalized ROW HOUSE and filled in the negative spaces to turn the text into more of vector art without going against changing font. I also used the image to guide eyes around the poster rather than my image being the focal point which grabs eyes from a far. The screen and cars on the images naturally guide audiences eyes downwards into the detailed information about the event in a “zig zag” motion. I purposefully didn’t align the bottom of the screen in the image to the bottom of drive in cinema text as it can actually section off the poster from its top and bottom. As a whole, the poster gives a dark and spooky vibe which goes cohesive to the theme of the event as it is a night time halloween themed drive in. Especially since the target audience group are millennials, I tried to stray from child-like designs or too traditional. If I could do anything different for this project it would be to try working with other images and moving the order of text: maybe bringing attention to drive-in cinema more than 2021 row house.
