1000 +136 WORDS ESSAY

The second brief, named as Principles of Graphic Communication was a bit of a challenge
for me. Not only were we assigned to do a design for an architecture magazine in Indesign
(thing that Ive never done before), but also make a poster for the International poetry day,
along, of course, with other great day briefs.

First of all, lets start with the architecture design. The magazine that we were supposed to
make a design for was a fictional one, named Arkitekt. What I really loved about this brief was
that I could do one thing that I know best: taking pictures. My idea for the magazine was to talk
about the contrast between new & old architecture that one can see around the city and, by
taking lots of pictures that would embrace this difference, I also had the opportunity to get to
know Birmingham a little bit more.

Then, I started to do quick sketches of what the final outcome would look like. Because I
always associated architecture with minimalism, I tried to stay on the same pattern when it
came to the cover design. After 3 attempts, I managed to create the right cover in which I had a
square divided in two: on one side was Bullring, and on the other one the columns from Victoria
Square. What I liked most about these two pictures was the fact that they were so different
from each other, yet they were matching perfectly together.

For the interior, I tried to use balance, contrast and direction. Because I wanted to play a
little bit with shapes, I started dividing the facing sheets in 2 in a way that 4 triangles were
made. After that, I placed some of the pictures I took in there, followed by text shaped along
the triangle box.

For the other day briefs we were assigned to do a Copy/Paste project with Becky, Micro &
Macro, Call my name, research about design principles and poetry group work. Even if,
unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to attend some of them, I managed to catch up
with everybody and do extra research to understand better what the aim of the tasks were. Not
only did I learn a lot of new things, but also had the chance to put them in practice in the main
brief: the Poetry task.

The poetry task was one of the most challenging briefs I had to do so far. Because I had so
many ideas and did not know how to work with them, I got a bit stuck. Yet, after I spoke with
Tracy, she helped me understand that sometimes I just have to sketch all my ideas on a piece of
paper. So I did! After I done some quick sketches here and there, I found the right concept for
my poster.

The poem I chose for this brief was Riga Crypto & Lapona Enigel by Ion Barbu, one of the
most important interwar poets in Europe, but also an excellent mathematician. The poem itself
is a love one, which depicts the tragic love story between Riga Crypto (the king of the
mushrooms) and Lapona Enigel (the queen of the sky). As Laponas destiny was to fly to the
white wheel (a metaphor for sun), she refused Rigas love for her, as he was calling her every
night. Because of their difference: Riga belonging in a low class, having no knowledge in
comparison with Lapona who knew everything, this love story did not last. On the grounds that
he wanted the queen for himself, he decided to go to the sun instead of her, in this way
tragically dying (the death scene being inspired by the Greek mythology in which Hyperion, a
God with wings made of wax, flew so close to the sun that they melted and he fell).

In this way, with the authors background as a mathematician and the tragic love story
between the two characters I tried to make an eye-catching 3D poster, with an 1920s aesthetic,
as the poem was published then.

For the font I used Gill Sans for the reason that not only did it came out the same year as the
poem, but was also the font used by Ion Barbu in his volume The second game. When it comes
to the colour palette, I chose green and red, first of all because they are complementary colours
and second of all because green represents the herbal kingdom from which Riga comes, and
red femininity and strenght, in Laponas case.

For the aesthetic I tried to remake the 1920/30s vibes in which Cubism, Bauhaus, Art Deco
and many other manifestos were popular then. In this way, I used geometry, a bold font, a
colorful palette that was unusual back in the day for ones eye and an interesting way of using
letter positioning.

When it comes to the concept of the poster, I tried to enhance the Rigas love for Lapona,
reason why I cut the O from Crypt-O and pasted it on Lap-O-nas name. In this way, we can see
the sacrifice he made in order for her to be finally complete and fullfiled, even if this meant the
destruction for him.

The geometry elements, the square grids and the formulas are meant to give a hint about
the authors background as a mathematician. After combining everything together and making
2 separate posters, I thought about combining them in order to make a 3D poster. My idea was
inspired by the Honda advertising video named The other side that Martin showed us in which
a single video had 2 stories. In this way, after I experimented a little bit with angles, I made a
poster in which, as you walk by it, you can see both posters from different points of view.
 As a final thing, because the whole idea of this brief was about International Poetry Day, I
asked relatives, friends and even strangers to help me with a little project. Because I wanted to
prove that even if people speak different languages and are from different countries, they can
still understand the message of the poem and about the author. In this way, I managed to
gather photos that were taken of my poster from USA, Canada, Italy, Germany, Romania, UK,
Spain, Denmark, Ireland, Netherlands and France.

In conclusion, this brief was an excellent opportunity for me to take a step forward and learn
new things such as:

How to use Indesign ;

How to work with the principles of graphic design ;
About typography ;
Typewriter art ;
Cubism ;
Art Deco ;
Bauhaus ;
Gender & personality ;
And many, many more things that will help me to become a great graphic designer.