greeNTU poster at the lift lobby.
After working a few days on the poster, and another few for the sponsorship hiccups, Vincent finally printed 60 copies of my poster for the Environmental Awareness Campaign and pasted them on notice boards across the campus. I wouldn’t say that it looks perfect, especially for the paddings that need to be more constant throughout the layout, but well, it’s my first try in poster design. I thought I’ll never venture beyond basic web design and now this is a small step for me (no, I’m not trying to speak like Louis Armstrong).
A big thanks to Chris Spooner for his Trendy Typographic Poster Design tutorial. If it wasn’t for his tutorial, I would have stuck with the good old conventional way of an event poster, which typically means lots of words and details, sponsors, a link to the club website and you’re done. His tutorial inspired me to create a poster that is typographically based and yet contain some information in the design without compromising artistic freedom. I kind of hate it when many designers are forced to change their designs to accomodate miles and miles of red tapes – I can’t believe people extending that evil power of red tapes into design as well, silencing and snuffing out ideas and creativity in the process.
Since it’s a school poster and not a corporate one, I was given quite a lot of flexibility in the design, sans the sponsors part. It’s a must since the event is going to be heavily funded by external organisations and companies (did you see Nokia?).
Concept
GreeNTU is a hybrid of the words ‘green’ and ‘NTU’. I guess I’ll spare you the rhetorics for the former, and for the latter, NTU stands for Nanyang Technological University, which is where I am currently studying at. It also means ‘Green To You’, probably inspired by Calvin Klein’s ck in2u line of fragrance. Earthlink is the environmental club that is promoting the entire event.
The background colour was already decided upon at the moment I read the tutorial. A green background will go really well with the environmental theme of the event and the poster, and so what I really did was just to dig up a photo in my huge library and then blur it to achieve the soft glow and shadow effects.
Typography
I’ve used Franklin Gothic Heavy (demibold roman) for the text and that’s the font family that I applied throughout the entire poster, including the sponsors part. The colour of the words are varied depending on the message they are conveying – the dark green for the event name, organising club and some detail; white for the events coming up; light green for the keywords related to the environment; and red for recyclable materials.
What distinguishes this poster from the original sample in Chris’ tutorial is that he used a single keyword for the entire poster – while it is possible for the poster, I opted for multiple keywords to get the message across and to allow more variation in the layout. I’m still divded between whether did it beautify or uglify the entire poster :razz:
The final product, sans sponsors’ information
Here’s the final produt of the combination of words and colours, but leaving out the sponsors’ information. I have to admit that while including them in the poster did adversely affect the overall aesthetics, it’s something that cannot be avoided (as mandated by the Student Affairs Office). That’s another mile of red tape.
The greeNTU Poster
I guess this satisfies your curiousity! :)
that’s a fantastic looking poster!!! you did a great job :) i like how you managed to come up with so many different keywords that relates to the awareness you’re trying to convey through the poster :)
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That’s wonderful! I’m glad you got to show off your talents in your campus :)
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Wow, your poster looks absolutely amazing! It’s great that you got to do this, because you did a fabulous job. I’m sure everyone will be very appreciative of the lovely end product! :)
Yea. It’s nice. I like it )
Very nice poster man. and thanks for linking up the tutorial. i’ll have to give it a try next time :)
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great poster ! It gives the impression of continually moving forward and
urging people to act in a green way.
Wow, it’s beautiful!! I love the color scheme down to the concepts of it. It’s pretty neat and cool, my brother used to do a lot of that, now he does more simplistic things. You remind me a lot of him :)
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What a great poster Teddy! I love looking at type posters and I think they type and the colors look amazing!
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OH my GOSH! thats sooo freaking nice! AHHHHHHHHHH.. hoho. i was thinking of a typography poster for my magazine cover too! haha.
nownow, who doesnt like typography??
PS: teddy! Can i add u on msn?
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Smashing work on the poster, Teddy! I’m a great fan of typography-based posters! Never had the chance to work on one though. Yours is just amazing. Nothing beats getting your work plastered everywhere for the masses and the recognition you’ll get! Hehe.
I also like how you used different colors and shades on the different messages in the poster. A passerby would definitely throw an extra glance on all these typography goodness!
Although I would imagine a PSD file with that much type would slow my laptop to a massive crawl. =\ How was it on yours?
@ember: Thank you… actually I’m a fan of everything that deals with typography. I’m so totally in love with motion/kinetic typography but sadly I lack the expertise to do videos that are so amazing (my favourite pick will be the Ocean’s Eleven one).
I wouldn’t say mine is the best… I don’t quite like mixing three different colours together but I guess in order to get the message across, it’s necessary that I make a visual distinction between the three different types of phrases, heh. I should’ve included a secret message within the poster – not as if anyone will know unless I tell them or if they scrutinize closely. Nobody knows who did the poster but that’s a great way to stay low :)
The PSD file is around 130MB big, and it’s a big pain in the ass to load it in PS3 (and on my stupid Vista machine). I heard that it loads faster in PS4 because the newer version also uses the graphic card to speed up loading. And when I tried to reposition all the text en-masse, my computer suffered a really bad lag that lasted for 3 minutes.
Not to mention the messy hierarchical arrangement of each layer into different folders :P
Hi Teddy, Happy new year. Wow long time no see and really be improved alot. What a nice blog here and congratulations you owned a brand new poster now! Gong Hei Fatt Choi.
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First of all, a big thank you everyone for your generous compliments :) *bows*
@Michelle: It took me two hours to brainstorm enough keywords for the poster – initially I was planning to stick to a few but I’ve decided to give it more variety to make it more interesting, heheh.
@Letti: Oh well I didn’t include my name in the poster because I prefer to stay low – I would like people to appreciate the work instead of the person behind it. Afterall, it’s the idea and message that matters, right?
@Shrew: Thank you! I don’t think much will even notice that it existed since the posters were up pretty last minute and our event is right after a long weekend, where everyone will be skipping school and staying at home *laughs*
@Jas: Thanks :D
@aronil: It’s the tutorial that taught me the basics of creating a typographic poster – so I feel compelled to link it as a way of saying thanks to Chris who’ve spent time writing it.
@Bob: I hope I didn’t sound too desperate! In fact, I combined two motives together – while the main aim is to promote environmental awaress, I’ve made sure that I’ll try to cudgel people towards a green lifestyle through the poster too. That’s killing two birds with one stone… no, poster.
@Destiny: I picked green because that’s the best colour representing our cause, heheh. Oh wow your brother is a designer too? Awesome!
@Katy: Type posters are my favourite… I love everything that deals with typography! I think it’s an art ignored by many.
@sue: Thank you Sue! You can try that out for your magazine poster heheh. I’ve sent you an email containing my MSN email address :)
@GenYong: Happy Chinese New Year to you too! Thanks for the compliments anyway, heh. Have fun and enjoy the holiday!
WOW. As you probably know, I’m mad about green AND into envirovmental activism, so this is amazing. Great balance and colour combo!
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It looks really impressive, Teddy! Well done. Happy lunar new year by the way! :)
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This is awesome Teddy!! Great poster, I see no imperfections in it at all. What a great way to get the message across.
very nice…eye catching and inline with the theme ;)
Ooh awesome! I will be looking out for those posters when I am on campus ;) I love how the text is faded into the background and how it makes the important words stand out.
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the poster looks awesome!! wahlaweh!
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@Iva: Oh wow, that’s awesome Iva! It’s really nice to know that you’re passionate about the environment too. Sometimes I wonder why some couldn’t care much about the environment and are so self-centered. Thanks for the compliments!
@thecoffeesnob: Thank you! Happy lunar new year to you too – I hope you’re having a great time over there too.
@Nel: Thanks Nel :) you’re tops!
@med: Thank you!
@Wendy: Oh yea, you’ll see it on campus but I’m not sure whether they had placed the posters over at NIE. Due to different administrative systems I guess you won’t be seeing mine over there, haha! Anyway, I’m opearting this palm messages booth at Canteen A (which is pretty near to NIE) and do drop by if you have time ;)
@abdusfauzi: Thanks!
[...] block to prepare some materials for her exhibition. Vincent returned with 60 copies of EAC posters, designed by yours truly. Before we noticed, it was already evening and sunlight was pouring through the sliding doors of [...]