The brief for this
exercise was to produce some ideas for a museum poster, which would fit in one
of three age catergories: - 5-9 year olds, 13-16 year olds and Adults.
The museum I chose
was the Tutankhamun Exhibition in Dorchester.
It is quite a small museum, but it is packed with replicas of
Tutankhamun’s treasures, that were taken from his tomb in Egypt, in the 1920’s
by archaeologist, Howard Carter.
I started by
visiting the museum and walking around the exhibits, photography is not allowed
inside the exhibition, so I had to sketch a few of the exhibits, and then try
to gather images from the internet, to create a moodboard for each age group.
Using simple
spider diagrams, I tried out a few words for each age catergory.
For the 5-9 year
olds catergory, I wanted fun to be the theme, so I thought about when I was a
young girl watching mystery cartoons such as Scooby Doo, where mummies were
portrayed as scary, but also had a comic element to them, so that they didn’t
frighten children too much, this was something I wanted to try to put into the
design of the poster.
For the 13-16
catergory, the image had to be more interesting.
Teenagers like to
see images that are more graphic, such as more macabre detail, so a mummies
face could be used in the museum poster design.
For the Adult
catergory, I felt this could have more information about the story behind
Tutankhamun, but the images could be a little more cryptic, and you would only
find out their meaning if you visited the museum.
Following on from
the spider diagrams, I moved on to thumbnail sketches, to try out ideas,
working out the layout, and whether I would include text in the posters or not.
Once these ideas
had been worked out, I sketched three of them in larger sizes, one for each
catergory, and placed printed text, from my laptop onto each of them, so that I
could finalise the layout.
The medium I
decided to work with was acrylic ink, which I had used on a previous exercise,
and which came in bright colours, making a poster seen from a distance
attractive to the viewer.
I tested the ink
on two out of the three large drawings, seeing if I could get the colours I
needed.
The blue that I
tried out for the second image, as a background colour was brilliant, but I
felt the layout lacked something.
Looking back at
the images I had gathered, I selected another one to address the balance
problem, that was happening at the bottom of this poster design. Once this had been solved I drew out this
design on Bristol Board, which is an incredibly smooth surface, good for
graphic images.
When colouring the
image I had drawn out, I found that the ink, especially on the blue background
was streaky, and you could see every brush stroke, which was not the effect I
wanted. So to combat this problem I
coated the paper several times with the coloured ink, which gave a more solid
look to it.
Once the main
colours had been done, I drew in the outline of everything with black ink, to
give it more structure.
In conclusion, the
poster works well, the blue and gold colours are attractive to the eye from a
distance, and the subject is easily recognizable.
Overall I am happy
with the design, although in the end I think I would have preferred to work on
a slightly rougher surface where the ink would have soaked into the paper,
perhaps giving a less patchy appearance.
