Winter Fair Poster
The advertisement was an important part of the Winter Fair. It was a way of informing people what the event was, where and when it took place.
The first idea that came into my mind was a Christmas tree with some baubles featuring gifts, people selling products at their tables, and an overall idea of shopping for presents.
It sounded like a great idea at first. However, after I sketched it out, it looked very busy and overwhelming. The text was all in one place, and when you see a poster, you don’t want to stand in front of it and read it for a couple of minutes. Some people may be less interested in the content, therefore, less likely to read the full text if it seems long. Most of us look at the posters by just passing by them. The title of the event should be quick and easy to read for those who only want to have an idea of what the poster is about instead of going straight into full details.
Another thing was the baubles. Looking at it on a piece of paper made me realize that the small pictures may be hard to see from a distance, which is not ideal. I wanted something big enough to be easy to see and read.
While looking up ideas, I came across a Northlight Winter Fair poster. The first thing that stood out to me was a character, a reindeer surrounded by Christmas decorations and standing for preparations for Christmas by holding some baubles and food. It inspired me to come up with my second idea.
My second idea was to draw a gingerbread man and Holly to represent Christmas. I wanted to spread the text between the top, middle and bottom of the page. To do this, I placed the date of the event and drew on the gingerbread man as a part of the character's design.
Since it’s a Winter themed event, I decided to use blue for the background as this colour is very often associated with the winter season. For the text, I chose red to match the Staffordshire university logo and to contrast with the blue background. I also tried to use a golden ratio rule I learnt last year to position all the elements of the poster in the right place so that they are easy to read and aesthetically pleasing.
Although I am happy with the A4 poster I created, I don’t think an idea of a physical poster was good enough to advertise the Winter Fair. While talking to other students from Staffordshire university, most people admitted that they did not hear about the event. I haven’t spotted any form of advertisement around the campus. However, I came across an online event posted by our university, which was more effective than a poster as it had more people who saw the post and were interested in attending the Winter Fair.
While my poster was directed to the general public inside and outside of the university, I should have created something more like an online post targeting young adults at our university, as most of the people visiting the Winter Fair were students.
