The Project of Olympic Proportions - Roughs

So, through a combination of Blogger making a few of my posts disappear and then not letting me log on, I'm going to write a little retrospectively.

For the comps, I managed to get them all done in fairly quick order. I started with my favorite idea, the soccer ball with the image of China in place of one of the pentagon panels. My goal here was to not overwhelm the viewer with motion. I wanted to create a sense of ideal anticipation. The hardest part in the construction of this piece was the creation of the ball itself. As anyone who has ever tried, a soccer ball is quite possibly the hardest thing to accurately depict. Luckily, my job was much easier since I just had to trace an image with pen tool. I will admit that tracing China took a little while though. My only problem with this design as it stands is the font. I had trouble figuring out a font that I thought would fit really well with the design as a whole. I also didn't want to get very wordy with the rules of the game. As a certified soccer ref myself, I figured all an audience would really need to know is the concept of scoring, how many players are on the field, etc.

My next design was to be for the archery events in the Beijing Olympics. I think that it turned out fairly well. The quiver helped direct attention to the title, while emphasizing what the poster was about in a single glance. I was also very pleased with the effect of the flights on the arrows. I had been afraid it would have just been a distraction, but they actually worked quite well. On Adrienne's advice, I had incorporated the Olympic rings into the object of the quiver. This was a good idea. It allowed the rings to be used in the design without beating the viewer over the head with them and screaming "This is for the Olympics!" Once again I feel that the weak point is my font choice. I thought about using something medieval looking as a reference tot he age of the sport, but I thought that would be too specific and might be a little too centered on Western culture when this is an international event in an Eastern country.



Finally comes my design for the Olympic table tennis competition. Once again I was shooting for simplicity. I had trouble in my thumbnails with coming up with something interesting, without being over the top, because it is still ping pong. It is a rather simple sport, and wanted to try and reflect that. Initially I was going to use just a stationary paddle but after talking with Adrienne about the thumbnails, I decided to add a little motion to it. In contrast with my other designs, I think that the font works well with the overall feeling of simplicity.

During the critiques, Brett and Chrissy helped me out with a few things. They gave me a few suggestions of different fonts I could use, and warned me against being too fond of negative space. I'm planning on working with the archery design for my final project. Previously, I had thought that my soccer design would be the most successful, but everyone appeared to be more fond of the quiver design, so I'm going to go with it.