The lemon posters were the first of the collection of ideas, so there are a couple more style experiments in here that weren't carried over to other subject matters. This first picture was how I had envisioned the work to be like, pre-iteration. I like a lot of sweet little illustrations and I borrowed the style to make turn it into a warning about lemons' effect on digestion, by personifying the subject matter so that the message was cautionary rather than a screaming warning. However after asking a few people I found that neither the illustration nor the typeface was strong enough or had an effect on people. The image in Figure 2 had a similar reception - I used a posterize effect to mimic a screen printed look, but combined with the wispy text and background of a similar colour, it didn't really "pop" and the message was weak.
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| Figure 1 |
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| Figure 2 |
I have previously said that the colour halftone effect didn't work out so great for me, but this piece below was, to me, an exception. Because I left textures out of the rest of the composition, the halftone is a more detailed focal point. The curvy triangles could be made smaller, as looking at it now they are a little bulky and distracting - they were meant to suggest the corrosive element of citric acid in lemon juice as the shape is borrowed from the corrosion drops in chemical warning signs. The composition of the backdrop was decided on after looking at other pop art posters and seeing how they were laid out. I think this could be worked on to make it more dynamic, as at the moment it is very static and doesn't really fit with the way the lemon is positioned. Overall though I am quite pleased at how my first attempt at a "contemporary" pop art poster turned out.
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| Figure 3 |
Looking at traditional pop art led me to discover the WPAP style, which I wasn't so familiar with but had seen in some propagandic work along the way too. It is an extension of pop art which takes influences from cubism and similar art styles. I am happy with the way this version of the lemon turned out so I might use this style again. My only worry is that the style is a very "busy" one, especially the background, so I will have to see if any additional text can be worked with. I am guilty of over-stuffing my posters with too much information sometimes too so I will have to take extra care! I do really like the layered look of the fruit, so it is possible that I could keep this and keep the background blank.
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| Figure 4 |
Lastly I tried out the painterly-imitation technique which had worked out for me previously, and I think the results are my favourites out of this bunch. The typeface used was one which fit well with the vintage looking visuals and was legible as well, which given that these would be read in passing in public is an important factor in the design.
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| Figure 5 |
The smoother gradient styles worked well on the lemon shape as it is curved and could be rendered well. I used layer masks of textured paper, which was from a freebie pack I downloaded from deviant art a couple of years ago and unfortunately can't trace it now. The text used in the first poster very much pushed the negative aspect of citric acid content in lemons, whereas the second image uses a lot more visual rhetoric and relies on the viewer to decide whether or not the acid content is bad or good.
The textures added a bit of depth to the posters, making them look that little bit more authentic given the style I was mimicking. This is by far one of my favourite styles I have worked in and I expect I will continue using it, but I would also hope to try out a more blocky vector style as done in the previous post (apples posters) and gauge how effective that would be.
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| Figure 6 |
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