Dreams Poster Design

The story:

A girl of about 19 has worked diligently all her life. She is happy and has a principle of helping people, even in her ambition. At 19, a close friend living far away, has come to her with problems. He has a young child and has no energy to go on with life. With depression and thoughts of giving up, he speaks to her and despite the distance admits that she is the only one he trusts and the only person he believes that cares about him.

She has two choices: To continue on her path and finally reap the benefits of her hard work... or to give it all up to answer the calling she feels in her heart, to do what is right as the person she sees herself to be. What will she choose with the knowledge that the life of 2 people are dependent on her kindness?

This play is a dark comedy about the decision she makes as a young women with the potential to achieve her dreams or to follow her heart and start living immediatly as the selfless person she aspires to be.


The Poster:

Title - Scissors through the dreams to signify sacrifice. A little bit of foreshadowing here.

Black & White - To signify choice. Being sacrifice, there's some darkness. But which is the 'black' option and which is white is not clear. Helping people and pursuing dreams, neither is clearly the losing choice. So I used this to signify the difficulty of her choice.

Puzzle pieces - To symbolize that she needs to remove certain factors from her life in order to fit her friend and his child into her life. Placing them in her life would mean every day from then on would be very much about them and their welfare. Thus the falling jigsaw pieces and 2 pieces with their faces on it being fit into the background of the poster.

Silhoutte - The figure has her arms open to show her welcoming the 2 people into her life. It's black so you can't really see the details of how she feels. The rather friendly pose is also to add the lighter element, to make room for the comedy in the play. It also is a literal representation of DARK comedy.

It also is in black to blend her into the black and white themed background. This highlights that this is the foundation. Every thing else in the poster are additional elements, to reflect the nature of the play being focused on her and her life, with everything else as choices that colour up her life. She is the thing that everything else is working on. So she blends in the back as the basis and all things have some contrast to look like they go on top of it.

Starring - Some pull power to get audiences in, they want to know who's playing the lead roles. I added perforations to look like a ticket stub to frame the cast listing.

The flower pattern - To add a bit of prettyness and lightness. Also to fill the space to make it a balanced opposition to the black half which seems alot stronger because of the nature of the colour.

The faces - Slightly smiley, doesn't evoke strong reactions. The focus is not so much these characters but the main character so I didn't want them to be the focus of the poster. So I didn't want audiences to gain too strong an impression from their faces. That's why they don't directly into the cam. They aren't supposed to be EVIL characters that make the audience thing, "hey, its simple, follow your dreams". I didn't want them to look depressed either, but people with a chance at life and look somewhat delicate, for the lead character to want to take care of them and 'repair' them. The audience should get a hint that they are lovable, thus the lead's desire to love them. Again, all this is to underscore that the situation is not a simplistic one.

Font -

Dreams: A solid font, to be able to be seen from a distance and with enough room to be torn and still be decipherable.

Cacophony Theatres - A poster is after all an advertisement, so its important that a logo-like representation of the production theater's name be used, to make it recognizable. Thus the added lines around the title. The idea is that any production by this theater would use the same print of their name.

Details - Small but readable, only for those really interested in watching the production. This is a step further than the visuals of the poster just being able to attract attention so it can afford to be small. Colours chosen to provide sufficient contrast and to act as INFORMATION n not to be confused with other elements that tell you about the content of the play. Also added some lighter highlights around the text wherever it crosses over the black figure, without having to resort to alternating the colours of the text (black over white background and white over black background) which can be quite ugly or look like a 'cheat' move. The glow highlights are also quite subtle but do add contrast enough to help readability.

Details given are sufficient for interested audiences but I put contact details for any clarifications. Also added a discount element which is quite common in productions to draw particular audiences.

Changes - I've modified certain elements after the class presentation. I've made Dreams a brighter white, including the reflection which came out rather grey and didn't look reflective at all like it does on a computer screen. I shifted the puzzle bits a little to make the hole in the black background more apparent, to see these are new pieces being fitted in to an established back. Added white highlights to the left of the silhoutte to make it more visible from a distance. Added contrast on the scissors for the same reason - visibility.