Maki poster, part 2

- Last episode I talked about how experienced designers tend to make bold moves and big differences on the page where beginners tend to even things out and make them more alike. And to show what I mean by bold moves I redesigned this concert poster, which is pretty bland. Sticking to these typefaces, I came up with this. Black page, big picture, bolder type, higher contrast between type weights and sizes and so on.

The makeover has the energy you'd want in a concert poster and it looks designed. In this episode I'll take it further. Better type, bolder page proportions. Standard page proportions, these are letter proportions, are pretty blah. One edge is somewhat shorter than the other, more definite would be a square where all four sides are alike, or double that, a two to one ratio.

These are ratios you can feel. Your monitor is probably 16 by nine, which is less than two to one, but definitely bolder than letter size, so I'll start there in a landscape format. I'll also do a vertical version. Divide the page roughly into thirds and put the picture in there. Pretty tightly cropped, also to the rule of thirds. You can adjust this as you go. In the upper left corner I set her name in the typeface Druk.

Druk is spelled D-R-U-K. It's from Commercial Type. Druk is ultra condensed. Others are similar and it comes in several widths. I'll be using two. I have Jakira in double extra condensed and Maki in extra condensed, which puts the emphasis on it. No space between. Then her second picture, bleed to the top. Then again in double extra condensed the word live. Then color the type from the picture like this.

And this is a cool thing. Ultra condensed type is powerful on a bunch of levels. I love it for the blocks it makes. It's intentional, there's nothing vague about it. You're forcing a lot of communication into a compressed space, so there's an intensity to it. It towers like a skyscraper, so there's this bigger than life feel to it. Date and time, also in double extra condensed run together, separated only by gray value.

I love the rectangles. Now a change of face to Miller Display italic. It's a beautifully proportions textured serif, set the venue and what a lovely contrast. This is another asset of Druk. Because it's visually neutral you can put stylish faces against it and they don't interact. Each stands on its own. So it goes with almost anything. Then I drew an axis here and set a Kent & Moore production in tiny Helvetica Light caps.

Caps to keep it block-like, aligned right. This is bold stuff. Tight picture cropping, bleeds, intense typefaces on the edges, high contrast of style and size, and sharp alignment. Last step, add the text in Miller sized to hit the baseline, set the sponsors below that, and we're done. Looks pretty easy. It was surprisingly easy.

I experimented a bit with type widths and sizes. Here's a version with her first name wider. But the basic configuration worked from the start and that's because of the rectangles. So this is an easy style to work in. Here's the same design in all black. I love this. Strong photo in free space, then the type, imagery, everything in a narrow band across the top. It moves your eye, it has texture, contrast, all that.

There are no foreign elements, like curves for example. It's pure. The other cool thing about this type is it can run vertically too. Super big photo, even more tightly cropped, same rule of thirds. Again, you can fudge a bit depending on your image. And now we'll just stack the type this way. First name, second name, live, tuck the second photo in there, our tiny type.

Yates Pavilion, date and time in Druk. Note the tight line spacing. And finally, the Miller text, aligned right like everything else. And it just carries your eye down the page. It's classy, it doesn't look contrived. One other way to do it unique to this type is to create a built block.

Jakira Maki, this time the same width, so Jakira is bigger, then live, then bring the date and time and the photo into the block. Add back Yates Pavilion, our tiny type aligned here, and then the text, which can now be aligned left, which is easier to read, and we're done.

I like this a lot. It's an incredible format. It's radical, it's bold, it's classy, and it's surprisingly easy to do. So that's what I mean by making bold moves. High contrast, tall, wide, near the edges, all that, that's what design looks like. And that's your design for today, see you next time.