Draft Graphic Design Project

Over a couple months now, I have been imagining what starting my own piano-teaching business would be like. Part of this has been picturing how the poster for advertising this business would look. Therefore, when I heard about this Graphic Design Project, I already had a well-developed idea for it. What I have posted here is the manifestation of that long-held idea, my poster for piano improvisation lessons.

Since I have thought over this poster’s design during my daily life (without sitting down to research things), there are not many individual inspirations I can name. Most of the design elements popped into my head naturally. However, I can at least name where I took the concept for my theoretical business from. It is from Chopin Academy, a music school I took most of my private piano lessons from. I have the link to this school’s website below.

http://www.chopinacademy.com/

While making the poster, I wanted to portray a message of “having fun” and “being laid back” in the unified whole. One of the most important steps for doing this was to use an appropriate mix of colors. To establish my message’s figurative background of fun and excitement, I used intense colors in the actual background. The fact that they cover a keyboard is intentional, since this way people can interpret the keyboard as the source of the fun.

I did not want the colors to be too exciting, though. In addition to feeling fun, I wanted the poster to feel relaxed. That is why each background color is analogous to the one next to it, so that there is no alarming contrast between them. That is also why I gave the gray boxes the color they have. I wanted these boxes to pop from the background, but I did not want them to do so in a surprising way by using a color more vivid than gray.

Speaking of the boxes, I designed the two lower-right ones with Gestalt Theory in mind. I aimed to associate them with one another by making them very similar. They have the same shape, same color, and same style of text on them; and they are both are placed near photos with dull color schemes. I also associated them by putting them in close proximity. The point in all this is to make people view these boxes as a single item separate from the rest of the poster. After all, I need them to seem separate from everything else, since I have important info on them I want people to easily notice.

Three of my images are simply photos I took in my bedroom. The fourth image is a cartoon I designed. I thought my business could be more appealing if it had a brightly-colored mascot, so I drew a character I call “Bird Guy” who could fill that role. I then photographed him, put him in Photoshop, and edited him so his colors would look more impressive.

I did not have a hard time finding images, but I did have a hard time using Photoshop. It took me hours to figure out how to make the background’s rainbow effect. Through trial and error, I eventually found a process for this. I sliced up the keyboard image with the “Polygonal Lasso Tool,” then I made each slice into its own layer through “Layer Via Copy.” I made six “Hue/Saturation” layers, then I gave each its own color. Lastly, I attached each “Hue/Saturation” layer to a keyboard slice by making them “Layer Masks.” For certain, making your vision a reality in Photoshop is difficult as a beginner. My advice to other beginners would be to set aside enough time for figuring out how to accomplish what you want.