Poster

Rationale

Joanna Hardy
Project: Poster
2 / 23 / 09

Event & Issue:
I designed this event for the Nautica South Beach Triathlon, which is an event supporting St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. It is an event that takes place on April 5, 2009 in Miami Beach, Florida. It involves a half-mile ocean swim parallel to South Beach, a 19-mile bike course that crosses over Miami Beach and a 4-mile run alongside the Art Deco District in Miami. Anyone can register to participate in the event as a St. Jude Charity Athlete. This includes participating with corporate teams, professional triathlon athletes and celebrities in South Beach. All participants will be helping St. Jude Hospital with 100% of the profits raised at the event benefiting the hospital.

Visual Message:
I wanted my poster to come off with a clear, bold message but still with a somewhat simple design. The combination of the image of the man and the bold images come across with a strong tone.

Audience:
The poster is designed to target athletic people, mainly younger to middle aged adults. It would be for people who would want to participate in an intense event, but who also are interested and able to donate a good amount of money to a cause. It would be placed in gyms and many types of public spaces.

Design Strategy:
I think my poster comes off strong with the main image the viewer is drawn to as the man. The man is representative of the whole event, a triathlon, because I needed to find one image that could display this. I wanted the muscular man to lead into the large white capital letters, which together they show the toughness of the event. But even more, they both are showing that what the organization represents is even tougher. I made a comparison between what an athlete has to endure in a triathlon to what children who have to fight life-threatening diseases must face. The path in the background is there, but purposely does not stand out too strongly because it is meant to represent the path of the triathlon. The text reading “the strength to endure” is clearly in larger, stronger type of a typeface because that is what the viewer should be drawn to along with the man. It is supposed to represent what the whole poster is about. The small blurb is there to further explain what St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital does and also relate that to the triathlon.

Style Sheet:
DISPLAY TYPE: (The and To): Copperplate Gothic Bold, 65/78, metrics kerning, tracking – 0
(Strength and Endure): Copperplate Gothic Bold, 75/90, metrics kerning, tracking- 0
EVENT TITLE: Helvetica Regular, 47/56.4, metrics kerning, tracking – 0
EVENT DATE: Helvetica Bold, 17/20.4, metrics kerning, tracking – 0
SMALL PARAGRAPH: Helvetica Regular, 14/16.8, metrics kerning, tracking – 0
WEBSITE: Helvetica Regular, 18/21.6, metrics kerning, tracking- 0

Extras:
I wanted the colors to come across with a loud, strong mood that the viewer feels when they think about a triathlon and children fighting life-threatening diseases. The deep, dark red is used as the background because red is a color associated with fighting, endurance and emotion. I feel it is an appropriate color when designing something about a difficult event and more importantly, a tough cause. The metal gray of the man is supposed to further enhance the strength of the character for the cause and the event. The darker red of the road fades in the background purposely and the white and light gray of the text is brought to the front because it holds important information.