Exercise - If the face fits

1) A short story in a women's magazine

I have four fonts that are available in regular and bold style

• Arial
• Eras
• Gill sans
• Bedoni

I'm not sure that I'm confident enough to mix typefaces so I'm sticking with these.

I mocked up all four using Lorem Ipsum as dummy text for the story

 I think Arial was the most readable. Magazine stories often have illustration within the text so I chose a drawing I did previously of a girl looking thoughtful

 and sat her behind the text

 I think she's a bit better if she's bigger and I used the airbrush tool to put some soft colour on the page.

2) An advertisement in a parish magazine asking for more helpers for the flower rota

I wanted something a bit more informal for this, something that might appeal to the target audience. My available choices were:

• Poor Richard
• Perpetua
• Berlin sans
• Modern No. 20

 I like Poor Richard best as its clean and readable.

To attract attention it needs flowers

I think both flowers looks too busy

and prefer this layout

3) A poster to advertise an after school club for boys 13-14

Lots of choices here. It's possible to use a novelty typeface but I wanted something that was easily readable as the target audience might not all be good readers. It needed punch to grab their attention.
I had a long list of typefaces that I tried, these four were the main contenders

After careful consideration I chose Gill Ultra Bold as I thought it was "shouty" enough but still easy to read.

I jiggled the words around a bit to make them more eye catching. It needs a background for the mock up. I thought of icons to lay randomly around the poster

I tried making a geometric background that had a lively feel by playing with the tools on Paint Shop

 I then overlaid the lettering. I'm not sure the words are readable enough or that it would attract the target audience

I thought of putting the words over the image of a playing field and in my research stumbled on pictures of schoolboys playing football

 I wanted a simple image that didn't distract from the text so I redrew the picture from my first drawing then traced it to try and get the main elements

 I want the club to appeal to boys who don't play football so I used just part of the image but that's not very clear so I used a negative image and overlaid the words.

It needs more colour to attract attention

The lettering is a dark red to contrast with the green (I couldn't use purple against the yellow for boys) Maybe I should try orange/blue?

Orange is a difficult colour to get on my computer but I like this one best. It would need some adjustments at the printers.

My tutor thought that this was over reliant on the image and I'd been unadventurous with the typeface  so here goes

 I've used Stencil and Lucida handwriting

 Maybe the yellow and green was wrong?

 I seem to have come back to a black background. I'm still not really happy with this though I do think it's an improvement. I'm not convinced that the fonts available to me are quite what I'm looking for......

4) A flyer for an engagement party

Ok I'm not used to nightclub fliers so I did some Internet research. There seem to be a lot of pinks, purples and blues, lots of scantilly clad girls which might not be appropriate for an engagement. I liked this and there were some good ideas at http://www.designrelated.com/inspiration/view/JenSilverman/entry/3415/83-fantastic-nightclub-flyer-samples
It seems possible, indeed normal, to mix fonts, and it is an opportunity to use interesting backgrounds. Some designs have great artwork.

I started by focusing on the text and originally went for Broadway and Mistral on a gradated background

I did some doodles in my sketchbook to try and think of an alternative to the scantily clad girls and decided on a couple toasting their guests which I think would fit with the tone of the text and the jokey gregarious couple it implys

 I put them on my prepared background and played with the colour

(This one's too dull)

 I tried a lot of variations which I won't bore you with by posting here. This one (above) was one of the better ones but it's not punchy enough. I was trying to get away from pink and purple in deference to Josh. I also decided that the text was not "nightclubby" enough though I like the handwritten effect for the jokey bits. I changed to Reservoir Grunge and Segoe Print.

The colours aren't right, it's too busy (even for a nightclub flyer which is supposed to be busy) and I'm struggling to get the lettering to stand out over the gradated background. I like the figures but it's time for a new back ground. I looked again at the samples on the  internet and played again with Paintshop to produce this

Please believe me that it's a lot darker in the original

So with text you get

 

Below I've adjusted the brightness and contrast which has made the blues more lairy but is a little bit more like my original