The above gallery contains my final 2 type specimen posters that showcases the typeface that of ‘ITC Avant Garde Gothic’. The process of creating these two posters started with inspiration from retro 70’s typefaces, of which I undertook considerable research in selecting a font that appealed to me, first I selected the typeface of ‘Amelia’ and created a yellow submarine yellow and black styled piece, however upon learning of its ‘Display’ origins and lack of variation between weights, I decided to scrap this idea and continue my research into finding an appropriate typeface that followed the brief more effectively. I came across the below image that showcases various popular fonts used throughout the 70’s thus settling on the Avant-Garde typeface. I found the below images to be particularly helpful in giving me ideas of layout, style and the colour scheme that I used in my final pieces. I decided not to use the ‘Avant Garde’ logo from the magazine that inspired the creation of the typeface because it cannot be replicated exactly using the font as it is a one-off design made specifically for the magazine and therefore would be misleading. During my research, I looked into various car manufacturers from the 70s to find inspiration from the style and colour schemes that was used at the time, from here I found the below type specimen poster for a Lancia Stratos that I found extremely appealing and decided to save these colours as swatches, but did not choose this colour scheme until later in my design. Below, you can see the various points of design leading up to my final pieces, especially for the first of the posters as I wanted both to follow the same principles. Initially, I went for a blue background juxtaposed with the green and grey from the Lancia poster, however I felt this lacked contrast and deemed too repetitive, I decided then to add another colour to improve contrast, but this did not work as effectively as I thought it would, thus I removed the colour, added different strokes to the text, altered the alignment and found the appropriate purple to match the colour scheme. After the final design, I decided to attempt the posters from a different angle, with the first, I followed the Lancia poster more closely to try and replicate this with my own design but without copying it and with the second poster I followed the design principles of that of the yellow and orange Avant Garde poster below. In conclusion, I am proud of my final pieces and I found them considerably more effective the longer I studied the posters that first inspired me and in trying different techniques to communicate the same theme.
Jake Roberts - Portfolio 