This task involved drafting several potential advertisements for a performance of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. After several rounds of revisions, my final design solution included symbolic use of a bottle of poison and the spilled contents containing a 1960's inspired text treatment that represented the "free love" of the protagonists.
The final design utilizes a bold regal shade of purple to symbolize mystique and romance. Its flat colors are easy to print and stand out with their simplicity. The stylized typeface of the subheading is remniscent of old English theatre yet is still easy to read compared to blackletter type. The title lettering changed from the sketch to the final design, but it was hand-drawn to capture the loose flow of liquid on paper.
Previous sketches:
The rose-bearing corpse silhouette of my first sketch created a stark dichotomy between the light of life and dark of death. It had a lot of negative space but broke the classic rule of design that states "never cut a page in half." Ultimately, it failed to communicate the youth and romance of the piece as well as the other sketches.
The second sketch featured a spilled vial of poison, which is a rarely used piece of imagery where Romeo and Juliet are concerned (roses, hearts, daggers, and other imagery are more common, and thus less appealing). The final version did away with the dagger but kept the slanted justification of the body copy. Two pieces of death imagery seemed redundant.
My third and final sketch featured two lovers whose embrace forms a heart. The type treatment may look familiar because it was used in the final design, but this sketch failed to communicate the doomed fate of the protagonists. It is overly sentimental.
Nigel French inspired designs:
These designs are inspired by Nigel French. Each has its own merits, but the black and red color palette as well as the dagger/heart/rose imagery are overused and fail to stand out. They were great practice though.