The Design Poster Challenge Origins
As a graphic designer and creative person — I hope so — I keep learning, doing, and experimenting with things, both digital and analog, creating something new and different every day.
I am always developing my inspiration and ideas. I am also collecting my favorite pieces of work in the safe place of my hard disk —not that safe—, which I can consult when I lack motivation. It brings me enthusiasm and pushes me to create nice stuff.
Where does this challenge come from?
At the end of 2018, on Skillshare I saw a poster issued from a challenge made by Vasjen Katro who created one poster a day during one year and titled Baugasm. I watched the video, and I immersed myself in his project named Baugasm.
I was enthusiastic about all of his good works!
The posters he made were looking good from the layout and the elements he used in them. It brings me enough motivation to start my project and see what I can do.
The challenge seems the best way to sharpen my eyes, develop a personal style, and find my voice. Before I started, I knew it would be an arduous task. To my ears, it sounds crazy to create one poster a day for one year!
Motivation is just a start. The next step is to transform it into determination
After a month of having weighed up all the pros and cons of such a challenge, I thought it could be a good idea to help me become a better designer. I am also a bit shy. I thought the challenge would be an opportunity to push me onto the center stage. Exposing myself and letting The Internet know what I am doing will force me to continue the project all over the year. Once launched, no turning back!
It also can be seen as a new year’s resolution.
Doubts and Fears
However, several questions came to my mind: How should I start it? Am I good enough? Do I have time to spend on something time-consuming every day during an entire year? What’s in it for me? What if I am stuck with ideas? What if I am too busy? Many more questions were on the way.
To tell the truth, I was getting overly concerned. I think you already got it, and you know that feeling too.
Besides my doubts and fear, I started to creep in about the universe. My capacity to realize the project well. Do I have what it takes? What if I fail?
Existential questions and other matters in people’s lives have been overpassed easily due to my experience of life. I made a firm decision, and I decided to jump into the challenge without overthinking too much! After 30 years on earth, you can answer the half-answered questions of your youth relatively quickly, go further, be more profound, and narrower your answers. At that moment, I get more confident about my capacity to solve any problem that I may encounter.
How to make one Poster Design a day everyday during one year?
So, after resolving the questions about fears and doubts, I needed to help myself feel more secure. I decided to use some restrictions or constraints because they are graphic designers’ friends.
At the beginning, I came up with two constraints.
Firstly, use the same typographic layout and pieces of information on the corner except for the date and the poster’s number, which will change incrementally according to the date. I know that I can significantly improve it.
Secondly, use the same picture of Apollo made by Kozlik Mozlik that I bought on Istockphotos on every poster I will make.
I finally decided to add another restriction. To use the same typography named Molde made by Letritas (Juan Pablo de Gregorio) who is a kind of variation of the well-known font family Helvetica. I bought this font via Fontspring for a couple of bucks because she has many different weights, and they will help create different visuals.
I also occasionally allow myself to break the rules by adding new rules or finding themes, topics, sentences, quotes, images, vectors, pixels, or any graphics to play with or inspire myself to create my posters. But I won’t use them for more than one week.
I will also try to collaborate with someone else, such as other designers, illustrators, artists, or even musician. Althought it looks like a good idea, who will want to cooperate with me on a poster? That is maybe another challenge in the challenge.
Conclusion
So, I was committed to doing the challenge on the day before the new year! Whatever happens, I will see it and deal with all the kinds of problems that will happen.
As a final point. After preparing some stuff for the challenge, such as deskew the Appolo Statue and creating the posters’ layout, I feel confident and enthusiastic about this new experience.
Let’s go!
