Dark-light contrast
Three posters for three target audiences. The film “Dog Day Afternoon” aired for the first time in 1975. It’s a comic crime drama with the plot of three amateurs trying to rob a bank.
The project
Creating a visual with three different colour palettes; the colour palettes have to be reached from photographs of nature.
The goal is to target a different audience with each poster.
Poster dimensions: B1 (707 mm x 1000 mm)
The whole project
Typography
Font used: Hobo Std Medium (sans-serif typeface)
Size of font used: 27pt, 48pt and 90pt
Originally designed by Morris Fuller Benton for American Type Founders in 1910. In those times typographers started making the first sans-serif typefaces known as Grotesque or Gothic due to their rejection of the elegance of serif styles. Hobo is unique for having virtually no straight lines or descenders. I think its ideal to use to showcase this comedy film.
Legibility
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) define the minimum colour contrast ratio for legible text.
Level AA requires a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text.
Level AAA requires a contrast ratio of at least 7:1 for normal text and 4.5:1 for large text.
Level AA requires a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text.
Level AAA requires a contrast ratio of at least 7:1 for normal text and 4.5:1 for large text.
I checked legibility on the Adobe colour website which follows the WCAG 2.1 rules. I wanted to satisfy the requirements for the AA level.
The illustration
I created a sketch for the poster in Illustrator. It is a scene in which the robber came out in front of the bank to see a large crowd of citizens.
The sketch
Color palettes
With Canva Color palette generator I extracted colours from photos to get the colour palettes. Next, I run the colours through the Adobe Color: Color Wheel to find out the exact value of tone, lightness and saturation. From there I got the three colour palettes each with its own important elements. The first is a dark-light contrast, the second has a dark and cold harmony, and the third is a warm-cold contrast.
Dark-light contrast — the first colour palette
Poster for publication in 1975
The poster is intended for publication in 1975 when the film was released.
It gives an impression of the film’s theme, the colours were used to evoke everyday life.
It gives an impression of the film’s theme, the colours were used to evoke everyday life.
The dark background is used to calm the saturation of the bright colours in the palette. Orange and brown are suitable for background elements because they are of the same tone, but different brightness. The most important information is highlighted in a bright colour.
The picture used to get the colours for the first palette
The colour palette n°1
I used dark brown for the background and very light yellow to highlight the main information (title) to create a contrast of dark and light. For secondary information, I can't use orange because it would blend too much with brown, so I'll use it for background elements. Due to its low saturation number, pink is good for extracting secondary information.
From the colour palette, I assembled the colour combinations of text and background. In the pictures below you can see which options can achieve text legibility. The optimal combination is yellow (#F7DB4C) text colour on a brown (#401B05) background (ratio of 11.03:1). Secondary information achieves a ratio of 7.07:1 on the same background.
Combination of all colour text on all colour backgrounds
