Introduction & Planning
As part of training for certification in Adobe Illustrator, the instructor asked us to create an event poster using the skills we had learned up to this point. As such, I began sketching designs for such an event poster, looking at local events' as well as national ones' posters for inspiration. Some of the local events I created posters for, as well as two election posters as an experiment in composition.
I eventually settled on creating a graduation poster for a local high school, as I had an idea to make the concept for it more dynamic. Thus, I made a larger sketch of a poster composition which I went with.
Beginning stages
Setting up
I wanted the poster to be decently large, so for my purposes I set up a document that would output a 24" (2') by 36" (3') poster. I also added a 1/4 inch bleed to the document to make sure it was compatible for offset printing. However, as the printer being used to print training projects was RGB, I set that to the document color mode.
Background
As the sketch depicts a graduation cap being tossed into the air, I decided to make the background depict a semi-cloudy sky. Starting off that background was simple enough - I just made a rectangle with a sky-like gradient.
However, creating the clouds would be slightly more challenging, as I wanted the clouds to not be the exact same - but at the same time, it would be difficult to create and recreate each cloud, one at a time. A small compromise was made as a result - while I would have to use a set symbol as a base, I could vary the sizes and shapes using symbol tools.
Main design elements
The graduation cap
As the cap was going to be center stage in the design, it was the first main element I created. This was accomplished mainly using basic shapes - though I made a composite shape to get the cylindrical shape I needed. It was also a lot bigger at first as to make creating it easier, but afterwards I shrunk it down to a decent size.
The tassel for the cap was what was needed next, and since I wanted it to form '2020' I decided to make it using the pencil tool first. This was easily the hardest part of the project, and the undo shortcut saw plenty of use here. Eventually I found a shape that was [somewhat] legible and that I was satisfied with, and fleshed it out from there before putting it into the actual design. (Of course, this is not how tassels actually look, but an actual tassel would not work for the purpose I had in mind.)
2020-shaped tassel's bare line, before I made it look similar to an actual tassel, the same tassel design given some depth and some fraying at the end, a color version with shading and overlaps, and finally the tassel gone over with eraser strokes to give it a rope-like appearance.
Cap with tassel attached.
Typography
Next up was the actual text on the poster itself. First off was the main text at the top, which was split in two down the middle by the passage of the tassel. Thus it was a matter of using kerning to separate the two letters. I also adjusted the orientation of the tassel and positioning of the cap in order to get it to go down the middle split. I also added a baseline which I split using the eraser tool and deleting the middle portion left behind.
Top text layout with baseline, with the guide used for positioning shown. Second image shows a change of font.
The next step was making the text at the bottom, which would be information for the event in question as well as the date. I thus went and got the information from the school's website, and added that in alongside some other text.
Last-minute changes
Background addition
As the event is taking place at Red Rocks, CO, I decided to add in some background detail alluding to the location. Therefore I added such 'red rocks' to the bottom of the background (and got rid of the clouds there). Essentially i made a bunch of individual rocks, copied them and made them darker for shading, and then used the trim pathfinder to make it a united object.
Final product
