OUGD503 - Banner Design Brief - Further Design Developments

In evaluating initial design developments, it was decided that the approach which would work most effectively in communicating my intentions was to play with both text and image, helping to provide some extra clarity for potential new students, parents and visitors who may not already know about the ASPIRE system and what it stands for. This approach designed larger letterforms to appear in white in order to stand out from the coloured backgrounds. Smaller text was then placed into white boxes to produce a small element of consistency between these. The shape of the box was taken from the shape of tabs featured on Whitecoate School's website.

Following peer criticism, it was suggested, however that the black outlines of these text boxes were too thick which drew some attention away from the other aspects of the banner designs. This was therefore modified in reducing the thickness of the stroke so that they were of the same width as the larger letterforms, helping to bring these two elements together. It was decided to keep the boxes since it helped to produce a playful, comic-book aesthetic which matched the chosen typeface and conveyed a sense of action which young children could potentially familiarise with.

Another development based on feedback, was to make the colours brighter since children are more attracted to such colours. However, it was decided not to up this too much as to not make the background colours overpowering and distracting of the main elements of design, which could also start to cause eye strain if looked at for prolonged periods of time.

Since research into colour psychology also suggested that colours can have significant effects on a child's physical and emotional behaviours, and when used in abundance can produce worse effects. For this reason, it was decided to stick with the chosen colour scheme as, if the colours were too overpowering, this could have a bad effect on the pupil's learning behaviours within school which would limit students in being able to reach the aims of the ASPIRE systems which these banners are specifically visualising.