Headline Development

Some quick, early ideas for the headline brief.

After a few early ideas I settled on a layout similar to this. I wanted to keep my design really simple. I was originally planning to screen print the design.


After seeing these postage stamps from the 1912 Gordon Bennett balloon race I was quite interested in making my design in the style of a postage stamp.


Here I looked at some more adventurous use of colour. However I felt that my design was too similar to the postage stamps and I wanted to do something more typographic. I'm not an Illustrator and I felt this idea was relying too heavily on the image of the balloon.


So, I further developed the hand drawn typography which I had previously only used for the word 'Paris' so that it could become the centre piece of the poster.

I feel much happier going with this direction.


Experimentation with colour.


This is the stage I am at now. I did a test on A3 newsprint in sky blue ink. I chose newsprint because I wanted something fragile and ephemeral, like it really was a poster for the 1906 Paris balloon race. Newsprint also has an aged quality which I felt was appropriate.

I have to do some fine tuning to the design and make my final decision on colour and paper stock and the piece will be finished.