A woman for which I did a business card design donated money to the organization so they could hire a graphic designer to rebrand their homework assistance program. She recommended me. They wanted to rename the program from Village Tutors to The Homework Club.
Although the majority of the kids, at this time, are K-12, they also wanted to catch the interest of teenagers. What would be the sweet spot for the various age groups? I started thinking about anime, graphic novels, and comic strips. Perhaps have the poster tell a story in comic strip style?
First I took several pictures of the interior and exterior of the building where the tutoring/homework assistance takes place. Then I spent a couple of days observing the comings and goings of the kids and tutors, and how the place operated.
I also had to keep in mind that they wanted 2 sizes: 8.5x11 and 11x17 for print and one for the web. When I design for print and web I always design in CMYK. Converting CMYK to RGB is easy. But converting RGB to CYMK has it's problems; one of which is the loss in color quality. There can also be problems with the use of mesh and gradients.
I also had to keep in mind that they wanted 2 sizes: 8.5x11 and 11x17 for print and one for the web. When I design for print and web I always design in CMYK. Converting CMYK to RGB is easy. But converting RGB to CYMK has it's problems; one of which is the loss in color quality. There can also be problems with the use of mesh and gradients.
I offered two options to the Village Tutors representative. One was a regular type of poster and the other was the comic strip style.
They loved the comic strip style. All the figures were drawn and added to the photos in Photoshop. The photos were placed in Illustrator where effects were added to make the photos look more like drawings. All the dialogue and information were added in Illustrator.
With any design offered to the client, there are usually changes. The final will often be different than the comp or draft. In this case the client wanted all the characters to be drawn instead of using photographs of people. The only photographed character was replaced with a drawing. They wanted the girl to be more upbeat rather than resisting help and they wanted the font size for The Homework Club information increased. One suggestion to accomplish increasing the size of the font was to eliminate a couple of the panels. I assured them I could increase the size of the font without having to eliminate any panels.
The two images below are the final products approved by the client. As you can see, there were slight adjustments between the 11x17 and 8.5x11.
I enjoy all the projects I work on but this one was one of the more enjoyable efforts I've done. Doing something completely different is exciting, fun, and can stretch your imagination.
With any design offered to the client, there are usually changes. The final will often be different than the comp or draft. In this case the client wanted all the characters to be drawn instead of using photographs of people. The only photographed character was replaced with a drawing. They wanted the girl to be more upbeat rather than resisting help and they wanted the font size for The Homework Club information increased. One suggestion to accomplish increasing the size of the font was to eliminate a couple of the panels. I assured them I could increase the size of the font without having to eliminate any panels.
The two images below are the final products approved by the client. As you can see, there were slight adjustments between the 11x17 and 8.5x11.
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| 11x17 |
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| 8.5 x 11 |
