Poster Design of
Van Gogh's Life & Work
Theme and Inspiration
As someone who significantly influences my lifelong love for painting and art, Van Gogh has always been my inspiration with his masterpieces and life stories. When given this project of creating an alphabet, it didn't take long for me to decide to honor Vincent van Gogh as the theme.
So I quickly sketched out a rough idea about laying out the letters like a gallery exhibition with applying Grid layout. Each letter is associated with a word that is either an important subject of Van Gogh's painting or important people in his life.
Manuscript
1st Version
The 1st version I created was applied with a background picture, which is one of my favorite paintings of Van Gogh's - Almond Blossoms. However, the effects were not what I expected. After analysis, problems may come from:
- First, the background painting was covered by the letters and overall it looks a little busy.
- Second, I choose the brush feeling typography to echo Van Gogh's painting style, but it feels too lively and casual, which might need some adjustment.
First version alphabet
2nd Version
To give this alphabet a more vintage vibe, I replaced the previous typography with "Charlotte" and "Baskerville". The former typography features a hand script feeling which brings back the age of post-impressionism, and the later serif font looks vintage but not rigid.
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The last change was to apply a subtraction of the background, where I replaced the painting background with a plain canvas. The new background not only carries canvas texture but also elevates the alphabet content.
Aa
Charlotte
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
1234567890
Aa
Baskerville
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
1234567890
