The "Read" poster is a campaign by a city library system
to promote reading. My basic concept is to imply that there is a lot of
exciting things in books and that it is cool to read them.
I first envisioned a posterized graphic style that simplified
the colors into dark and light values. This reduces the information "noise"
to minimum by merely reducing the number of colors.
Exaggerating the colors gives the project larger than life
dimension. This abstract study almost obscures the information "an eye
glass lens" but is visually striking.
This image implies that the viewer is looking at a book through
sunglasses as he views the poster. Asking the viewer to pretend that he
is on the beach and this is the book he is reading. To associate books
and people is the essence of the information to be conveyed. The next step
is to make that association less passive.
These two images begin to pull together the ideas set forth
in the previous frames, and to work out the details of simplified color
fields. The one on the left implies that the man reading has things going
on in his head because of the book. What's not immediately obvious is what
he is looking at. It's not an instantly recognizable book shape. The second
image solves that problem.
Here in the final design we see the wonderful things to be
found in books are exploding forth from the book it's self. The simplification
of the reader's features allows viewers to more readily identify themselves
with the image. The type in the word "READ" builds on the contrast and
balance of color. The typestyle changes every other letter as does the
color and weight. This difficult feat works by balancing the perceived "value".
The red type is extremely bold. The thin type is capable of having the
same "value" by being larger and of a brighter color, thereby carrying
the group as one word rather than two sets of two characters.
The book and it's reader are the primary focal point of the
image, this is the hook to capture the attention. The word "READ" is secondary
and completes the concept for the viewer. The sponsor's line is third
level importance, it's relatively small text size is increased in value
by the use of the maximum color value "white" which exists no other place
in the graphic except one, the pages of the primary symbol, the book.
