Visual Hierarchy: Pittsburgh City Theatre
- Describe the range of typographic variables that can be used to define your design options
- Apply variables effectively to text to draw attention to specific pieces of information and aid the identification of content groups
- Explain the effectiveness/ineffectiveness of combining variables to engage an audience and enhance the clarity of content
Fresh. Bold. Provocative. These are words used to describe Pittsburgh’s 40-year old contemporary space that fosters community, creativity, diversity, and collaboration.
Initial Research
Located in South Side Flats, The Pittsburgh City Theatre Company is a professional theatre located downtown. They specialize in contemporary plays, live music, and community bonding. With a 254-seat main stage and a 112-seat studio space, the events are largely populated and impactful, despite being indoors. This fosters an atmosphere of traditional closeness and diversity brought together by shared connection.
“City Theatre’s mission is to provide an artistic home for the development and production of contemporary plays of substance and ideas that engage and challenge a diverse audience.” — Statement by the company
With its 45th running season, City Theatre began as a small, black-box theatre known for producing imaginative, contemporary American works. Over time, artistic directors brought in more diverse writers to stage, and the theatre is now known for always bringing new and distinct shows to the audience.
Audience: most of the visitors are young adults to middle-aged looking for refined themes and matured humor, but at the same time a fulfilling 2–3 hrs with spirit and new surprises.
As displayed by the website, there’s a multitude of upcoming events by various artist, actors, and musicians. The interesting thing to note is that the events are not siloed to a specific category: their performances for gospel jazz, school plays, comedy skits, and other unique genres.
The events
Although I wasn’t able to attend the show myself due to time conflicts, I spoke to John about the ambience of the theatre. According to him, everything felt very fresh, unique and inviting. The promotional posters were with a bright pink and yellow, the stage was set with a moody blue-purple, and the performers for “Live From the Edge” were all people of color. When describing the event, John laughed and pointed out how there wasn’t a single minority within the crowd; it was all on the performers.
What makes a poster stand out?
In the long run, a poster is only as strong as it is amongst others. Looking at this bulletin board littered with overlapping tabloids and letter-sized papers, it’s easy to see how even decently-designed posters could get lost in the midst.
In class, we analyzed what types of posters were stronger than others, and why. One particularly strong poster was the Ronny Cheng advertisement, as it provides dynamic movement, warm colors, and the text and content are rather large. It sticks out like a sore thumb in the best way. Other aspects to consider were contrast, alignment, sizing, and outdoor lighting.
Bulletin Board Library:
Bulletin Board Analysis:
- Many walls have different background colors (green, black, red, etc.) that change how much a poster stands out. For example, the red bulletin dampens the impact of orange, so the “Blue Screen” anime poster stands out the most. If the Ronny Cheng poster was put next to it, there’s a good chance that it would be less visually striking.
- Sizing matters a lot. After a certain point, posters begin to pile up and become repetitive. While familiarity breeds comfort, it doesn’t guarantee success when posters and posters are taking up space and covering it.
- While you can’t guarantee a poster to have the most stand-out color (due to differently colored backgrounds), it helps to have contrast within the poster itself. For example, I found the “Originals” poster on the dark green bulletin to stand out decently well, despite also having a dark background. This may be due to the curly font standing out from the rigidity of the rectangular structure, or the striking white colored text that makes it pop more.
10/26/21: Visual Hierarchy — text only
We received the required text for our poster, and I sectioned off the areas that I intuitively found the most important. Or at the very least, things I would emphasize as of now, without proper C-mini hierarchy knowledge. The me in two weeks is probably going to think I’m dumb as rocks looking back at this.
I immediately took in these factors:
- The top and bottom lines, or the company name and website link respectively
- Any known dates or numbers
- Any titles of events
As of now, the names of the acts are a little difficult to find, as they don’t have much going for them. They may be capitalized more often, but so do the performers’ names.
Thus, we began a rapid exercise of emphasizing certain lines, and seeing how that affects readability:
Strokewidth: Bolded lines really do a lot too quickly, because I fear that too many bolded words mashed together is reminiscent of an ink splatter on a calligraphy page: you can’t see a bloody thing. Thus, I personally find a preference in the first one. I think dates are important, but they already have numbers going for them, you know? The City Theatre and event titles don’t quite have that much going for them. Plus, they’re lost in the sea of other texts that were unable to segregate through line spacing or margins (for now). The 4th iteration is what I find the most horrific, as it’s too much black text in such close quarters.
Linespacing: I personally have always been a fan of linespacing, as it gives room to breathe. However, I also have a personal history of creating too much line space, and the text starts to feel isolated and awkward. For now, I’d say the first and third iteration are decent game. The second iteration has event titles estranged from the rest of their family, and the fourth one is straight up misleading: the isolated dates make it see like the information under it is for said date, when it’s the other way around.
Flushed-left two margins: This was when sectioning off the various events felt more natural, as they were still within proximity of each other. I think the biggest challenge was separating the event information from the company name, and figuring out where the dates fall under that as well.
At this point Claire told me that — while we are indeed aiming to understand the “best” hierarchy — there’s value in intentionally emphasizing poor areas to really understand the flip side: what’s the worst way you can organize this information? Thus, I created some extra artboards that I think really stretch past the qualification for ideal.
Flushed-left three margins: While this also added a breath of “natural” readability, I think that the number of possibly good iterations definitely decreased. There’s a certain threshold of the “tab” key one can create before it either begins to look like a text skeleton with scoliosis, or a spiral staircase. I think the third iteration is the best example of that. I don’t like that one.
Linespacing + 2 stroke weights: I enjoyed the additive process of this one; personally I’m leaning towards the third one. With the addition of the bolded stroke style, there’s less of a need to space things out for sectioning content. Thus, iterations such as the 4th one (where it looks like the titles are screaming for the body text that’s miles away in exile) aren’t as necessary.
Stroke weight + horizontal shift: This one also felt more comfortable and put-together. As I’ve said before, it’s important to be cautious over the way margins are incorporated. Despite this, I liked how cohesive this experimentation felt. Things felt connected, but were still legible. Personally, I find myself leaning towards either the first or second iteration.
10/27/21: Size, imagery and color
SIZE
Immediate self-analysis:
- I tend to left-align my headers
- Even though I take bottom-heavy margins and spacing into consideration, I still try to fill the entire page with text. There could be more done with white space.
- Visually hierarchy isn’t too bad, but everything feels awfully cookie-cutter and simplistic. There could be more “oomph” to everything.
Thus, I personally find my third iteration to be the strongest. There’s more contrast in text sizing, white space is used better, and even though it’s still not the most interesting layout, I think there’s greater potential.
Noteworthy comments:
- How can you stretch with the directionality/angles of the text? For example, you can increase dynamic movement with unorthodox angles
- For text rotated 90 degrees, try and make it so that the first letter of the word is at the top (it’s easier for us to tilt our heads to the right, as opposed to the left)
- If text is blown up, is top-down hierarchy really necessary? If City Theatre is the largest font size out of the rest, then it won’t matter too much whether it’s placed at the top or the bottom because it will be seen first regardless.
COLOR
When I think of “theatre,” I imagine stark contrast, lots of gold, and brown, warm undertones. When I think of “contemporary,” I visualize complimentary pairs: of oranges and yellows and cool blue accents. The challenge is combining these two aspects, blending together the rich history City Theatre contains while still maintaining the unique freshness each performance brings.
For my first take, I thought about my immediate concept of Pittsburgh City Theatre.
First Row: Originally, I viewed it as a grandiose, majestic area flecked with golds and rich, warm colors. This was my initial idea, and so the first row was me playing with browns, dark tones, and contrast in lighting
Second Row: Next, I played more with the “contemporary” idea. Specifically: yellow. I kept the dark tones, but began to experiment with more complimentary colors
Third Row: I then did a blend of the two experiments, but with light color dominance.
My second page of color iterations were more finitely centered.
Though I did them a bit sloppily, I started thinking more about proportions, primary and secondary colors, and what types of accent colors would be fitting. I also started thinking about textures and potential gradients, essentially anything outside of flat colors.
As of now, I’m intrigued by the purple-green combination, and feel like I can create something interesting out of that. I also am drawn to that specific yellow-orange as an accent color; it’s a nice blend of classy and contemporary.
Claire recommended that I spend a couple hours mindlessly making magazine swatches, so this third page was the most experimental.
I went into more greens and lighter dominant colors, and delved deeper into the orange-yellow accent color spectrum. I also looked into more pinks, rouges, and grays.
I hoped that with a more head-empty approach, I can break apart from my attachment to my initial concepts and be more open-minded with other color palettes. Overall, I enjoyed playing around with colors I was unfamiliar with.
My last magazine-swatch pass was the most in-depth and intentional. Though I may not go through with these color palettes, these four swatches were definitely the most cohesive.
Looking at this photo, I do think the black is much too stark. However, I do enjoy the yellow-purple and yellow-orange combinations. I fear the green-grey is a little too industrialized and not as vivacious as I would’ve liked, but it was fun experimenting with muted colors alongside bright accents.
Overall, I’m leaning towards 1.5, 2.1, 3.4, and 4.1. Using these, I started to make a few condensed swatch colors.
11/2/21
Using Adobe Capture, I picked up the hexadecimals for the magazine swatches. After scanning the colors, I set them as themed swatches on Illustrator and created quick color mockups on my resized posters.
Feedback and Commentary:
- The printer muddles up the colors an awful bit
- From far away, the colors aren’t nearly as stark as I expected them to be. How does ten feet compare to three? To five inches? Start to work on more contrast!
- Work on diagonal lines, breaking away from the grid, and blowing up the words. You’re also allowed to capitalize and separate specific words
11/4/21
IMAGERY
I mostly searched for images that crated a semblance of kinetic energy and contrasting colors. I also hoped to cultivate, rich, warm lighting to create the inviting, atmosphere qualities Pittsburgh City Theatre generates.
For each poster iteration, I took the themes and motifs that encompassed Pittsburgh’s City Theatre and emphasized a certain one:
First, I experimented with the contemporary aspect: the vibrant energy and motion of the performers themselves. This time, the posters relied more on space and color. I personally correlate contemporary with complimentary, so I experimented with rich yellows and purposes with a blurred, photographic abstraction of theatrical performers.
Personal Criticism: While I really loved playing with scale for these iterations (especially the middle one, I think that has a lot of power behind it). It gave too much of a “dance” impression, as opposed to a theatre. Moreover, the negative space from the black personally made me feel that the stage is larger than that of the actual City Theatre.
Next, I looked into the diversity aspect. Something inviting, open, and kind. Perhaps a bit cliche, but successful in a welcoming delivery. I found a nice image with a bright spotlight and open arms, and I thought the lighting contrast and angularity provided good potential.
Personal Criticism: The greatest challenge for this image was the placement of the text in accordance to the composition: I’m apprehensive towards spotlights due to their triangular aspect, and the diagonal slant didn’t help much either.
In-class criticism:
- The image is very strong in comparison to my other posters. Almost every classmate, peer, and even professors automatically leaned towards this poster for the image’s warm, inviting and high-contrast attention grabbers. Moreover, the golden color works well with it
- Vicki: The text could adhere to the image better. As of now, the spotlight really grabs the viewer’s attention, followed by the person’s open arms. In contrast, most of the primary text for this poster is blown up to the sides, which creates a disconnect. What can be done about that? Also, cut off that small light tangent at the waist, play with blending modes, layering and other fun things with the text so it blends with the spotlight more!
- Andrew: Point one, the purple doesn’t work nearly as well as the yellow. Point two, there’s a great opportunity for negative space, but it’s being hindered by the text being placed all over.
- Yoshi: Though the image may be cliche it fits well and there’s a lot of interesting modifications that can be done. Play around with rotations, scaling, and color correction in photoshop. There’s already some good font size contrast, now utilize the rest.
I then emphasized the contemporary aspect in relation to the performances: funky, fresh, and never-before-seen; something that really encapsulates the elation one feels from witnessing the unique shows. I had a lot of fun with these posters, as I don’t often go for the colorful route.
Personal Criticism: A lot of these text placements felt more like magazines than posters, and the layering with the blurred person (who is already pretty difficult to mask) and their shadow didn’t work as well as I wanted it to. There’s also a lot of color going on, and may not be the most successful.
In-class criticism:
- Vicky: The colors are nice, and there’s great room for negative space. but the text is a little all over the place. Especially in the left side, the person and primary title are in two different areas of focus. Aside from that, how can you arrange text without feeling the need to spread it all over?
- Yoshi: If you compare posters 7–9 to 4–6, they both market City Theatre but in drastically different ways: the color of these feels younger and free, as opposed to the earlier posters’ traditional, refined audience. Even if we want “free,” we don’t necessarily want it conveyed at the target audiences’ expense. Instead, we want the freedom to be conveyed in the atmosphere and openness. In addition, the “poster child” for 7–9 is a white man, while 3–4 is a vague, darkened silhouette of a woman. Clearly, one does a better job of giving the impression of diversity than the other.
I also did some individual posters with plainer images, looking more into text placement and basic composition. For iterations 7, 11, and 12, the text is based off of Cece’s text experiment from the last class critique.
Personal Criticism: While I do really enjoy the colors and text placement of some, I felt that they were almost too simple. Personally, I love 10, 11, and 15, but nothing about it really screams “CITY THEATRE” to me. In essence, they’re successful simply because they meet the basics.
In-Class Criticism:
- Vicki: the text placement works, but it’s recommended to scrap the ones based from previous classmates’ experiments (as they have already been created and there’s more that could’ve been done from our own generated ideas).
Overall, the main challenge was creating text that would adhere to the image, as well as creating a limiting color palette for the fonts that would create contrast and stick out.
11/6/21: Finalizing
Out of all my posters, I decided on Iterations 4–6 for my image of choice. Though it doesn’t emphasize the contemporary aspect as much as some of my other posters, it utilizes the diverse, organic, historical and local vibe much better than Iterations 7–9 (which felt commercial and appeared to cater a more teen-like audience). To remedy the former, I’ll work on text placement to help break out of the typical “old-style” grid vibe.
Since biggest issue was the key text areas contrasting the natural eyeflow of the image, I analyzed how someone would immediately see the poster, and what points of emphasis are prominent.
I started messing around with the smaller details, such as scale, rotation, and level of warmth.
I tried to have the tagline adhere to that natural diagonal angle, but Andrew pointed out that — while it may have been successful in the earlier posters (where the title text was pushed to the sides) — there’s simply too much information going on now that everything is pushed to the center.
Yoshi recommended that I standardize the font sizes more so that I have no more than 2–3 variations in font size. He also encouraged me to play around more, and break free from the limitations of this specific image alignment before I start refining.
Below are some iterations where I went a little stir-crazy:
Feedback from Vicki:
- Regarding the first poster with chromatic aberration: “No.”
- Third is definitely the strongest: tighten the top and bottom text
- Change body text of microhiearchy from 45 to 55 stroke. Also up the tracking
- Not really vibing with the blue text (I agree)
- The exaggerated slant is interesting and dynamic, but definitely not the approach to go with. I also think it looks a tad satanical.
Blowing up the size of the person definitely brings the composition closer, and allows adequate space for the body text to “rest” on the hand.
After tightening the text alignments and standardizing the fonts sizes and strokewidths, I started to work towards the final element: the hot colors for “City Theatre” and “2021–22 Season.”
The challenge with these two fonts are that — while you want it to stand out —there’s a certain level of proportion and contrast that needed to be maintained. Back when the contrast for “City Theatre” on and off the spotlight was start, Yoshi and Vicki both pointed out that it broke up the text too much so that you’d read “City The-” instead. Thus, I wanted to lesson that impact, while also coming up with a bright enough color for “2021–2022 Season” that would give viewers enough of a reason to read back upwards. Clearly, after many iterations I started having a bit of a crisis:
The grueling trial of finding a good hot color:
At this point, I just let color theory handle its thing and went to an online color wheel calculator to properly calculate a good complimentary purple to the background color in which “2021–22 Season” is placed.
I went through several purple and magenta iterations, but most came out awkward and/or blended in too much. So gave up! After some struggles, I asked Jacky what color would make her more inclined to view the top text. She then pointed out that the thing leading her eye the most was “that wonderful, warm yellow highlight on the arm.” I saw a lot of value in that comment, and in the end went back to that warm golden yellow.
Small touchups after final critique:
- Tagline is shifted upwards so tat the x-height is alined with the x-height for “City”
- Dates in micro-hierarchy is bolded from 55 to 65 for slight emphasis compared to the rest of the body text
Personal Reflection:
When I was the first to choose a poster client, I remember deliberately selecting a topic that I knew I would be weaker in. I hoped that delving outside of my comfort zone would encourage me to grow and prevent me from falling back on blatant intuition. Reflecting back on the last few pushes for this assignment, I have never felt so despondent or emotionally detached from creating a poster.
I found that my process (and workflow in general) was definitely more efficient and explorative. I had a good time building a visual structure from the ground up, and it was actually quite liberating to focus on one small thing at a time, as opposed to feeling overwhelmed by all the elements at once. My biggest concern throughout this project was getting too attached to a concept too fast in the beginning, and so I’m thankful that I was able to avoid it.
Still, I think there was the subconscious hope to develop something fantastical and special. Yet the more I worked on my poster, the more I felt that I kept falling back to basics instead. Yoshi commented that he felt I was limiting myself for the sake of the image, and I wholeheartedly agree; there were so many more iterations I would have liked to make: layering, textures, masking and shadows, that I just didn’t have the opportunity to execute with this. Maybe that was the root of my frustration, or the constant staring at my piece, or maybe just the fact that I don’t use browns often for communications work. Regardless, I feel no pride, nor relief upon hanging this “thing” up. When Cathy immediately felt drawn towards my poster, I had a spark of pleasant, surprised gratification that warmed my heart.
So, I like to take a breath and remind myself that at the end of the day, this assignment is meant for a learning opportunity. As stated often during this project, we’re not required to reinvent the wheel. And in the end, I’m thankful for the chance to really hit the nitty-gritty without completely spiraling into mental oblivion. Though it wasn’t at all how I expected it to turn out or make me feel, I’m grateful for this poster’s creation.
