Foo Fighters Poster Design Rationale

Where to begin? This project again was Foo Fighters themed and a roller coaster of creativity. I truly had no clue where it'd end up or what would change from my initial sketch. The rough sketch I made for the poster consisted of flames jutting from the tail of the plane which formed Foo Fighters title at the top. In the cockpit was faces of the band members. On the missiles were the names of the band members. On the plane were albums covers from the band. And below the plane was the venue information. You know what is cool? When I drew the picture I didn't think I could actually produce it in Photoshop/Quark, it was more of a dream. However, it came true for the most part. Sure it isn't perfect (like no flames forming the band's name) but it is truly neat that my image in my mind or in a drawing can actually come to life with dedication and experimentation.

Before I can talk about the background I have to mention where most the hours went on this project: the centerpiece. The main object of the poster also the aspect I was most proud of was a fighter jet (Foo Fighter meant UFO that's how the band got their name). I found the fighter from Flickr and magnetic lasso'd it into the 11x17 poster document. I than found pictures of the band members where I magnetic lasso'd and free transformed the sizes of their heads into the cockpit of the plane. On the missles I used the vertical title tool and wrote each member of the band (2 on each missle). And of course I found all the album covers from the band which I copied over and placed/resized and rotated them around the plane in areas that made sense as if it was painted on or tattoo'd. In order to make it more believable and to blend into the plane I gave each cover the multiply effect to have a faded in/ink look on the plane's frame. I than decided the plane needed an outline to stand out. So I Magnetic Lasso'd the outline of the plane > edit > stroke > picked a certain thickness I wanted/color I wanted.

The process of the background started in Photoshop with the gradient tool. I selected the 11x17 background with the tool and made it all red. I then made a strip going down the background which I made blue to add a cool clashing effect across the middle of the plane and its cockpit. I than added the band's name blue for 'Foo' on the red background and red for 'Fighters' on the blue stripe.

On the way top I wrote "The Best" in large font to catch eyes. And on the bottom under the plane was the venue information arranged in a Z format. Meaning, the lines of font followed a Z pattern which is known for the way the eyes follows an image. The venue information and "The Best" wasn't standing out enough, so I used the gradient tool once again and made a blue rectangle on the top making sure the font layer was above the background. And a red rectangle on the bottom. This was planned, the blue on the top actually ended up forming a '7' with the blue stripe in the middle - that was intentional. It ended up representing the 7 for september 7th when the concert was occuring. To make the 7 stand out even more I added a thin red line on the very top of the poster and made the bottom red rectangle more blended in with the red above it.

At the very end, I added a little information on some of the music the band was featuring than manipulated it using the warp text -shell lower to add a almost 3D like effect to the font/plane. And I decided to use the transparent spray tool around some of the edges of the plane to match the outline of the plane/background and gave it an overall unique look as if it was spray painted. All in all, I'm proud of the plane the most and the eye catching properties the poster contains.

Foo Fighters PowerPoint Design Rationale

I did my 5 slides PowerPoint on one of my favorite bands –the Foo Fighters. The entire project took around 10 hours despite looking simple and only being one minute long. The title’s slide although time consuming was pretty basic. The only hard part of the first slide was the sound. We needed to insert an .mp3 one-minute loop of a 30 second segment of a song from our band. This was done using iTunes, audacity and selecting an option in PowerPoint. The real pain came with timing each slide perfectly so the viewer could see the contents and all the effects could come in properly while keeping the 5 slides to the one minute time frame to work with the one minute song loop. First off, it is mandatory to set every slide and effect to ‘run after previous’ which is found in the custom animation tab. Also, clicking a slide then pushing transitions tab > options button, it allowed me to change the time for each slide if I picked run automatically after a select amount of seconds. I constantly found myself trying to tweak each slide by seconds trying to make it work.

So first off the full song, “The Pretender” was in iTunes already as an .mp3. I then dragged the song into audacity, which is used to edit music and made the 30-second loop. In audacity I selected part of the song that made up 30 seconds, I then copied it and opened a new window and pasted it twice side by side to make up one minute (it flowed smoothly). I then exported the loop from audacity as a .wav file > dragged into iTunes > and converted it into mp3 (under advanced tab > create mp3 version). In the title slide I inserted the sound. This was done by inserting sound > select the loop mp3 > slideshow tab > custom animation > media options > under stop playing pick after 5 slides (that way the song plays through the entire PowerPoint).

Now for slide two – the fun facts. I searched a bunch of websites for interesting or just general facts about the band that perhaps the commoner wouldn’t know. I then limited each bullet to no more then 10 words, no complete sentences or anything to overwhelm the viewer. I changed the bullets by right clicking the slide > bullets and numbering then selected a more appealing one. The font and the picture in the background was a trial and error process. I believe I went through at least 5 different font combinations for the title and the content until it looked aesthetically appealing (title font = Papyrus, content font = Tekton Pro), while trying to keep the title font the same for all the slides. Same goes for the picture, I actually ended up searching for ‘Foo Fighter desktop wallpaper.’ The results were good quality pictures that could be expanded without stretching the image out of proportion. I sent the image behind the text by selecting the picture > right clicking the picture > arrange > send to back. Now lets get into effects because there are a lot of them (entrance effects which can be found under custom animation). The title ‘Fun Facts’ had a spinner effect, the content had a bounce effect and after each bullet the font would gray out. The graying out effect was achieved by selecting font > custom animation > more effect options > after animation > picked grey as the color.

The third slide had to have an album cover from the band on one side with the album’s songs and their time lengths next to it. I went to slide layout’s tab and picked content with caption layout. I found the album cover Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, and dragged it into the layouts right box, I than for the title on the left hand side put the album’s name and underneath inserted the names and time lengths of the song. This looks easier then it seems. I went to alignment and spacing > horizontal > distributed > I then needed to hit the space bar before the time to fix the spacing. The album font was Papyrus in italics and the content font was Bembo Std. I tried to add numerous effects to spice it up while keeping in mind the time constraints and the viewer. First the album name appears with a fade effect, than the picture fades in as well. The song names and time lengths come in with a fly in effect at a perfect pace, making it easy to read and aesthetically pleasing.

The fourth slide was by far the hardest. It dealt with making a chart comparing 4 different aspects of the band. At first I used a table template but then realized I couldn’t manipulate the words in each box, only the table as a whole as if it was a merged layer. Therefore, I needed to insert > shape, from there I picked the square shape and stretched it out to 4 box lengths and I did that 4 times on top of each other. I then changed each row to be aesthetically pleasing with a white-black alteration. This was pleasing but also a pain because later I needed to individually select each box and change the font (white font on a black box, or black font on a white box). I then picked a line shape and made 3 lines down the boxes to divide them up vertically, the color of the boxes divided them horizontally. Okay so now for what I exactly compared. I compared four songs from the Foo Fighters using their duration, year released and the album they come from. So I used the text box button and inserted the information manually in every box trying to make it as even as possible. The title font was Papyrus and the box font was Bembo Std. I then found another wallpaper of the Foo Fighters > right clicked picture > arrange > send to back to make it more appealing. The effects are where this slide really shines – over 25 effects used. Because I manually made the chart, I made the boxes come in first with ‘light speed’, than the lines ‘peek in’, row 1 had all different effects, row 2 and 3 used ‘dissolve in’ and lastly, row used ‘spinner’. I tried to keep all the fonts and their sizes similar. All in all, I think it’s my best slide and the most aesthetically pleasing.

The last slide (5) was the most fun – it had to be a collage of the band. The title was again consistent (Papyrus – “The Best of the Best”). I found eleven pictures of the band, and inserted them into the slide one at a time, each having a unique effect and position. At the end of the wonderful sequence I inserted a picture I made myself following some of the rules from the collage project. Basically, I used Photoshop and merged photos together by manipulating layers of 6 or so pictures, cropping heads of the band members from several different pictures onto their bodies from one picture and then a album picture and the lead singer on the sides. I then changed the saturation and hue a little bit to get a cool color scheme. It worked out amazingly, the collage made a ripple like effect because some of the pictures in the collage were used alone in the before sequence. After all the picture effects were over, I had the hyperlink of the band appear, which was done by right clicking the slide > hyperlink > I put in the Foo fighters main website and under display I wrote “Visit the official Foo Fighters site – click here!” The hyperlink appeared just as the song ended and after the picture/collage sequence.

Animation and Rationale

The animation was a blast (see the collage rationale to understand the images and the font poem rationale to understand the fonts used).

So how does one make an animation in Photoshop?
-Have font poem open with all layers visible, save collage as .gif or jpeg than select collage > copy and past it into the font poem psd. It should show up as a layer with the words with the font poem. In Photoshop > window > animation to begin. To control what appears you just click the eye button next to each layer. So if the eye button was on for that layer it'd appear, so basically I clicked the eye button only for certain words on each slide. Than you would do a new slide and make sure the eye was clicked off from the previous slide. Every other slide I had my collage slowly starting to come in by increasing the opacity by 5% --I did this to add a cool flame flicker effect.

When the collage wasn't fading in, I had the words come in sometimes in groups or repeated for emphasis. I had dream appear once in the collage to show that the collage is dream-like and merging of both worlds. At the end I had the font poem over the collage. I needed to change some of the font colors in order to work with all the red of the firey look. Also, the word side for some reason or another didn't show up as a layer when I clicked the eye button. So I had to copy and paste it from the font poem saved file into the animation psd. Annoying part about that is if you add/change one aspect of a slide it affect all other slides.

I had 33 slides because I had 22 words and every other slide was the collage. So a lot to deal with, compared to other people who had only 12 words and a similar amount of slides. My slides were fast paced .5 seconds per except on the last 3 slides which were "to scream", the font poem over the collage and just the collage itself in full visibility.