1-Day Brief – Tado Ando

Our class was given a 1-day brief to advertise a retrospective exhibit of Tadao Ando‘s work at The Museum of Modern Art. It’s refreshing to be thrown head-first into a brief of an unknown subject.

The restrictions for the A1 poster design were as follows: Squares and circles are the only shapes permitted, the colour Palette is limited to two colours (including black), and the typeface “Courier” must be used for text.

For each poster, I restricted myself to using only two members of Courier’s font family, for consistency, and to keep the space from becoming too busy. My use of both an upper and lower case is purely an aesthetic decision.

Below are the two earliest posters that I made. So stripped-down, I’m not sure they serve their purpose as well as they could! Perhaps if they were used to advertise another artist’s work, this format would be better suited.

Brown, black, and white

Yes, although the dusty colour is in reference to the architectural medium concrete, the first posters I made don’t display the artist’s aesthetic at all. To capture the architect’s power, I need to look again at his work.

Light, wind, and water, are all softer elements of Ando’s buildings.

Turquoise, black, and white

Above is an attempt to create something out of squares. The materials Ando uses in his work are the type associated with Brutalism. There is an elegance to Ando’s creations, though I fall short of communicating that here.

Teal, black, and white

This one feels very much a throw-away; but you’ve got to get out poor compositions to get through to the better ones! If I had longer, I’d have fiddled about with the placement of the architect’s name more.

Blue, black, and white

Landscape. Just for the sake of it. Nowhere did it say we couldn’t design the A1 poster in landscape. I didn’t dabble in gradients, but I got the feeling that they were not to be used.

This brief was a challenge – a good challenge – but I’m not wholly convinced by my own work. I don’t dislike Courier as a typeface, but like everything, it does have a service that it’s best suited for, and these posters… probably aren’t it. Though that’s what made using Courier fun; to make a stiff, serious font look cool or engaging.

In retrospect, I should have taken advantage of circles!

Once I got into “the zone”, making posters wasn’t difficult despite the restrictions. With a limited set of tools at my disposal, came forth more ingenuity. (I hope!) I have also learned to better appreciate the consideration that goes into positioning text and image harmoniously.