ePoster

I think I made a mistake. I made the decision to not to start my (e-)poster until I had a good amount of research completed for the Critical Photo Essay. At the time, I thought I shouldn’t limit myself to whatever research I had in order to make sure I was communicating the entirety of my project correctly. This was stupid—not only do I have too much of the wrong kind of research but the actual (e-)poster is not big enough or the space to communicate all the data I collected. It was too much and it made the process of starting the poster a lot harder. Getting the ‘right’ content is one thing but the other is trying to communicate that content visually. I love art and I consider myself fairly artistic so I went into this assignment feeling pretty good about my abilities in alignment and graphics. I had no idea that the process of transitioning textual information in visually accessible ways goes far beyond the techniques I learned in art class. This process asked me to extend my artistry further into the digital realm—combing all the elements in one single product—Whoa!  

I have never created an (e-)poster until now so I thought I should stick to technology I know, PowerPoint. After completing the project I wish I would have taken more time to explore other options like Adobe or something that offered more editing. Fiddling with multiple text boxes on top of each other got to be frustrating. This is an understatement—I started and deleted this poster three times before I was happy with the textures, colors, and alignment—that auto alignment was not my friend. Little things like this made this process much harder for reasons that went outside my own anxieties of writing well. I knew how I wanted my poster to look but I needed to Google every step to figure out how to actually make it happen within the program. My limited technological knowledge did, I think, hold me back because I needed to fall back on other decisions that I understood how to do in PowerPoint. I would have loved to display the bar graph in a little bit more interesting ways—but everything I tried in the program got really difficult to move around and edit so I decided to stick to a basic bar graph. If I were to do another (e-)poster I would definitely not take the technology for granted and allow myself more time to practice within it. The color wheel was my friend, I kept referencing back to it because after you start and restart a project three times you don’t really know what colors look good together—I felt a little like I was clothes shopping—unable to make decisions.  

(E-)posters are pretty cool, I have to admit. The process of making it was frustrating but I wish we could do more because they’re so good at forcing you to interpret information differently. Being concise is key, which I struggle with anyway, so this was great practice. I also think the idea of a single product demonstrating so many of the elements we’ve discussed this semester was so important. McCloud came in clutch as I drafted my sequencing of information in ways the viewer could follow instinctually. I am happy with the way my finished product turned out—would I do it this way if I could redo it? Probably not, but that’s ok. I was able to make cuts and include less in order to make the poster more readable, I came up with a color sequence that I actually like, and I didn’t fall into the trap of cheesy education graphics of kids looking just a little too happy. Overall, (e-)posters are cool and PowerPoint sucks. Onwards!