Thumbnail Visuals

For this task, we were given the brief to make thumbnail visuals for a play poster. I decided to chose ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ a 1955 play by Tennessee Williams. In this project, we had to design forty initial thumbnail visuals, using a range of mediums, and then narrow that down to five designs to refine before we decided upon the final three client visuals to present. 

 Before beginning this however we were given the small task of drawing out twenty four chairs as thumbnail visuals. Starting this task proved difficult for working in a fast way was something I am not used to, as I like to spend more time on pieces but for this task, the key was to work quickly.

​Although I didn't get to complete all twenty four in the one hour time frame, as I was working a little slower than I needed to be, this task proved that I could work in a quick way, getting pen to paper and getting any idea that came to mind down quickly, as was going to be the key to this project. This activity did help when it came to preparing for what I needed to do over the upcoming week and got me in the mindset to be working quickly and efficiently through all forty client visuals. 

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All together, I did manage to make all forty visuals, working a the pace that I needed to be working at to get all the tasks finished, however, it proved to be stressful working so quickly. As I went along, as well as creating new ideas, I also began to mess around with and refine some ideas within the forty without even realising it because as I was working, I found ways to better some of the ideas I had already gotten down, whether that was by moving the text, or some of the composition of the piece. I believe that I was so stressed and panicked about finishing on time partly due to the materials I used, as ink and watercolour needed time to dry in-between working. Although I could work on a couple at the same time, if I were to do this again, I would rethink the materials I used.

 
​From there, I began to refine some of the ideas I had had, as seen on page four of the initial forty visuals. What I found however was that ideas were merging and changing, taking aspects of a few different pieces and combining them to make a stronger piece. I also found that simple moves, such as the movement of the tail coiled around the wine bottle made the piece more effective, as some looked significantly weaker than others, even with such a small adjustment.

It was at this point that I began to put more care into the thumbnails I was creating, making sure that things were in the right area and the right idea was chosen, as well as using a combination of different mediums to see which gave the best effect. This was something that I realised that in my final three, where they were brought up to scale, that the same mediums didn't work as well as they had done for the smaller visuals. With that said, I believe I was able to refine and decide on the right final three ideas, creating a range of ideas; one being more literal to the play, one being more literal to the title and the last being more of a general theme throughout the play.  

In terms of my final three pieces used as client visuals, I was proud of the outcome, even if I would have done things differently such as through using different materials. I believe I was able to convey the ideas that I wanted to, all whilst  giving options and variation in ideas, colour schemes and the position of the text to create three different ideas that all, in one way or another, related to the base text, and would be able to allow the client to see what they did, and didn't like in regards to varying aspects of the three final visuals.