Whenever a project is being done in the design world, the sketches play a huge role. As I have mentioned before, sketches are done so the designers can see put all their designs and ideas down on a paper to compare everything all at once. Then from there the designer will go on to create mockups and the final design. These sketches may even be revisited over and over for new ideas or to use something from the sketches but in a different way.
As I was sketching my ideas, I only sketched my ideas at the surface layer. I never dug deeper and went past the surface of what I should have sketched. In one of my previous graduate class, we talked a lot about deep work. In fact Cal Newport even wrote a book on all things deep work, from what it means to what causes us not to perform deep work and even how to solve that problem. He mentions the phrase, “deep work”, in his book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, explaining that it means, “professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that pushes your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill and are hard to replicate.” This really resonated with me in that in order to get out the best sketches and ideas that I possibly can I had to rethink how I approached the project. This all begins with finding a way to have a distraction free place to focus on the sketches and nothing else.
However, during this crazy time of being in the midst of a pandemic and in quarantine, it means that everyone in my family is with me in the same house all day long 24/7. With that comes numerous distractions that are new and I have to deal with. Along with these new distractions, I am also on a short time frame (seven weeks) to get my work done for two of my graduate classes and to get the work done I need to for my brand new internship. Even though I wrote out everything I needed to get done for my movie poster project week by week, it still wasn’t enough for me to be able to do deep work starting with my sketches. I still felt like something had to change. With a new mindset going into this week, I decided to set aside time each day (about an hour or more) to truly focus on the task at hand without any distractions including my phone, TV, family members, pets, and anything else that will distract me by setting up an area in my room with my laptop and drawing tablet. Here, I was able to think about the sketches differently and was able to produce a better collection of sketches.
So with the added sketches, (sketches part two), I decided to not to focus on the poster as a whole. Instead, I decided to deconstruct it and break it down. I drew my ideas of what the title would be in different type faces (for the specific time period) and in different ways of displaying it (all in one line, stacked, etc.). Then, I spent time on how to display the other text that was needed including the names of the most important actors (or the ones that would get the attention of movie goers). While this may not seem important to some people, it actually is because the poster may seem interesting to someone but when they see an actor’s name who they love to watch in movies, then it peaks their interest more. So I played around with how large or small it should be and it’s placement in the poster based on the movie. I even sketched ideas of how the characters (if any) and which characters would appear in the posters whether it was their full bodies, half, just their heads, or a mixture. Even though I was only supposed to be sketching ideas, I decided to a little bit of color and maybe even a little bit of textures, but not too much that they are not sketches anymore. This is so that I have some idea of how I wanted the posters to look so that I was not going into mockup week blind. Being able to get back into doing deep work for this project opened all these new possibilities and ideas that I can take and run with as I create the mockups of each poster.
Michaela Ganezer 