Ashley Caudill: Poster Assignment

I decided to use the program called Sumopaint for my poster.  I have heard that Sumopaint is similar to Photoshop and since I know Photoshop pretty well, I thought Sumopaint would be less of a learning curve for me.  Overall, for a free software Sumopaint is great, the tools and layout are almost identical to Photoshop.  I had a couple issues when working with Sumopaint, one of the main ones was using the text tool, when I was trying to enlarge the text, if it happened to run off the page, it would delete the text that bled off the page.  This made me quite frustrated because I had to keep creating a text layer and enlarging the size until I got it to the size I wanted.  The second issue I ran into was the free transform tool, when I was trying to use it, instead of selecting the entire image to enlarge it like I’m used to in Photoshop, I had to outline the image, and if I didn’t outline the entire image, it would only enlarge what was inside of the transform box.  Other than those two issues I ran into Sumopaint seemed quite easy and a suitable software to make a poster, it just took me a couple tries to figure out how to use certain tools.

For my poster I wanted to make it appealing to children as well as informational for parents.  I thought having a cartoon chef with a pizza as well as common words and numbers they see in a math class, would both appeal to children and compliment the title, Easy As Pie.  I tried to use gender-neutral colors when designing the poster as well as colors that seemed fun and bright.  I tried to follow the “works everytime” layout, which I think I was quite successful with.  I changed the logo to a square clipart image because I felt the shape of that logo worked better with the layout of the poster as well as fit with the fractions theme.      

Overall I found this assignment to be surprisingly more difficult than I would have thought, I can’t quite figure out why, but I think it had to deal with the limitations of making sure every design element and layout decision fit within in the “works everytime” layout parameters, which I am not used to when designing posters.  This layout is definitely something I will make sure to follow in the future, but it will take some time getting used to.

Sources:

[Untitled illustration of a chef].  Retrieved January 24, 2015 from http://www.clipartpanda.com/clipart_images/find-the-perfect-clip-art-1782137

[Untitled illustration of pizza fractions].  Retrieved January 24, 2015 from https://www.etsy.com/listing/156508958/cheesy-pizza-fractions-mega-clipart-set

[Untitled illustration of a fractions logo].  Retrieved January 24, 2015 from http://blog.richmond.edu/openwidelookinside/archives/3295