GDMA: Emotions

Project Brief

This assignment is done in GDMA-1122 Introduction to Graphic Design, a first-semester course in GDMA, a two-year comprehensive and intensive design program. The following brief is given to students at the beginning of the project after each student is randomly assigned three different emotions for their project.

Color theorist, psychologist, and Swedish professor Dr. Hans Lundquist will give a three-part lecture series based on color, how humans perceive it, and how it connects with our emotions. Dr. Lundquist has done extensive research regarding how humans react emotionally to certain colors and what emotions we associate with colors. During his three-part lecture series, Dr. Lundquist will focus on three specific emotions or feelings, and how humans associate color with them. Each lecture will be given at the Bloom Auditorium located at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.

Three posters will be designed (one for each night) to raise awareness about the lecture series. The posters should feel like a series and include visuals that connect them, however, each poster should be distinct. The three posters should not be the same design using different colors.

Due to the nature of the doctor’s research and the content of his lectures, each poster should utilize a monochromatic, or analogous color scheme. No photographic imagery, or any imagery resembling a face or person of any kind is present in the design. Shapes, typography, and most importantly, color need to be used to communicate visually.

The goal is to attract fellow scientists, students, and anyone interested in psychology to attend the lectures. The posters will be present throughout San Francisco, and the hope is that they can play a vital role in drawing large crowds to the lectures.
Each poster will need to feature the doctor’s name, the lecture topic, and the location and time for the lecture. The goal is for the posters to catch attention, have them relate specifically to the emotion that the lecture will be covering through the use of color, and also to feature details about the event such as time and location.

Learning Objectives

Students are expected to show an understanding of communicating with color, especially with a limited color range, and to demonstrate an ability to create and use abstract imagery without relying on literal representations.

Deliverables

Students submit three printed posters, 11.5\" x 11.7\", each including required information such as time, date, and location as well as their assigned emotions (one per poster) in the following format:

[Emotion]
An Exploration Using Color
Dr. Hans Lundquist

Reflections

This assignment has been done for several years and has always felt successful as it forces students early in their education to explore abstract representations and also to quickly learn they\'ll often not be selecting the content or subject of their work (they never get three emotions randomly assigned that they\'re excited to use).