Module I – Complex Character

Complex Character Design on Pablo Picasso

You are asked to design an A2 format poster profiling one of the characters listed below. (…)

Marie Stopes: author, campaigner for women’s rights; Shami Chakrabati: director of Liberty, pressure group campaigning for civil liberties; Charles Dickens: author, campaigner for social reform; Eric Gill: type designer, illustrator, unorthodox parent; Adolf Hitler: German chancellor 1933-45; Eddie Izzard: comedian, political campaigner; Stephen Fry: actor, author, technophile, twitterer; Silvio Berlusconi: controversial prime minister of Italy; Stephen Hawking: theoretical physicist; Pablo Picasso: artist; Amy Winehouse: singer, songwriter; Alfred Hitchcock: film director; Peter Mandelson: politician;

The poster must be predominantly image based and must be constructed using an element of Adobe Photoshop.

It must be INFORMATION RICH. It should include a visual likeness somewhere, at least one map plus at least one other schematic element. Plus other elements that will build a complex profile of the character in question.

The composition should speak about the life of the character, their work, historical, political, cultural context… it is your job to find out what makes them interesting. Hierarchy will be an important factor – which pieces of information are most significant, which are of minor importance?

It is likely that the composition will include a variety of media (this might even be an opportunity for some hand drawn components). It will be important to devise a way of uniting stylistically different elements to make a coherent composition. (…)

Research and preperation work