Bringing The Exhibition Together

I had to decide on a museum to hold the exhibition in as well as a title for it. I had looked at a few New York museums in this project such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Guggenheim and the MoMA. I decide to use The Whitney Museum of American Art. This was because the museum was more contemporary, meaning it would be more likely to hold an exhibition with similar styles works to the ones I had created in this project. The shape of the building is very interesting, stories of it stick out from the front and overhang the entrance meaning any illustrations I did of it would make them recognizable. Also, I thought the logo of museum wasn't too exiting and I wanted to redesign it. 

I first made a simple line drawing of the building. I then scanned it into Photoshop and coloured it, inspired by the colour scheme and also the style of James Gulliver Hancock's work. I thought that some illustrations of his where he just draws a single building could work as a logo. However, my illustration for the Whitney seemed too complex, especially if it would be reduced in size. I therefore decided to make it into a black and white image. This seemed to make an effective logo as it simplified the original drawing. I then put in some different shapes and did a survey to find out which one people preferred, at the same time I asked peoples opinion on a range of fonts I selected. 
It turned out that the most popular was the image inside a square, all though a few people had suggested that it would look better inside a thicker square.

I now wanted to start creating some illustrations based upon the Whitney Museum. I created this work based upon Eric Rosner's style but by putting the buildings in a way similar to how I did with Jess Hogarth's style. I started off by drawing the Whitney Museum building in the center at the bottom then worked upwards adding more buildings from Manhattan.

The next thing to do was to decide on a name for the exhibition. I originally wanted to use the 'I Love NY' theme based upon the advertising campaign for tourism in New York. However I thought I could come up with my own name and make the exhibition more unique. I came up with a list of various titles & taglines, song names, lyrics and slogans that related to New York. 

I ask a survey and the most popular was 'In A New York Minute', the name of an Eagles Song. I liked this as it could mean the exhibition was about all aspects of the big city. I next had to come up with a range of fonts in which the exhibition name could be read. I planned in putting my patterns into the shapes of the letters. This made it much more interesting and related to the works of the exhibition. First put the work in digitally by selecting the shapes of each letter and filling them with the pattern. I then also experimented practically by paper cutting out the shapes of the letters and putting my image underneath. This lead to me thinking of how I could make the paper cut more exiting and less flat. I found typography artist Gina Hollingsworth. 

Gina Hollingsworth has created a paper-cut alphabet where only part of the shape of each letter is cut, this allows part of it to be folded over to create the full letter. I first recreated this alphabet of hers before cutting out 'In A New York Minute'. With mine I thought I could put some of my works underneath the cut out, this would show the works that would be shown in the exhibition. I took photos of this as a way of getting the title onto the computer so I could put it onto promotional materials. 

With this photo I used a hard light to create bigger, more defined shadows. I thought this could be effective as the shapes the paper-cut makes look like skyscrapers. However, when I started editing the photos, the outlines of the letters became unclear so you couldn't see the difference in the paper-cut that was sticking up and the paper behind it.


When editing the other photos, I attempted to extend the white paper background, increasing the size of the image. I did try and make the background a more complete white but I couldn't do this without making the shadows look unnatural.

Once I was happy with the edited photos, I could put them onto promotional materials. I added some information about the exhibition then super-imposed it onto this New York bus.

I think this makes an effective advertisement as the 3D look of it with catch people eye. I next started to produce exhibition posters with the paper-cut title. 

I used a photo which I had taken at an angle for this one. Although the text seems quite easy to read with this image, it doesn't work on a poster and makes it look like it's just been placed on top. I also couldn't use this illustration of mine because it is of The Guggenheim Museum and not The Whitney where I planned on using. 

I therefore used some other illustrations. This one was a collection of drawings I had done in the style of Julia Rothman. It turned out ok but it wasn't one of the best works I had created in this project, nor was it a very centered image so it didn't seem suitable for this style of poster. 

I put this original logo design on this work and the simpleness of it seemed to work as it didn't over complicate the poster. However I hadn't created the illustration to such a great quality because I had planned on using it as a logo where it would be much smaller.

I much preferred this image on the poster. I was happy with the illustration and the colours in it seem to match the images behind the cut-out title. I included lots of well known New York buildings in it so it relates well to the city.