For this exercise you are going to make up a poster list for yourself. It is intended that you keep it pinned to a noticeboard or wall to remind you of the dates and, as it will be there a long time, it needs to look good.
Start by collecting all the birthdays of your friends and family. You’ll need their name and birth date, to decide whether or not you buy them presents or just send a card, text message or email.
When you have all this design a page to include all this information.
Now you design your own ordering the information that best suits you and including as much additional information as you would find useful.
Once I read the brief I began to write down all the birthdays in my family, I then began to sketch up the idea that came to my mind, it was very basic and simple but I believe I can refine it until it looks complete.
Sketch
I then went on to Pinterest to see if I could derive any ideas for the task, I was hoping to come across some existing birthday list posters but I didn’t find any, so instead I saved some birthday themed images which might come in handy.
I already had the idea for my layout prepared, I just needed to find a good colour scheme to go with it. I went through some images that I had saved in my computer and I felt like this colour combination would work for a birthday-friendly poster.
I then went on to apply the colours, I coloured the boxes in yellow with blue outlines and I placed two pink banners across the page where I put my titles as the hierarchy. Even though I was trying to make these colours work they just wouldn’t fall into place so I stopped experimenting any further.
Final Design
This is what my final design looked like, I balanced my design by using dominant, secondary and accent colours, I then added pictorials to show what I was going to send to each person, I then finished off by designing a few balloons to go with the birthday theme. I found this exercise very enjoyable and practical.
OCA Graphic Design 