Puttin It All In the Bag

Post for Monday, December 13:

Today was our final day for class! And boy did we end it in quit the unique way. Finally having finished our Pasta Demonstration posters and getting them printed, we put together a CD for Franc with the final refinements done to all of our Al Dente work to turn in. We also printed out three of our favorite labels from the 8 total that we designed and headed over to the Al Dente Pasta factory in Whitmore Lake. Once there, we took a short tour to see how was the pasta was packaged and distributed. We also were able to take the labels we printed out to put on the Al Dente packaging bags and get them filled with pasta! It was really cool to see our work displayed with the actual pasta :)
After we headed over to Monique's for a delicious pasta lunch and there, presented her with our posters. She loved them! The food was great and the joyful conversation about our work and its wonderful turn out filled the air.

I've posted some images of our final posters (above), which are 24''x36'', and some images from the Monique's celebration (below)!

Hope you enjoy!

Happy Holidays,
A.D. Trois

Post for Wednesday, Dec 8:
Today we continued to finalize our final versions of the Al Dente Cooking Demonstration posters. Many of us printed them out full scale, tiled in black and white to critique in small groups with Franc. This was very helpful to see the posters at full scale in order to directly see how proportions, spacing, and alignment related to each other. From here we are to print the final versions with Patrick Young at full scale and half scale to present to Monique at our very own "Al Dente" lunch at her factory on Monday. This will be a great ending to such an in depth semester and a great way to tastefully finish off our hard work. :)

First Printed Iterations of the Poster

Post for Monday, Dec. 8:

In class on Monday, we had a critique of our in progress poster designs. It was very interesting to once again come all together and see the different directions that everyone has gone with these posters. Another element that was particularly exciting was seeing these designs go from mere sketches in sketch books to full color prints hanging on the wall. The final poster is going to be 24" x 36". For most of us, this will be the largest we have ever printed. One challenging thing in regards to this was trying to keep in mind how large the poster is actually going to be/look since most people had printed their posters half size or smaller. In our group, we each seemed to try to relate the design of our posters back to our labels and with consideration of the placement and use of our logos. Issues that were brought up generally had to do with color, placement, illustration, typeface, hierarchy and concept. On Wednesday, we will continue work on these posters in hopes of printing in full size by Monday. Pictured above are the posters we presented to the class on Monday.

Beginning Stages

Post for Wednesday, Dec 1:

On Wednesday's class we had a discussion regarding the posters. We were all
excited about making them, and brought in our preliminary sketches and
ideas. Some things we considered were what was important to have on the
poster, such as the logo and the places/times of cooking demonstrations.
This tends to be a lot of information, and our challenge will definitely be
how to organize the info in an interesting way that will not look
overwhelming. Posters need to draw in a viewer in a matter of seconds, so
the design has to be simple as well as compelling. Some of us used photos
of Monique, but we realized quickly that this was problematic because many
of the photos we have in our archives have the previous identity on aprons
and bags, which conflicts with our new designs. Instead we will have to use
new individual photographs and drawings if we choose to use images.
Overall, everyone's ideas seemed to be coming together nicely, posters are
definitely one of the more exciting items to design.


Here is an example of one of the preliminary poster designs by Jackie: