100 Things// Dark Side to Diamonds Poster

The dark side to diamonds poster started out as a play with the Pink Floyd album cover when light shines through the triangle to create a spectrum. I quickly knocked up some visualls which all looked terrible;

On top of looking quite silly this idea had not really captured my imagination and was pretty unoriginal. I aimed to take blood out of the other side instead of a spectrum but the idea was pretty flawed in concept even though I was excited about the idea during the design sheet phase, becuase it thought the satirical humour was funny for some reason.
So I moved on to a new idea, which would be to use the text 'There is a Dark side to Diamonds' as a sort of light against a dark place. Symbolic of the truth leaking through or shining brightly on the viewers. The poster would be pretty simple but I hoped that it would be eye catching to the audience.

 I stared with this basic poster layout in Liberator font, which is inspired by text that was painted onto the sides of US cargo during the second world war apparently...
I wanted to give the poster some deep texture based on some inspiration I had seem that should be documented on the design context blog by now.The aim was to have a rough texture which would give the solid clean text a jump off the page for the viewer.

 Here I am experimenting with what the text would look like if it was created with outlines. My thought process was that hopefully I could create a neon effect by drawing the text out of lines and then linking the letters together as a chain.

 I developed this further by adding some columns that I hoped would act as a frame for the text and added the lines to connect the text together. I also began to experiment with the background image and pattern as well as adding colours and multiplying them over the image to generate heavy shades of varying colour. 
 

Here I experimented with the context of the phrase itself, given that if this was produced I would aim to have it printed on dark card in black ink to give a pretty post modern philosophical sort of meaning, then back it up with a flyer for facts...
However this type of poster would not stand out like I wanted it to to draw some audience so a different direction back towards the heavy white on dark background was needed.  

 I also felt that the background texture was pretty pointless and unnecessary, especially because I could just get some paper with a similar texture and print on that. So here I have opted for an image if a crumpling brick wall and arranged the first outlined type on top of it. I also used some cyan colour multiply over the top to add a deep colour.

 here is a text of the dame final design with a solid fill on the text. I prefer the solid fill because the text just stands out much more and really proclaims its meaning clearly. Here I have also added a web address to the bottom of the poster. The web adress is to a website which I believe full incorporates the tone the products will take on diamonds and the industry as a whole and also seems to provide great resources for those interested in the subject including essays, articles and other on-line based pages full of information. 

Finally I added an outer glow to the text. I did this to give the impression that the text was lighting up the crumbling wall, in the same way I want my research and products to shine light on the situation of blood and conflict diamonds.

I am weary of the possibility that once printed the outer glow effect will look tacky. Or even if it looks tacky right now. I hope that the print production will not ruin the depth of the image and cause the light up text to become flat and of poor quality...