The Brief

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.

Brainstorming and spider diagrams

I will need a clear heading that stands out and establish if I will use text only or include some pictures.  Will it be a freeform birthday list or a more structured one?  It will be nice to have the poster adaptable if you make new friends, but for this exercise I will design this birthday list without the option to add more friends.  This way I will be able to optimise the layout. 

It might give the birthday list a more personal feel if I add a quote underneath the heading, such as, ‘A little bird told me that it’s your birthday today’ or something similar.  In figure 2, I brainstormed a few heading ideas.  I also considered the size of the list and decided on a 2 x A4 page or a spread that would give me an A3 size.  I jotted down all the information I would like on the list and estimated the space I would need. 

Working in InDesign

I then plotted a rough layout idea (figure 3) to establish how I would fit all the months on the spread.  I have decided to use Adobe InDesign for this birthday list.  I will probably use a patterned background and minimal artwork for this layout and solely focus on the typography and the design. I will work with tables to create individual forms for each month that can be ticked under the categories card, text or present.  Working with tables is a new challenge and I had to learn by researching the Adobe Handbook and watching videos.  I had to learn about paragraph styles, cell styles and table styles.  I can now understand the value of setting up a page template and keeping examples in a file because once the template is up and running, it is just a matter of changing the typeface and colours to create your design.

I have chosen a colour palette and stock pictures, but first I must see how my idea will work in my software.  I discovered that it makes more sense to copy and paste the tables once you have the table, cells and text established.  I saved all my styles, so once I have chosen my type, it will be quick to edit the typeface because you edit in one cell, and it will automatically edit all the other related cells.

I am now at the stage where I need to render the poster and see how the months will work on the page.  The month boxes are slightly larger than what I expected, but this is due to having a reasonable text size and a lot of information on the page.

Choosing and pairing my typefaces

Now that I am at the rendering stage of this project, I am ready to choose and pair my type.  The typeface is especially important for this layout as it will be 80% type, and it should look good.

The top typeface combination of figure 7 is my first choice.  I will now render the birthday list and complete it in InDesign.

I decided to simplify the name of the birthday list to ‘Birthdays’.  I am happy with the outcome as there was a lot of information, so it was better to keep it as simple as possible.  I have brightened the pink to look fresher and toned the grey background.

Heading – IvyEpic Extra Bold 72pt

Quote – Flamingo Regular 27pt

Subheading – IvyEpic Bold 27,5pt

Body Text – IvyEpic Medium 17pt

Micro Text – IvyEpic Semibold 12pt