Awareness Poster

 

The Brooklyn Anti-Gentrification Network (BAN) is a people of color-led, mass-based coalition of tenants, homeowners, block associations, anti-police brutality groups, legal and grassroots organizations working together to end the rampant gentrification and displacement of low to middle income residents of Brooklyn, New York. The organization has helped in the fight against the construction of high-raises in Bushwick, Amazon headquarters opening in NY, and many other causes that help preserve parts of New York for the people who live there. 

 

I had such a blast working on this poster design, I really got to experiment with typography and got really creative with the layering of the images. I would love to illustrate this poster as well. I think a rock gig-poster style illustration would really match the aesthetic/message. This poster went through many different versions before landing on this “final” copy. Sketching really helped move this process along, because I was able to plan where the text would go before actually working in photoshop.

 

The typography was especially fun to work ok because I got to research what Godzilla’s latest movie poster used and tried to recreate it. I couldn’t find the exact font they used for free, but I was able to trackdown a demo version of the same font but a different weight for 2 dollars, money well spent. Although the movie poster paired the font with a really similar font, I wanted to still capture that Japanese movie feel but show some variety in font choices to make it more interesting. So I paired the Captura font with a font called Japanese Tiling which is a condensed font. In a way I kind of took what the godzilla poster did and flipped it. They used a condensed font for the heading with a extra bold font for the subtitle and I used a extra bold font for the heading (cause I couldnt get the condensed version) with a condensed font for the subtitle. I also tried to stay true to the movie poster in how the made these little lockups with the subtitle.

 

 

You might also notice that the Godzilla poster is in blue and my poster is in this creepy green color. When I used the same blues as the Godzilla poster it just didn't feel like it captured this Godzilla vibe. When I think of Godzilla, I think of green. While the movie poster is in blue, I feel like we actually associate this creepy/halloween green color with Godzilla. While it isnt an exact copy of the poster I feel like it captures the same spirit. Hopefully my poster hints at the idea that gentrification is a threat that is attacking our city much like Godzilla and we need to fight back!

 

     

After presenting this to the class, my professor advised that a version without the blocks of descriptive text would be much bolder and more compelling. He was definitely right, I love this new version of the poster it feels very powerful. It also gave me this interesting idea to have the little running man at the bottom sort of popping out from the poster like he is really running away from the hipster.