Skillset Challenge: A3 Composition

Like many creative students, as I reach the end of my degree, I am beginning to put together a portfolio that will showcase my work to employers. Portfolios can be time-consuming to put together, creating a thoughtful and balanced composition often requires a significant amount of attention. Over the last few weeks we have been encouraged to consider font, typeface, colour, image and the importance of white space.

With the aim of developing my composition skills, last week I was asked to put together a simple A3 sheet using a number of components provided by my lecturer, Jamie Liversedge. The components included two images, a drawing, title and body of text, these were to be displayed in a “dynamically interesting and visually strong composition”. I was informed that the sheet was a right hand page, the page number was 10 and that the sheet must include a coloured bar. 

Using the photoshop cutout filter and several adjustment layers I began by editing the images to create a graphically bold and eye-catching visual style. I then decided to crop both pictures to soften the edges and prevent creating a sheet dominated by square block images. 

I pulled out the strong striped pattern in the first photo (Left Hand Side) and layered this into the background at 20% opacity. Following the vertical lines, I used a subtle blue bar along the right hand side of the page, using the same colour on both outside edges helps to create a visual border and a coherent layout. I chose a simplistic sans serif font to match the bold graphic style of the sheet. Although the page does lack white space, I tried to format the sheet in a logical layout, that was uncluttered and easy to absorb. 

I struggled most trying to place the detailed drawing and technical information. I decided to remove the grey background and position it alongside some text; this could be a brief sentence to explain the drawing and what it is showing. 

Overall I am happy with the layout, specifically the left hand side of the page. Using layers at different opacities really helps to settle the picture within the sheet. This is a technique that I will certainly consider utilising within my personal portfolio. 

A copy of the original layout components