Tok Followed Tik

I was really excited to begin this week’s project because I had created a movie poster before when I was a freshman in high school and wanted to challenge myself a bit more. I used different images from my time abroad and really wanted to focus on the depth of the poster. Because the instructions said to include seven different elements, I wanted to make something that incorporated all the elements of design while maintaining a clear focus and flow of the overall poster. When I was looking at my pictures, deciding which ones I wanted to use, I immediately found a picture I took at the Guinness Factory in Ireland that was perfect which I put below.

I was thinking about what I wanted to name the movie and when I saw the picture of the clocks, the title came to me: Tok followed Tik. With the growing popularity of the app TikTok, I thought about how the interesting pun could also apply to the names of the two best friends. I thought it was interesting with the text behind the clock and I will admit that it was part of the original picture which is even better because it adds an interesting element to the poster that I love.

When I was considering the depth of this poster, I knew I had to incorporate three elements to make a background, mid-ground and foreground and add shadows where they were needed. Here are the original photos I combined in the poster:

I did struggle with the orientation of the poster because I was upset with how it looked being horizontal. Most of my pictures were horizontal and I didn’t really have an option where it looked good in portrait, so I decided to stick with that orientation.

In regard to the typography, I wanted the main focus to be the title, so I put a smaller text in white in the corner. There wasn’t a lot of room once I put in the background and wanted to have a clear emphasis on the hilly background without much text obstructing that. I really liked how the type was integrated with the clocks and I originally was going to try and remove the text but after many failed attempts and stepping back to look at the poster, I really liked the text in the clocks, and it was a happy mistake that my title ended up being the focus of one of my photos! I wanted to make sure that the text that was in the clocks was the main focal point and while my decision making towards specific typography ended up being limited, I knew I wanted it in the mid-ground and manipulated the other elements (like dropping shadows on figures) to make sure that element was exactly where I wanted. The text in the clock was awesome because I think it was pretty indicative of time traveling without any other description and that was my original goal when I was planning the typography of this poster.

I didn’t love the authentic titles where I placed them, but again, the orientation of my poster made placement a little tricky. Thankfully, I was able to find a template online that replicated those credits and ended up filling in the names with people I knew which was fun.

Lastly, for the two human elements, I wanted them to appear as authentic as possible and not look like cutouts on a page, so I kept the lighting of the background in mind when I was editing the two girls. I immediately dropped two shadows of the girls at a 90º angle because I wanted to make sure the shadow distance from the body and the angle were the same on both girls. I was focused on consistency in this poster, so I edited the brightness and contrast levels of both girls to try and match the background and mid-ground. While it’s not perfect, I think it’s pretty good and I’m happy with how it turned out for my second time designing a poster.