Project: Design a Poster for the School Play

 This was Hollywood's movie poster version.

Design a promotional poster for the upcoming school play, "Arsenic and Old Lace", a dark play by American playwright Joseph Kesselring.

Here's the basic plot of the play if you've never seen it before.:

The play is a farce revolving around Mortimer Brewster, a theatre-hating drama critic who must deal with his crazy family and local police as he debates whether to go through with marrying the woman he loves. His family include two spinster aunts who have taken to murdering old men by poisoning them with arsenic, a brother who believes he's Teddy Roosevelt, and a criminally murderous brother who - due to botched plastic surgery to evade the authorities - now looks like horror-film actor Boris Karloff (a self-referential joke, as the part was originally played by Karloff). The basic plot matches that of the movie adaptation, with a few minor changes in background.

Find photographs, images,  that best convey the ideas behind your chosen subject. Since it is a poster, keep the overall image simple and clean.  Too much clutter will be visually distracting to the viewer.

These are the 9 golden rules of good poster design:

1. Put as little as possible on the poster (design or text).

2. Arrange the design and lettering to attract the attention of passers-by.

3. Consider where the poster will be hung or displayed. (in our case it would be in the school halls)

4. Consider how effective it will look next to other flyers or posters.

5. Text and design should be large enough to be seen from a prescribed distance, usually 6 feet..

6. Use harmonious color combinations.

7. Design and text must complement each other.

8. Use a modern up-to-date art style.

9. The design should not detract from the impact of the words.

Click here for a link to a site that has a nice example of a poster for a play as an example to go by.

Here's some others to take a look at for ideas on layout and color use...

http://yin.arts.uci.edu/~forger/poster.html

http://www.theartofposter.com/

http://www.internationalposter.com/ru-text.cfm

Project Requirements:

Image size: 18" x 24"

Resolution: 72 dpi

Include the following text on your poster design: Performance name, playwright's name, date, time, location, etc., as well as an image for the poster.  At this time you will need to make up the date and time because we don't know that yet.  The play will be performed in the NCHS Gymnasium.