Graphics Project

Cheerleading is a big part of my life at AU and this tryout poster demonstrates the types of skills, teamwork, and spirit that are needed to be on the team. The background of the poster is light blue with white which is meant to look like a sky, which goes along with the idea of flying in cheerleading. Dark writing on light background is very effective when trying to grab the attention of viewers so I lightened the blue from the original image, which came from www.doobix.com/.../sky/backgrounds_sky_40.jpeg, and chose black text for the information about tryouts and the quote.

All of the AU Cheer images were taken over the course of the past two years by members of the team at various times and were sent to me via Facebook. There are 6 images on the poster, the flipping girl, the team picture, the co-ed stunt, the toe-touching girl, the American University Athletics logo, and the four girls holding hands and jumping. All of these images had saturation and lightness adjustments made to them as well as shadowing effects. It was necessary to cut the images from their original backgrounds and place them onto the poster with the use of careful eraser editing and feathering. For example, the AU logo had bevel and emboss done create a black outline around it in order to contrast with the background, and the team picture had a glowing effect applied to it. The team picture was purposely placed in the center because it is a very symmetrical image and brings power to the poster which is highlighted by the glowing effect. For the four girls holding hands I lowered the opacity so that the spirit quote could be placed over it and the image could blend with the background. This allowed for the poster to have more images but have these images take up less space on the background.

The text for the poster is bold for the purpose of attracting attention and also there is importance in the quote. "Strength. Teamwork. Spirit. Are you in?" sums up the attitude of the cheerleading program at AU and a quote like this one is necessary to make the poster more memorable than having the tryout dates and times as the only text. Also, the word spirit was made red to stand out, mainly to stress the importance of being spirited and to add more red to the poster because it is one of the school colors. The images compliment this quote and would paint a clear picture as to what is expected at tryouts, and hopefully attract the right people to the team. I didn't want to add any more text or images because then the poster would be too busy and the information would be hidden by cool pictures of people in the air flipping.

Overall, this is a poster that could be seen around campus and even though it was made for the purpose of this project I will probably hand it over to my coach so he can use it for the program in the future.