Fracking the System
Print Design
March 2024
Project Details
Time Spent
67 hours
Tasks
Graphic Designer
Copywriter
Tools Used
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Firefly
Project Type
Film Poster
The Ask
Fracking the System: Colorado’s Oil and Gas Wars reveals shocking and powerful lessons from the front lines of environmental activism that leaves the audience against and ready to join the fight.
The Colorado-based documentary reveals the environmental damages and health hazards that fracking exposes its populations to. My job as a designer was to create a movie poster for the documentary that captures its message and encourages viewers to watch the film and join the cause.
Process
Process Summary
At the start of the process, I watched the film and took notes, time stamping specific visuals and quotes that I thought could inspire my design. This worked really well for me because it helped me iterate on different concepts early on. When designing the poster, I began by experimenting with different visuals, and then tried to format the type in a way that worked with the imagery. Going forward, I’m not sure if that was the best idea because it was really hard to structure my text to fit over/in the images. I think it would have been more productive to work with the type and imagery at the same time, in order to allow myself to better combine the type and imagery.
Throughout my process, I had various critiques that helped influence my revisions. I pushed myself to present vastly different concepts to see which were best received. While this helped to push me to more creatively and effectively express my ideas, it made the feedback I got on the overall layout of the poster more limited.
Previous Iterations
Final Design
Concept
This poster focuses on the concept of the endangerment of children that the film emphasizes. Being that Bella Romero, the school in the film, is placed right in front of an oil rig, I wanted to convey the close proximity of the oil rig and the school. By contrasting a school child with an oil rig, and portraying fear on the child's face, I felt I would be able to emotionally target parents and incline them to watch the film.
Revisions
Based on the feedback I received from pursuing Version 5, I decided to go back to a Version 3 because it was more powerful at communicating the meaning behind the film. I rearranged the type, making sure that it was no longer stretched, and was a simple typeface that wasn’t overbearing. I also stacked the block type for the credits at the bottom to mimic industry-standard cinema posters, and to allow for more space. Adding the fracking site in the reflection of the window allowed me to tie in imagery from the film, embedding it into my artwork without making it overpowering.
Takeaways
I learned a lot of new hard and soft skills throughout this project. The first being that I’ve significantly improved my skills in Photoshop, and gained valuable experience in utilizing AI in a design space. Furthermore, I’ve recognized that visual hierarchy is something I am relatively strong at considering within my designs. I also excel at finding new and creative ways to embed my type into imagery to make designs more unified. One thing that I struggle with as a designer is narrowing in on one concept. I find that I go through a constant cycle of changing my mind on whether or not I like my concept. Being indecisive and constantly changing my ideas can be good, but when done too excessively it prevents me from getting sufficient feedback on the design elements of my work.
