British award-winning designer Alex Fowkes is best known for his brilliant typography work and his ability to combine typefaces in impactful and creative ways. I was inspired by Fowkes’ unique style, so I chose to create advertising posters for an imaginary typography workshop hosted by the designer. My process included researching Fowkes and his portfolio, designing several sketches that compiled my ideas, and creating three mood boards that captured my inspiration for the color palette, type combinations, illustrations and rhetoric tropes. This resulted in three final poster solutions that featured three different rhetorical tropes. The final posters are 11 in. by 17 in. and are mounted on 14 in. by 20 in. black foam board.

In all three posters, my goal was to use vibrant colors and rhetorical tropes and to mostly feature typography that emulated the chunky variety of typefaces that Fowkes uses. I decided to use a combination of serif, slab serif, sans serif and my own handwriting to add interest and contrast. Additionally, I included the event information and used social media icons on two posters and a QR code on one that links to Fowkes’ portfolio. My main poster has a pop of yellow and focuses on marketing the event through the use of mixed, complementary fonts that demonstrate hyperbole and exaggerate how amazing the event will be in order to entertain the viewer.  My second poster contains bright teal colors and has three columns of typography-related puns placed in the background of the poster to add comedic effect. The third works with personification by featuring opaque background text that gives human characteristics to type, like “type that talks” and by visually including a large chat box coming out from the main hand-drawn headline.

Overall, my goal in this project was to create eye-catching, vibrant posters that draw the viewer in but also leave a lasting impression through the use of prominent typographical elements and rhetorical tropes.