It's finally done, comrade! Part 3

Here it is, the final design. A propaganda poster for the Watts Towers, asking the people of Watts if that old beaten tower is still around after all of the hard times, can't they do the same? Also, before going any further, listen to this as you go.

Looking back you can spot ideas taken from almost all of the roughs prior to this. The colors I decided were very important to something that was supposed to have an air of propaganda about it, so I kept it bold and simple. The large amount of text I used as a framing device for the Tower itself, to draw attention to it, with some key words and little phrases made a little larger than the rest to keep the entirety of the type from just fading into an aura around the tower. The tower itself was done using brush strokes to make it appear weathered and kind of "battle damaged" but it still stands tall, playing on the message from the slogan. I also wanted to keep every piece of the work on a separate plane, that way it all sat on the same page, but didn't blend too much that you couldn't pick them apart. The top and bottom sections slanting off in different directions, while the type around the tower was on a flat plane, with the tower pointing straight up to the skies.

It's finally done, comrade! Part 2

On to the design process
I started with quite a few drafts to get all of my ideas out in the open, starting with MANY hand roughs and eventually narrowing it down to a few digitals, as shown here.

Eventually I would take ideas from just about all of these and end up with the final piece.

It's finally done, comrade! Part 1

Over the course of too much time I care to mention, I've gone through quite a few designs and slogans.
The first step was getting key words out onto the Table, these words were to give me an idea as to where I wanted to go with the direction of the ad, words such as:

Hardship
History
Persistence
Durability
Endure
Inspire
Symbol
Beacon
Respect
Hope

There were more, but these were the most relevant to my final design, from these I did somewhat of a brain pick and pulled slogans out of it:

"Think back but push forward!"
"When it's tough, look to the Towers!"
"Aim high like the Towers!"
"Rise up with the Towers!"
and finally, "It still stands, can YOU?"

I stuck with the final slogan for two reasons, first that it was short and simple, slogans that get too wordy/long breathed can be a problem. Second and probably the main point was that it is a question and not a statement, it calls on the reader to ask themselves the question, makes it interactive in a sense, writing that makes people think is much better than writing that just throws orders in their face.

Watts Tower Photos

2 of them for getting an idea of the structure of the tower, and another 2 for the detail work put into the walls and such.