Graphic Design - More than just pretty pictures

We had a project over the summer that was to design an anti theft poster for Donnington Park.Now i'll be the first to admit that Graphc design isnt my thing, I thought I could just look at examples of others work that looked cool and apply the same layout and colour scheme to my design and bravo, my tutors would love it.

OH. HOW WRONG I WAS.

It turns out that good graphic design is way more than just pretty pictures, as a result my two poster designs suffered some harsh criticism, it was a real eye opener for me to have my work slated like this. I was out of ideas the only thing I could think of doing was to take the criticism on board and learn from it. I did just that.

Failed Graphic Design 1

The problem with this design was there was too much going on, the design took emphasis from the meaning of the poster. The image I had used was not very clear either.

Failed graphic design 2

I really liked the whole target idea and I was determined to hang on to it, I just had to find away to communicate the anti theft message without just making a pretty picture like I had done with my previous designs.I really like the yellow and black colour scheme though.

After much thought I experimented with making the target out of the items that where particularly at risk from being stolen at donnington park such as cars and bikes and also theft of personal items of those attending the download festival such as mobile phones and laptops.

This was a practice design, my tutor really liked it and he suggested that I make a collage and play about with it in photoshop.

I took a photograph of the collage and messed about with conrast in photoshop, when the police saw this design they liked it but they suggested that I included everything that could be nicked in the poster.
my tutor told me that I needed to take my own pictures also so I took advantage of the kids in class "love of technology" and swiped there ipads phones and pods so that I could snap a few sneeky pictures.

There where some errors with this pic so I decided to rectify this by positioning the pictures inside the target so that I could make sure there were not any bits cut off.

The final design, more than just a pretty picture.