The Project
For this project I was tasked with designing a poster based on a national park. The poster would be 11×17 and use the silhouette of an animal from said park as a container for a landscape observed at the park. The landscape must have a foreground, midground and background to give depth to the design.
Research
I started off the project by surfing the web looking at a variety of different national parks. I stumbled upon Glacier National Park located in Montana and fell in love with the landscapes I saw. I knew that the breathtaking mountains, beautiful blue water and blooming flowers of Glacier National Park was something I wanted to emulate in my design.
![](https://dev-alyssa-amelio-portfolio.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/the-hills-are-alive-robert-miller.jpg)
![](https://dev-alyssa-amelio-portfolio.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Towering-Inferno-Glacier-National-Park.jpg)
![](https://dev-alyssa-amelio-portfolio.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Montana-1024x507.jpeg)
After deciding on the park I was going to base my design off of, I then began to research popular wild life found at the park. At the beginning, I decided to use a Red Fox as the silhouette container for the design.
![](https://dev-alyssa-amelio-portfolio.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/NationalParkPosterProjectPart2_6011_AAmelio-663x1024.png)
Rough Draft
When starting on the landscape, I chose one of the photos I found during my research and tried to recreate it in Illustrator. First, I started by blocking out the main pieces of the landscape, the mountains, water and foreground.
Getting closer…
As I started to flesh things out, I experimented with gradients and a different container for my landscape, Glacier National Park’s popular Bighorn Sheep.
![](https://dev-alyssa-amelio-portfolio.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/NationalParkPosterPart3_6011_AAmelio_V2-1-663x1024.jpg)
![](https://dev-alyssa-amelio-portfolio.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/NationalParkPosterPart3_6011_AAmelio_V3-1-663x1024.jpg)
The Final Project
After getting my critiques back and spending more time on the project, I was able to make some edits that changed my design for the better. I revised my mountains, flipped the gradient of the lake, added some birds to the sky for some more visual interest, and added a gradient to the bottom half of the poster to give it more depth. I ended the project with two different color options, a majestic purple sunset and a beautiful blue sky.
![](https://dev-alyssa-amelio-portfolio.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/NationalParkPosterPartFinal_6011_AAmelio_purple-663x1024.jpg)
![](https://dev-alyssa-amelio-portfolio.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/NationalParkPosterPartFinal_6011_AAmelio_blue-663x1024.jpg)