Experimenting with Colour

Since the basic structure of this design is pretty much finalized I decided to play around with different colour schemes since black and white doesn't really say anything about the poem or the history behind it.

Navy Blue Type / White Background
This was to remind the audience of type printed in that old style ink that was a very deep blue colour. It's also an attempt to keep the design simple and contemporary, which is one of my goals for this piece. However I don't know if it's only slightly less plain than the original black and white.

White Type / Blue Background
This was add a more subtle feel to the type whilst suggesting connotations of the river. But I chose a more pale teal shade of blue as it appears slightly more formal and serious, hopefully reflecting the historical significance of the poem more than a brighter more in your face blue that could undermine the poem. I like this colour scheme but I think A) it makes the exclamations appear more passive instead of eye catching as they're set in white and B) Although the whole idea of using blue to represent the river does have its place, it is a bit cliche and isn't something I want to use in all of my designs. I think there are more meanings to explore through colour with this poem.

Brown and Deep Red Type / White Background
With this colour scheme I experimented with using alternating colours for the type, emphasizing the large outbursts using red in order to bring them out even further from the rest of the poem. Also the red and brown is designed to remind the audience of old 18th century posters (based on the ones I've been researching) which use red to highlight important words and phrases. Often titles. The brown has connotations of old style paper. In this way I can reflect the historical aspect of the poem without directly replicating something I've seen done before. And  hopefully these colours, along with the white background, will give the design a more contemporary feel.

Another alteration I made was to the typeface choice. I decided to set the smaller type in Minion Pro and leave the large type in Imprint MT Shadow. This is because the 'shadow' design of Imprint is hard to make out at this smaller scale and it only serves to make the type look needlessly heavy. Minion Pro is a similar roman typeface that carries the same connotations but works well as the main body type for this design because it's not so decorative. Overall the design becomes cleaner and more concise.