Initial Iteration - My first iteration of this poster was very rough and it involved essentially taking the ideas from my sketches and getting them onto the digital page. I fully rendered the animal silhouettes which were previously just scribbles and I put in text and simple smoke stacks.
Rethinking the smoke - One major problem I had with my previous designs was that the animals didn't really look like smoke. Some feedback I got confirmed that the animals even looked like they were being sucked into the smoke stacks more than they looked like they were coming out. Although I liked the idea of having white text, I wanted to rethink the way I showed the smoke because I felt that this message was more important than the color of the text. I changed the way I showed the animals to make them look much more like smoke and changed the text to black to contrast with the now-light top of the poster.
Retracing my steps - Although I liked the way the smoke looked in my last iteration, I felt like the black letters didn't stand out and I missed the boldness of the white lettering. I tried to get both the look of the smoke and the white lettering by making the top of the poster get dark again, but I found that the animals got lost in the middle of the smoke.
Rethinking the letters again - Another method I tried to get both the effect of smokiness and the bold white letters was to put a drop shadow on the letters with the light smoke behind them. Although I'm glad I tried this idea, I feel that it disrupts the tone of the piece and the white letters look out of place and take away from the smoke behind them.
The Final Iteration - At this point, white letters seemed to no longer be an option, but my idea of the drop shadow helped me to make the black letters more powerful. Putting a drop shadow on these black letters makes them stand out more, but doesn't take away from the smoke and because of that, doesn't take away from the message of my poster.