This assignment was to create a poster for a music event. I had a choice of three, and I decided to challenge myself with creating a poster for an Early Music concert. To start with I needed to create a moodboard. So I did some research and started to pull together a feeling and idea for the poster. That, even though it is dealing with music create a long time ago, the concert itself could feel modern.
A lot of Early Music posters out there seemed to be happy being old-fashioned and poorly designed. I decided to only pull things that felt fresh and blurred the lines between old music and new music.
I then started to explore thumbnails, trying to think of abstract, representational and other ways of getting a feel for the Early Music theme, whilst still feeling modern.
I was really intrigued by the rock-esque concert and the stained class, as both allowed me to push the normal aspect. For one, I was inspired by an old picture of a troop of Baroque musicians, they almost felt like a rock band to me. The other I was inspired to see if I might be able to pull off a modern stained effect, and pull on more abstract elements that I had learned during the section. So I used both of these to complete my visuals:
I am pleased with the visuals. They have the minimum content needed to convey the idea. I left spaces for the text, as I wanted to play around once I had rendered the final image, and it would be easier to do this digitally. The moodboard has lots of colours, but there seemed to be a theme of green and a golden yellow. So I started to think about colour schemes. I had the idea of different coloured spot lights in the rock concert, and I thought that this would be a really challenging task to get the lighting right. I created a coloured concept visual using Procreate on my ipad:
I was surprised how quick and easy it was to get this effect in Procreate, and it came with a host of brush tools to easily render things like lights and smoke. I knew, however that I wouldn't be able to rely on these for the final, and I was not sure that's what I wanted anyway. It took me about ten hours to do the final render, and a lot of experimentation with how to apply lighting effects non-destructively. That way, if I wasn't happy with the final results it would not be hard to change the colours.
The next thing to do was to add in the text. For my first attempt I leant on fonts that gave the right kind of "Baroque" feel:
This was not too bad - apart from the fact that I had forgotten the time on the poster! As this was specifically required in the brief, it was time to try a different approach. I decided to go with a title that was much more in contrast in style and colour, and then use sans serif fonts for the information to help them stand out at a distance.
Whilst I was putting it together, I tried to see what it would look like as a poster mockup. I think it works fairly well, but I did notice I forgot the time again! I double checked and fixed the poster.
You can see the final poster below:
Overall I am happy with what I learned about lighting. It was a really complex bit of work to pull it off, and I am glad I managed to progress. The perspective also works well, so that again is a progression in my skills.
In my sketchbook I have been considering how to shade with black only, and I tried to employ some of this 'noir' approach to the audience. Some work better than others but I learned a lot about how I can use negative space to suggest style and volume.
I am a bit disappointed that the image feels more like a comic than a poster image. I don't know how best to pull myself away from the same process every time it comes to the Assignment. I hope my tutor can give me some direction here.
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