Assignment 4: Poster Series

Concept

I want to create a music festival featuring my favorite artists from the Chicago area. All the artists will be based in Chicago and in the rock genre. I’ve picked 3 bands: Submediant, Cheap Trick, and Rise Against, which each have a unique sound and style, but fit with my festival concept. I will call the festival “Chicagart,” like “Chicago — art.”

Content

Here is my plan. On the left is aesthetics and on the right is content:

Poster 1

1. Name of festival: chicagart
2. Title of event: Submediant
3. Name(s) of artist(s): Submediant
4. Short paragraph about artist(s) or event itself: Submediant is a grunge band native to the Chicago area. Lead vocalist and guitarist Nick Wenger utilizes his incredible singing range to bring intense emotion to each note. Grunge isn’t dead!
5. Date, time, location: 10 October 2019, 9–10pm, 4220 South Halsted Street, International Ampitheatre, Chicago IL
6. Ticket information: buy online at www.chicagart.com

Poster 2

1. Name of festival: chicagart
2. Title of event: Cheap Trick
3. Name(s) of artist(s): Cheap Trick
4. Short paragraph about artist(s) or event itself: Cheap Trick is an internationally acclaimed rock band originally formed in Chicago in the 70s. Their classic rock sound influenced the rock scene throughout the 70s and 80s, with hit songs like “I Want You to Want Me,” “Surrender,” and “Dream Police.”
5. Date, time, location: 11 October 2019, 9–10pm, 329 N Dearborn St, House of Blues, Chicago IL
6. Ticket information: buy online at www.chicagart.com

Poster 3

1. Name of festival: chicagart
2. Title of event: Rise Against
3. Name(s) of artist(s): Rise Against
4. Short paragraph about artist(s) or event itself: Rise Against is a punk rock band originally formed in Chicago in 1999. Their rapid-paced tempo and gritty combination of hardcore punk and melodic hardcore gives them a unique sound. Hits include “Savior,” “Prayer of the Refugee,” and “Satellite.”
5. Date, time, location: 12 October 2019, 9–10pm, The Empty Bottle, 1035 N Western Avenue, Chicago IL
6. Ticket information: buy online at www.chicagart.com

Here are some initial ideas I sketched out for each poster:

Submediant:

Cheap trick:

Rise against:

Throughout the process of sketching, I got more and more playful with my type. I really like how the Rise Against drafts came together with the different text — as I talked about with Sanika, it looks kind of like the pulsing of music, which is a really interesting design for a music festival.

Here is a mood board I made:

The colors that popped out to me were yellow, purple, and red, so I decided to explore this color scheme in my initial designs:

First drafts:

I liked these posters but in my desk crit, it was pointed out that they don’t necessarily look like musical posters, but more like flyers. I tried to explore a more unified musical poster design for my next draft:

Second drafts:

Also tried this with the submediant to add more colors, not sure how I feel about it:

I think the layout of my second draft is better than the first, but the font I used isn’t the best because it’s not very readable — it looks more like something that could be a cool element of design, but not necessarily the best for titles.

I tried to take my designs in a different direction for the next draft, and play with the pen tool to make more interesting and unique designs:

Draft 3:

I think there’s a major improvement from drafts 1&2 to 3 — I spent a lot of time improving my pen tool technique and it shows! However, in my critique, people pointed out that there’s a problem with the unification of the posters; they don’t necessarily look like they’re all part of the same festival. In addition, people had trouble trying to understand which genre of music the bands were — the designs make a lot of sense to me because they mimic album art for each band, but for someone who doesn’t know the bands, I understand that it would be hard to get a basic idea of the music. This is definitely something to work on; in addition, I think the unification would be greatly improved by increasing the size of my “chicagart” title and making the colors more consistent.

To improve the communication of the genre, I decided to do some more research of rock/punk posters:

Looking at elements of these posters, I think it’s important to add more distress to my poster because it’s very clean-looking right now in general. I particularly like the aesthetic of the second, green poster, which has the detail in the top right as well as the bar at the bottom for the text — I think this is something I could easily incorporate into my own design, which would help to add unity to my posters, as well as add more clues about the genre of the music. I also think it would be cool to do something like the first, white poster, with an overlay of the black distress details. I think I should focus on darker colors, with the bright orange, red, and purples as pops of color, rather than the background of the poster itself.

Here is the next draft I came up with:

I like the concept, but it doesn’t incorporate color. When I met with Sanika, she suggested that I work on developing a color palette from my mood board using the eyedropper tool, and also that I put the three posters in one document as separate art boards, so that I can manipulate them as a set of three and create elements that span across the posters to further unify them. Here’s what I was able to come up with next:

I’m really happy with these designs because I think they convey the genre much better and I also love the cohesiveness between the posters — it’s truly starting to come together as a branded music festival. In addition, I like the way the colors are looking with the textures I decided on.

Here is a twitter banner I made:

And another playing with the caps:

At this point, Sanika suggested that I experiment with different fonts; she really liked the font I used in the Draft 3 posters. She also suggested that I try adding color into the pen tool illustrations to add even more color (but being careful not to add too much), and that I change the color of the background to be more of a true white, since the beige color gives a little bit of a dull look to my posters.

After those edits, I was able to develop this as my final draft:

And for the banners:

I was happy with the font I chose because it looks cleaner and easier to read, but I was still able to add some of my distressed aesthetic in a subtle manner by creating outlines and adding a brush stroke around the edges of the letters. In addition, I think the sketches have more interest with the added color.

Overall, I think I made huge improvements from my first draft to my final product, and I can see a lot of development in my layout, style choices, and communication. At the first class critique, nobody was able to guess which genre the artists were, but I think it’s much clearer in the last draft, and the posters are much more cohesive. In addition, I learned a lot of new skills in illustrator over the course of this project, such as the pen tool, the brush strokes, the scissors and knife tools, and the curvature tool. I look forward to using these new skills in projects in the future.