man.bear.pig. Poster Series Documentation
Project Statement
For this project, I was tasked with creating a three-poster series for an art festival that I made up. The posters were supposed to work both when together and separate from each other. Concretely, the project specified that I use hierarchy, a grid, color, and illustrations to embody my arts festival.
Ideation
I was initially intent on making my posters for a music festival, and so I developed a couple themes for music festivals. One was the idea for a festival in the middle of the desert, taking place over the course of a day, thus the name “Day in the Desert”. Another one was “SkyCycles”, developed mostly so I could use a stye with a lot of rounded rectangles. I also thought of Man-bear-Pig, a festival created in the name of a fake mythical creature. The creature is literally fake, in that it was made up by the creators of South Park, not just that it isn’t real.
In the end, I decided that I wanted to step out of my comfort zone a little bit. I went forward with the festival called man.bear.pig., after the character from a South Park episode that aired in 2006. In the episode, Man-Bear-Pig is meant to be a metaphor for climate change, which Al Gore is constantly trying to prove is real to everyone else.
For my purposes, Man-Bear-Pig is itself the basis for symbolism— each of the three events in the festival is representative of one of the animals in Man-Bear-Pig. I made the “Man” event a concert, the “Bear” event a wrestling tournament, and the “Pig” event a pig roast. The first was because communication and singing, while not solely attributed to humans, feel innately and truly human. The wrestling tournament came from bears being (possibly falsely) known for wrestling. The pig roast came from, well, the pig, and how barbecues tend to involve a lot of pork.
The above color swatches were developed to be pretty earthy, especially the last two. The second line of colors was color picked from a picture of barbecued meats.
First Drafts
The first drafts were focused on giving the festival a barebones feel. The event itself was the main attraction, the posters were just a means of conveying information…except for the body text. I wanted the body text to portray Man-Bear-Pig as a real myth, going overboard so as to poke fun at tall tales. Because the text is hard to read, here it is in a more legible format.
Man:
The mythical Man-Bear-Pig descends from more brutal animals, but only man has the ability to rock the world. The day will be kicked off by the deeply emotional sounds of Neck Deep, supported by the rhythmic rock of DON BROCO. Everyone is encouraged to engage in mosh pits and yelling to summon the spirit of Man-Bear-Pig.
Bear:
The source of Man-Bear-Pig’s great strength comes from the mighty bear. As a tribute to muscle, the afternoon’s event consists of an amateur wrestling contest. Anyone is welcome to compete, but only those that channel the power of Man-Bear-Pig are sure to find victory.
Pig:
Many have faced Man-Bear-Pig, but none have lived to tell the tale. Still, there are stories of its delicious flesh. The end of this action-packed day is a feast to satiate even the hungriest festival-goers. The best local pitmasters will be slow-roasting their goods the entire day, finishing the festival off with a toast to the beast that will be sure to fill your senses.
The hand-drawn animals of the first drafts were meant to reflect the unfinished, rough look of the festival as a whole. The colors were also basic for this reason, although I was in the middle of developing them further.
Right Before Interim
These drafts show my thought processes as I was coming up on the interim critique. There are a few notable things:
- I was trying to break the grid and the horizontal theme with the top two. “A concert” was meant to stand out because it was not aligned with the rest of the content.
- There is a color block theme in some of these, as I was inspired by some of the Swiss posters that sit in a collection at the CMU library. It was part of an effort to keep a simple style while feeling rough around the edges.
- The color is much richer. I wanted the colors to pop while also being earthy.
Interim Poster Series
This is the poster series that I brought to the interim critique. It has elements of the color block above, hand-drawn animals and title to retain the “rough around the edges” look, and the rich color. Notably different is the subtitle above the hand-drawn event title. This is to introduce the event that’s happening while also keeping the viewer in perspective of the whole event.
People generally liked the hand-drawn titles and the emotion that the posters evoked, but felt like the grid wasn’t followed and the placement of the animals was weird. The text also was not placed correctly, according to my peers. I personally wanted to change the colors and try something new with the graphics.
One More Exploration
Before deciding on my final style, I tried one more theme. This was one where I recycled the hand drawings of the animals and made them into blurry polaroids. This was meant to reflect when people say “I have clear proof of _____ mythical creature” and just show a blurry photograph. These posters would have obviously blurry images that one could still see had just a pig/bear/man in it. While I think that this was a strong concept, it was hard to make look good, so I went a different route with my final product.
Final Theme
I wanted to make posters that were cute while also being rough. I changed the body text to be shorter but more clear about what the event would be. The text on these first drafts was way too large when printed out, so I went to refining and adding the rest of the information.
These are each a little bit different in font, in scale, in how the speech bubbles are places, and also one has a subtitle. The information is too large again and the speech bubbles are redundant. In my final product, I settle on DIN as my font of choice. That being said, I keep a lot of hand-drawn elements to try and work in the unfinished look. I combine the speech bubbles with “man”, etc, into the titles. I also work in the color palette that I made via barbecue meats.
Final Product
Reflecting on my project, I am proud of the graphic style. It is most certainly out of my comfort zone but I felt it was a great exploration. If I had more time, I would play with making the hierarchy more clear and the text better arranged, as per the critique that I got. That being said, I feel that the project was an overall success. I’m proud that man.bear.pig. will be represented by this poster series and the hours and hours of work that I’ve put in.
