About two months ago, I volunteered to design a high school drama club poster for a friend of mine. I had stagnated creatively and needed a new project to occupy my time (read: pull me out of the depression I was sinking into).
I spent a few hours a day brainstorming and tweaking my ideas on a sheet of paper, and while I didn’t document my every step, I would love to share the several versions I have from start to finish.
Many of my ideas came to me while substitute teaching as students quietly worked on assignments or tests left behind by their regular teacher. Though I’d never seen the play, a quick Google search revealed it involved penguins, Christmas, and a man in a wheelchair.
Always a fan of cartoon animals, I opted to work the penguin into my poster. And because “The Man” was coming to “Dinner,” I couldn’t help but spell out the title in a bowl of alphabet soup.
The top three quarters of the poster came easily to me, but I never felt quite happy with the bottom portion. I know that I shouldn’t be a Debbie Downer, but I feel as though I must continue to be critical of my work in order to grow. The fact that I’m almost totally happy with the poster overall is a feat in itself.
I used acrylics to paint a background on an 11″x17″ sheet of mixed media paper. I still wasn’t sold on my final colors and knew the text would be too arduous and time-consuming to paint by hand, so I retained simple shapes and colors. This picture was taken before I added the bottom portion with address and ticket prices.
This was a rough mock-up I made in photoshop after photographing the painted backdrop. I didn’t have a scanner available to me, so the image was slightly skewed in places, but I was able to place the majority of the text in layers that I could eventually transfer and adjust onto the scanned version, which I did.
The only major change I made between the rough version and final one is the orientation of the letters in the date/time portion; while I liked the effect of each letter standing straight up in the heading, I thought it was too difficult to read on the rest of the poster. And yes, because I am a perfectionist, I added and placed each letter individually for all the ribbon-looking areas.
This is the final poster, freshly printed from Staples.
Here’s another image of the poster hanging in the school,
and one more of it hanging in our local small-chain grocery store.
Finally, my poster made its appearance on the cake made for the cast and crew. It made my day to see my little creation transformed and tweaked to fit its new medium.
Thank you, Mike, for giving me the opportunity to help you. I loved arting with myself again and had missed it terribly.
–eelbee