Poster a Day - Week #1
Over the last week I have challenged myself to produce one new poster everyday to encourage productivity, new ideas and to boost a more consistent online presence. Each poster is relevant to either my mindset on the day, or to techniques and styles that I have wanted to experiment with in the past. For my first day the most care was taken as I planned to establish an identity of sorts that would be visible and consistent across all of the posters going forward. After some deliberation i settled on a very clean, minimal template that enabled as much space as possible on each poster for the artwork itself to be as free as possible.
“Each poster is relevant to either my mindset on the day, or to techniques and styles that I have wanted to experiment with in the past.”
For my first day I decided to base the poster around musician ‘Frank Ocean’, I began by searching through the internet for different effects and layouts that I’m not necessarily accustomed to. After some time I decided I wanted to take assets from illustrator and merge them alongside photography, so naturally my next stop was to find photography that I believed could work with what I wanted to do. The general photo I was looking for would be very clear, centered on Ocean himself and for Ocean to be positioned somewhat dynamically so any patterns or assets could react to the image itself. I found a photo that fit into everything I had planned and then hopped on to illustrator to create repeating lines which were then placed into Photoshop and warped. The warped line pattern is very representative of the mellow, soulful tones that from Ocean’s music. The pattern is also accentuating the singer’s place on the poster making him seem separate from the background and placing him in the forefront. I made sure the photo is mostly monotone in colour and adjusted Ocean himself to make his skin tone jump out from the darker background. The poster mixes photography with patterns and puts a focus on Ocean’s emotion when performing.
“The warped line pattern is very representative of the mellow, soulful tones that from Ocean’s music.”
#2 - Brockhampton (Iridescence Album Poster)
For the second day I chose to base it around self-proclaimed best boy band in the world, ‘Brockhampton’. The day marked the release of their newest album ‘iridescence’ and so I wanted to create something that accurately captured both the energy and look of their new record. The large colour elements sprawled across the page is a clear nod to the album art and overall theme of Brockhampton’s new album which has a strong focus of vibrant thermal imaging. In order to make these bright colours as effective as possible I implemented a very dark desaturated background, I feel this was especially effective for the final outcome. The photograph features one of the band’s main members ‘Kevin Abstract’. The photograph is somewhere I wanted to push more on the energetic side of the piece, I tried some other variations of this such as repeating the photograph and experimenting with duo tones but settled on a more muted motion blur that spreads across the page. This idea of movement and motion carries over to the repetition of the title on the poster.
“I wanted to create something that accurately captured both the energy and look of their new record.”
#3 - Anthony Joshua Fight Night Poster
Day Three took place on the date of Anthony Joshua’s title defence against Russian, Andriy Povetkin. For this poster I knew I wanted to combine elements seen in the previous two designs, more specifically the motion in day 2’s poster and the prominent focused figure from the first day. I believe I merged these elements quite well with the strong motion blur seen spreading across the page alongside the warped line pattern. The pattern seen is warped to accentuate the movement Joshua is exhibiting in the photograph itself and helping push the impression of power coming from the World Champion.
“The pattern seen is warped to accentuate the movement Joshua is exhibiting”
#4 - Whale Drifting
Day 4 presented the time for newer research to find different styles and techniques that appealed to me. One element I had tried before with text was to create the effect of 3D shapes whilst merging hundreds of individual shapes with dynamic gradients. This has always been a technique I have wanted to push further and therefore I took a focus on how this could be implemented. After more extended research I decided I wanted to take these 3D elements and place them into environments that would result in a surreal outcome. For this poster I chose an underwater setting with a large whale moving through the centre. The large winding shapes climbing from the bottom creates this surreal aspect to the piece and a large sense of this is due to colour correction. The Hue and Saturation was altered to create a blue overtone that brought that made these shapes feel genuinely a part of the setting. The whale itself cuts through the two shapes creating a dynamic effect that makes the animal almost seem 3D.
“The large winding shapes climbing from the bottom creates this surreal aspect”
#5 - Betta
Day 5 saw me return to the drawing board for some more extending research into what really jumped out to me online. During my research I came across a livestream being run by Adobe Creative Cloud featuring designer ‘Temi Coker’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIpc0Bggaeg&t=616s) I quickly became interested in his style of design and the fact that he himself had created an established poster a day series. One particular approach he took was using photographs of betta fishes and imposing them onto different models. To achieve this theme I searched through Adobe stock for the relevant fish and model images and got to work. Colour correction is very important with this time of photo editing and manipulation and lets the transition from photo to photo seem much more natural. I like the surreal tone to this style of poster and how it can be presented in a normal, more realistic way.
“it can be presented in a normal, more realistic way.”
The 6th Poster in this series saw me push on the style seen on day 4. The idea going into this design was to take the previous use of this style and create some much more colourful and to interact more clearly with other elements. Using the same blend technique, hundreds of individual circles join together to form the impression of what looks like a 3D shape. In the search for key images I looked for an element in each image in which these shapes could jump from and interact with. As seen in the poster, I decided to have this element be a pair of rounded sunglasses. Not only did this allow me to have another element interact with, it acted as the inspiration for the yellow to orange colour theme. The idea being to have, what looked like beams of sunlight reflecting from the glasses in a very literal way. I added more depth to this poster in comparison to the previous iteration of this style be manually adding a drop shadow in the different areas where the shapes overlap, this provides a much more complete look and makes these shapes seem more like they are interactive objects.
“The idea being to have, what looked like beams of sunlight reflecting from the glasses in a very literal way.”
#6 Lenses
For the final poster of this first set, I continued with the style seen the day before and began to look at different ways in which I can which the winding shapes can interact with a central figure in a dynamic way. I was drawn back to an image i’d seen earlier of rap artist ‘Duckwrth’ who was holding his hands up to the camera creating a very clear foreground/background. I decided to use this image as a way to have the shapes perform as if they are a 3D object moving between the foreground and background. The shape moves in front of hands and wraps round behind them, doing this manages to further separate the fore/background and really push on this illusion of three dimensions. As well as this zooming in on the photograph (previously a full body wider shot) really draws focus onto Duckwrth himself and makes his face the complete central focus of the poster. Differently to previous posters I felt the text sat more comfortably set vertically down the right side of the page whilst still keeping along the grid lines set in the set poster layout.
“I decided to use this image as a way to have the shapes perform as if they are a 3D object moving between the foreground and background.”
#7 Duckwrth
Looking back on this first set of posters I am happy with the variety and exploration into different effects and styles that I would perhaps not have tried otherwise. More practice on these kind of styles and effects is always welcome and can be applied in many different places across a variety of projects. It is good to be able to have a new task to work with each day despite it being difficult to fit in among what can be a busy day to day schedule however I find that a project such as this can help boost both productivity and creativity in the long term. As well as this, after just one set of posts my social media has began to begin growing after being left to the side for quite sometime and I expect this to continue the more consistently work is uploaded.