I was tasked to design a showart for the digital play, "Racist Actor". The showart would be displayed on social media and the theater's website. For this project, I was not given any details about the play's plot and only knew that the playwright was Chinese-British.
Moodboard
The prompt I received from both the director and playwright was to design something representing fragmentation, urgency, and the erasure of faces and identity. The drafts for this project were closer to the initial ideas of a collage aesthetic and/or cultural identity clash.
First draft
Final image
As this was a play about Chinese identity, I wanted to make sure to draw upon specific cultural icons. The above graphic is the final result. Aside from the backdrop of Chinese lanterns, the contrast between red and black brought a violent connotation to the final image.
Improvements made:
- Change title font to a more "frantic" typeface
- To increase visual contrast, background image was changed to red lanterns
- Copied brushstroke styles in covering the person's face
Showart with full credits
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