The goal of this project was to create a gig poster for a made up band using Adobe Illustrator. The objective was to create something surreal and that conveyed a mood or a feeling rather than something literal. I wanted to depict what the feeling of listening to my made-up band feels l
Sketch and Planning
The sketching for this project was pretty hard. I sat and listened to some of my favorite bands while I sketched so I could just draw whatever came to mind. It was difficult to put my thoughts on the paper but the longer I sat and listened to the music, the easier it was to translate what I was feeling into images.
The Draft(s)
I ended up combining the ideas from many of my different sketches into something a little different than I had planned. I wanted the gig poster to be vibrant and twisted, and I know that I wanted the title text to be hand drawn and have that "drippy trippy" feeling because I had a really fun time sketching in that style. I ended up with the image above as my first draft. I couldn't figure out how to fit in the time, date, and place, so I asked from some critiques.
Most of the critiques I received had to do with the colors I was using and how vibrant they were, so I went in and made the poster a monochromatic purple color scheme. I did this to get a better idea of the contrast and how I could change my colors to work more cohesively.
I also made some small adjustments like making the main subject bigger and hand-drawing the text for the time, date, and place. With some other small teaks like fixing tangents and trapped space, I had my final image.
The Final
I ended up liking my original color scheme better, but decided to use a transparency layer with a blending mode to give the colors a more muted, less saturated look. I felt as though this fit the mood and the theme I was going for, and made the colors work more cohesively.
Overall I'm pretty happy with how the poster came out. I think it conveys the feeling I was aiming for, and I think the adjustments I made to my drafts really helped pull everything together. I'm excited to see what it looks like in print.
