Posting the Poster

Today I posted my entry for the San Diego Film Festival. It proved itself to be a little bit of a challenge; from weighing it and buying the appropriate stamp, to exchanging enough money for a ten dollar bill, the entrance fee. Nevertheless I have sent it with more than two weeks until the deadline, so hopefully it will arrive with plenty of time and I will hear back soon enough. I'm optimistic about my chances, whilst at the same time realising I only spent a day on the design, and I'm sure some of the other entrees will have spent much longer. All I can do is try!

Latino Film Poster Variety

In order to complete this one day brief I needed to settle on the perfect colour application and type composition. I tried it a few different ways, but made no drastic changes. I knew how I wanted the basic resolution to look, I just couldn't decide where I would place the small details. Below are a few snap shots of the range of choices I had.

When I had settled on something I was happy with I decided to print off a version to gage what the colours looked like and to what scale the fonts where. I was pretty happy with the outcome, and surprisingly pleased with how vibrant the colours where. Below are a few macro shots of the printed poster. 

From here I will go on to print the finished composition on high quality paper in the digital print resource. I will then mount the poster onto card, as per the instructions within the brief, and mail it to the correct address. I will post documentation of this at a later date.

San Diego Latino Film Festival

In order for me to get back into the mindset of designing after a few days away from it I decided to attempt a resolution to a live brief that I noticed several weeks ago. The brief itself is a simple poster design aimed at film fans of the Latin/South American genre. I thought this was perfect in terms of my interests in subject matter and to some extent a visual style. I have attempted a few 'Mexican' themed briefs in the past and thought I could draw from my experiences and jump straight into this one with pre-set visual inspiration all in the forefront of my mind. I started the brief by visiting 'Kuler' and tried a few different colour combinations. I wasn't quite sure what I was looking for but I knew the colours had to be bright and engaging. One of the key aspects of the brief was to attract people to look at the poster; the basic principle of any good poster design. Below is flip book of a few of my favourite colour combinations I came across.

I then went straight into illustration design. I knew I wanted to base the design on a traditional form of Mexican scultpure/figurines known as 'Alebrije'. Many images and a brief back story of alebrije can be found here. I started with an initial outline and then used just the one pen to expand on it until the 'figure' was completely covered in pattern. Below is a scan of the finished illustration (pre digital enhancement).

After the illustration had been scanned in I then used the live trace tool in illustrator to turn it into a vector image. I was happy with the digital outcome, but there was one thing missing; colour. I thought about the ways in which I could inject colour into the drawing, but ultimately settled on the method seen below in the flip book. With only five colours to choose from I spread them equally within the drawing trying to achieve the best composition I could. Below are close up snap shots of what I achieved within the day of development.

After settling on an appropriate colour scheme and in turn an application of the colours to the drawing I then went on to add some type to the composition. Below is a screen shot of the way in which I decided to add text. I am not one hundred per cent on the final combination of all the components, but I am certainly nearing completion on this quick one day brief I have set myself.