ONW Homecoming 2015 Advertising

The scope of this project was to create a poster, a flyer, and front and back ticket that captured the theme of this years homecoming. The theme is "Trick of the Lights" and based off of the book Night Circus. Our task was to create a magical, whimsical, and elegant feel.

To begin this process we started sketching and did a total of 20 sketches. One thing I need to improve on in this step is to make my sketches more of thumbnails instead of whole page designs. These sketches shown are my two favorites and the two that I drew most from for my final design. I pulled the curtain like feel from my first sketch as well as the elephant. The second one is a design that i would have liked to have pushed and looking back at it now, the second one could have fit the theme better--lessons learned.

As for actually starting the process, I pulled in this image which was my true inspiration for the curtain feel. I started to create a wheel-based shape with lines shooting out to re-create the curtain. Initially I had created the elephant on my own by tracing an image with the paint brush tool, but as I wanted to add some more details like the tribal blanket, it got too difficult. So I moved on to try and find an cultured looking elephant that I could image trace. I finally settled on this one that fulfilled the look I wanted EXCEPT how pixelated it turned out to be, specifically after I sent it off to print--bummer. 

Overall I gained a good amount of skills during this project. It was a good refresher that I CAN image trace and not re-create EVERYTHING with the pen tool. I also called on some other designers who taught me skills such as how to scan in my sketches and how to create the glowing effect that I incorporated in my poster and later my tickets. This being our first real project for a client, I experienced a bit of a learning curve with hard deadlines and the importance of making my final project look professional and ready to present. In the end this project taught me a lot of technical and professional skills.

Next time there are a few changes I would make so the overall feel matches the theme a bit better, Again I would probably go with my second sketch and use more of a red and black. I found myself straying from those colors because they don't fit my PERSONAL palate and I think that interfered with my ability to deliver what the client wanted. Next time I would also spend more time playing with the typography and make it play more into my design so it was the main focus and not the elephant. Again I would pay more attention to my vectored elephant and make that look more clean and fit the theme of the poster better. In addition my font on the bottom wasn't able to stay the same as the title because the font didn't include a money sign which I needed for the bottom section. This was a last minute problem and something I didn't have time to really fix. As for things I would do the same, I would want to keep the curtain and still try to hold on to the cream color with some glow.        My experiences with the overall process is something that will definitely carry on through my next projects. I never really understood the importance of the pre-production stage of sketching so much but now having this project under my belt I do. Overall I enjoyed this project and the theme but definitely a project I will learn and improve from.