Posters
LVC Coffeehouse Series
This poster was very challenging because of all the information that needed to be on it - the artist, the date, a brief description of their sound and a picture for five different acts. Many of the previous years' posters had tried to spread the information and pictures out over the entire area of the poster while muting a central image in the background. I chose to go a different way by essentially splitting the poster in half, with the information about the acts on the one side and the main image on the other. I had been toying around with the idea of putting the Dutchmen inside the Starbucks logo from the moment I first pictured the poster. It was one of my first attempts at superimposition using Photoshop and it turned out better than I thought it would. Jenn Evans, Director of Student Activities, even thought about using my created logo for actual coffee mugs.
Greenblotter Poetry Slam '08
For this poster I decided to attempt to play on the roots of the poetry slam itself. Its origins are deeply rooted in the African American community and often take on an urban persona. With this in mind I added an underground feel, a bit of an inside joke as our LVC Greenblotter Poetry Slams were not always the most well publicized events and in the past had spotty attendance records. Due to some budgetary issues our organization faced, this poster never was printed in its intended 11x17 proportions, but instead was hung up around campus on regular letter paper. Despite our issues, the event was well-attended and quite popular.
Vagina Monologues **APCA Award Winner**
When I found out that I would be creating the VM poster for the 2008 production, I thought about what kind of a feeling the show provokes and attempted to reflect that in my design. I decided to mix an intriguing pulp magazine style background featuring drops of color with a hard-edged almost punk rock bite to the main image. For said main image I chose to depict a woman with an in-your-face attitude and a very strong image. Unfortunately I had to add the text heavy information to the design as well and decided that putting the bulk of the information at the top and bottom, with the foremost details in the main image, where the eye would hopefully be drawn to and stay to investigate.
ValleyFest '08 **APCA Award Winner**
This year we, as an organization, attempted to honor our roots. To this end I decided to use the most common logo for past festivals (then known as the Spring Arts Festival) and incorporate that into the design of the 2008 poster. Also I decided to have a general color theme with all of the different items I created for the VF, hoping that if people on campus were walking by a flyer that was orange and blue they would know, without reading it, what it was for. While designing this poster I also found the font that would tie together all VF materials: ArtBrush.
Reel Big Fish Concert **APCA Award Winner**
In addition to the orange and blue color scheme that I had envisioned for ValleyFest materials, I also decided to attempt a level of urban chic in some designs. Graffiti and street art have always intrigued me visually and I had hoped to give the Reel Big Fish poster that sort of a feeling. We were given the artwork, taken from the band's most recent album The Monkeys for Nothing and the Chimps for Free, and it seemed to fit with the design. Using Photoshop I made the entire image look as if it was sprayed on a brick wall to finalize the urban feel.
Bon-Journey Concert
In the same way that our general festival poster paid homage to the old while bringing something new to the table, our selection of bands did the same. While we brought in Reel Big Fish to honor the new, we also booked Bon-Journey, the nations only Bon Jovi and Journey tribute act, to respect what came before. So for this poster I decided to just go for a straight forward rock band feel. The thing I'm actually most proud of in this poster is the logo that I created for a campus band called The Pinheads. After talking to a couple of guys in the band they gave me an idea of what to do with their name, suggesting the Back to the Future font and the Delorian. I think the logo, besides making the band look more legitimate, makes the poster work as whole. It's classic yet also a little tongue-in-cheek, the same kind of feel that a band like Bon-Journey may suggest.
ValleyFest Children **APCA Award Winner**
Advertising to the college community was easy for our ValleyFest committee. However, we also needed a way to get the local children to come and participate in all of our festivities. For the poster, that would be put up in the area elementary schools, I chose to make it look fun and exciting so that they would also think of our event as fun and exciting. The use of concentric circles really brings your eye in, focusing on the three biggest images-the Dutchmen, the LVC logo and the VF logo. Again there were a lot of little bits of information that needed to go into this poster. I decided to hide them inside the rings of blue that the orange circles created. In this way the audience was rewarded for looking at the poster longer with more information that would get them interested in the event.