Spring 2023
Overview
This final assignment challenged us to combine our knowledge of multiple Illustrator skills learned during the term to design an event poster and accompanying web banner (or billboard). I chose to design a lineup poster for a rave. We were required to work in different color profiles and resolutions for both products and for each product we had to work with detailed and organized layer structures. For the poster, we were required to work with full bleed and provide a print-ready PDF file. I had a great time working on this assignment since I'm very passionate about the EDM festival scene. I've always loved old-school rave flyers and how they often have surrealist themes. Neon colors, smiley faces, space themes, abstract shapes, and grids are frequently used in rave flyers and I wanted to create a bright, fun, surreal, and visually busy art piece that is right in line with the vibe at many EDM festivals.
The primary Illustrator tools and techniques I used to create my poster and web banner were the pencil tool, pen tool, curvature tool, basic shape tools, shape builder tool, live paint bucket, pathfinder and shape modes, gradients, blend tool, transform commands, transparency effects, grid tool, free transform tool, art brush, type tools, reflect & rotate tools, and liquefy tools.
Looking back, I did not spend as much time sketching as I should have. I began with some very rough sketched ideas and got so excited that I went straight to Illustrator to begin designing, but I quickly went off in multiple different directions. I ended up wasting a lot of time in the program just trying out different things and seeing what worked, time that could have been spent sketching more and refining my idea fully before taking it into Illustrator. I'm proud of my final result, but I do wish I picked a slightly different color palette and created a more refined and 'grown-up' yet still surreal and rave-y poster. I think my Illustrations are cute, but when put together I don't think that they accurately represent the type of rave flyer that I had envisioned in my head. And lastly, I didn't have great time management which did leave me without enough time to add more shading details that I would have wanted to add to objects like the eyeballs and the hands. In the future, I think I'll rework this poster to produce a darker, surreal, and more grungey rave vibe that calls to old-school rave flyers from the 90s.
Preliminary Sketches
Final Digital Poster + Banner
