Posts tagged ‘ads’
I’ve decided to postpone my post on the Remy Bumppo Theatre Company brochure design which was to accompany my behind-the-scenes posts on the season design until I can get my hands on an actual printed copy of the season brochure, which should happen tomorrow or so. In the meantime, this just landed in my hands, so I thought I’d share.
One of the fun things about having a relationship with a theatre company or other client is how often they just drop work into your lap. Over the last year, I’ve worked with Emerald City Theatre Company doing some print design work for them as well as a web site clean-up design. Out of the blue, their artistic/executive/marketing director dropped me an email asking if I could put together a magazine ad for them with only a few days turn-around time. She included an ad she liked and asked if it could look like that. I, of course, politely ignored that request. Well, not ignored, as I did take a look at the ad she supplied. But I find it dangerous to be asked to imitate or draw inspiration from a single source because not only is that plagiarism, it’s also not fun for me as a creative person.
So in lieu of creating a ribbon of images down the side of the ad as in the sample ad, I eventually decided on the idea of building blocks to evoke the feel of children at play. I started with a photo of some blocks for reference, and then built all of it from scratch in Photoshop using photos of different wood grains and the show photos. The result looked pretty good, and looks especially nice when printed in the bright glossy pages of this month’s TYA Magazine. And by turning the job around in less than 36 hours, I made some nice bank and had a happy client. Win-win!
This was my final ad on The Importance of Being Earnest, advertising the theatre company’s annual New Year’s Eve performance that comes with fancy desserts and a champagne toast. I deliberately wanted to do something similar to my first ad with the altered Wilde image, but I wanted to use a different photo to change things up. I’m actually quite proud of this ad, considering I did it while visiting my family, which means I was working on a laptop with no internet connection, no scanner, and no Wacom tablet. So all things considered, not bad.
Hope the new year is treating you well. So far, it is for me. 
Finally, a comic of sorts! My theatre company BoHo Theatre is opening its first holiday show this week, and our publicity photos weren’t ready in time for a big audience push. So I sprang into action this week and cranked out this little number in about 4 hours to include in the mass emailing and Facebook profile. I’ve also been doing some quick and simple comics for Lisa, illustrating the downright bizarre stories that the 3-5 years olds in her theatre classes have been coming up with. I’ll post those here soon.
What’s up for the coming new year? Well now that Dumbstruck is for all intents and purposes done, I’ll be working on completing my back strips with the aspiration of putting together some comprehensive compilations by this time next year. Also, one my projects over the holidays is to begin a complete revamp of my portfolio site, since it has now become very important to my livelihood. This site will become much more of a part of the portfolio site, and I’ll be using it as a real blog, posting more often with the projects I’m working on, thoughts and observations about being a freelancer, and (of course) comics when i get the chance.
So look forward to awesome changes over the next month or two. And if you have any favorite art portfolio websites that you think are really awesome, drop me a comment with the address to check it out. I always love inspiration!
One of my jobs is graphic design for Remy Bumppo Theater Company, utilizing the title and poster elements created by their design consultant, who has contributed pro bono work to the company for years. I was given hand drawings of the title logo and hats and had to then create a postcard, ads, and soon web banners and such. This is my first print ad for the current show. The whole “hats on photos” idea is something I began on the postcard, using the headshots of the cast members.
Interestingly, the photograph the image of Oscar Wilde is based on, despite being about 120 years old, is apparently rights-managed by Corbis. They would give us a full-resolution image plus rights for about $2,000. So instead, I reworked the low-res image (he was wearing a hat in the original), and did a free-hand vector version in Illustrator– my first full Illustrator project. All that plus the hats and the ad stylizing constitute enough of a difference to avoid rights infringement.
