Our objective for this project was to create a nonpartisan poster encouraging citizens to vote. I began sketching, and created moodboards for a few of my stronger concepts.
Two of my earlier concepts revolved around sports; I had focused on baseball and basketball in my initial sketches, as those both feel very American as well as being dynamic and interesting to illustrate. My third concept was a Western-themed poster. I felt inspired by the vivid paintings of cowboys and cowgirls riding off into the sunset, and felt this also presented a very American set of imagery to work with.
I knew I wanted my final design to be illustrative, and evoke a strong sense of feeling for the viewer, no matter which direction I took.
In critiques, I worked with classmates to determine the best sketch to move forward with. My final three had been a combination of two Western-style sketches and a baseball-themed sketch.
The strongest composition was the Western composition with VOTE spelled out in the clouds. My classmates gave some great notes about layout edits and other ways to elevate the poster more and more.
I worked up the next draft of the poster in Procreate, then used Photoshop to overlay a sunset image in different styles over the sky and clouds.
I ended up making the poster completely illustrative to keep the style the same. However, I did use the overlays as inspiration for the colors of the illustrated versions.
I had two final drafts of the poster that were the same in composition but different in colors. Rather than selecting one or the other, the consensus from class in the critique was to combine the two posters. The sky in my more natural version was more believable, but the cowboy’s red shirt and the paint horse stood out better in the brighter composition.
I worked on this combination, and cleaned up some other aspects of the poster. The final was selected by Queens University for inclusion in their "Design for Democracy" exhibition in October; I was honored that my work was picked for display.
