Case Study
Tags: School, Case Study, Design, Opinion Piece, Fiesta

A piece I want to talk about today is one I made a couple of years ago. It’s one that I still look over fondly and set a standard for my design work. This piece is the 30th Fiesta poster and event project. I was commissioned to design the branding project as a part of my job for the college organization Latinx/Chicanx Student Association (LCSA). The premise of the event was to celebrate latinx culture in speech, talent show, and a dance.

When I first attempted the poster I had a difficult time implementing the styles of Alphonse Mucha, an artist whose work I’d recently fell in love with. I chose his style of Art Nouveau because I thought it would fit with the elegant feel of the place the event was being held at, the Greysolon in Duluth. Well, what I had to fail to realize initially was just how he made his work; they were painted on a large scale canvas, and I was using digital technology. I thought I could recreate something similar but the first draft was not meeting my expectations. I stopped this version part way through.

First design iteration digitized.

So what I did was looked for help. I went to my professor at the time to see what I could do differently to improve my work. One of the first things she asked was, what do these symbols mean? What are you trying to convey? I said elegance, but I quickly realized what she meant. I had no context for these symbols. I then asked about how I could recreate the same visual textures as my inspiration? She reminded me of my background in comic illustration and suggested I try to focus on a more physical approach.

I asked her more about this approach and her experience with creating materials. She told onto me the old methods, before the computer screen; how a long time ago artists use to use the sun to trace over drafts. How if you wanted to draft a piece you needed to use the actual size paper to get a proper reference. I don’t remember exactly how we got to this, but she said something to me that I’ve not forgotten and I’ll quote it verbatim. She said, in terms of graphic design, “how can you break the rules if you don’t know what they are?” It reminded me in such a swift moment, all the things I still had yet to learn. With all this new insight I went back to the drawing board, literally.

I started out by using the same structure as the previous draft, I felt like I had something there. I incorporated more shapes and gutters similar to a comic book and filled them will a detail drawing of flowers. The flowers I picked were the national flowers of Venezuela and Peru. They represent beauty and ornamentation. More hidden is the rose which can symbolize love but mainly beauty in this context. The numbers in the main circle is the date “Spring 04/13/19” and the jagged polygons scattered throughout are meant to resemble stained glass. Coming off left pillar is a stylized version of Central and South America, which seamlessly flow into the next panel.

Here we have a drawing of the building the event will be held at, just incase the viewer needs a quick visual reference. You may notice the gradient used in this poster, it seems different than the typical colors found in Adobe products. Recalling from what my professor said, I tried to use paints for the color. I painted on a separate sheet of paper and scanned in the results. This created a more natural look and added texture to the piece as a whole. Things like the flowers or the balcony beam going off the panel is something I implemented from mangaka, where they often depict important subjects going off the panel in dynamic ways.

If I had to revisit this design again, or redo it I would in a heart beat. It was hard work, and a big learning experience, but it was rewarding. I would focus on using more high quality scans, straighter lines, and more space for certain elements. The actual information of the event is down below, basic and readable, but I would like to make this more so. In an ironic way, it’s probably the last thing you see when look at this. But they way the poster is designed it would lead your eye down there anyway.