Poster Design: Prototypes and the Final Version

Last week I posted about collecting the ideas for the music poster and now I wanted to show the prototypes and the final form. Below are two lino cut prints I did of possible versions of the poster. The intention for these was to translate the photographs into prints that then could be scanned and edited in Illustrator. 

I was working on turning the lines of light in the long-exposure print into graphic shapes and trying to present the buildings as if lit-up at night.

I enjoyed making these prints and I thought they turned out well. But when I scanned them and brought them into Illustrator they became problematic. The rough texture of the prints did not translate well into vectors and I spent a long time attempting to clean up the image. 

At this point I also decided on the colors and typeface for the poster. For the colors I chose hues that were similar to the 'urban night' photos I had collected. The neon blues, faded yellows and flashing reds were then manipulated to be richer and more stylized. I wanted a romanticized version of the city at night and I chose colors that related to the real-life example but were far more exaggerated. 

The same was true for the typeface. I chose Trajan because of its ancient Roman pretentions. The mix of historical reference and contemporary graphic creates a self-inflating image which I think fits with a glam rock band like Roxy Music. I also applied a 'wear' to the typeface by way of crumpling a laser printed page. I wanted to add even more tongue-in-cheek monumentality.

Eventually I realized that the scanned print was simply to messy and complex for the message that I wanted to convey. I redrew the poster with Illustrator tools and am much happier with the result.