Ali Holder Gig Poster

About Me

I'm a 29 year old Software Engineer from Amsterdam (I mostly make iPhone/iPad apps), I'm a big poster collector and concert go-er, I'm lead guitarist in 2 bands (Cosmic Sands and Sour Note) and I also love designing/design in general! I've followed a screen-printing class a few years ago and have made some screen-prints already.

Introduction

Ali Holder is an Austin Texas based singer songwriter! She agreed to let me design a gig poster for one of her gigs around SXSW 2013. Exciting! I'll be using this project in the DKNG class firstly to share my progress, methods, thought process and secondly to receive invaluable feedback and hopefully constructive criticism on my work! I'm hoping a cool custom screen print will attract more attendees to her show!

Her previous flyers have been images with text, simple but to the point with vintage/western esthetics which I think are pretty cool. It all feels Instagrammy in a way... I like the colors and feelings the pictures evoke!

Materials & Methods

I will be sketching everything out on A3 paper sheets with pencils. I'll be using a lightbox to clean up and flesh out these sketches... when I get a detailed and clean sketch, I'll be inking it again using a lightbox and a brush pen (Pentel Pocket Brush Pen). This outline I will scan into illustrator to convert it into an EPS which I will be coloring in with solid colors and rasters, have it screen printed by a specialized screen printer (D&L screenprinting in Seattle maybe) and have a batch sent out to Ali in Austin for handing out, hanging up and selling!

Poster Theme

Pearly Gated Tree: I've already been concepting and sketching away at this, it consists of an arched gate standing on a cloud (think the pearly gates), the arch frames a tree which grows out of the cloud with its branches reaching out and wrapping around the gate's arch and columns (maybe roman style pillars?)... I don't know where I got this but I think its the first one I'm going to try to sketch in more detail. The branches will be making up some of the text (Artist name, Venue name) maybe?

The Sketches

Another iteration of the Holder tree:

Different attempt at filling in the tree with very thin lines!

Experimenting with colors!

Reference Images

Pearl Jam Rotterdam 2009 Gig Poster - Ames Bros. This is a concert poster out of my screen print collection, I was fortunate enough to attend that gig, it was pretty amazing!! Note how Rotterdam is spelled out in the branches below Pearl Jam.