Gig posters come in all shapes and sizes which makes it a great collectible for band lovers. This week I wanted to create a gig poster for a fictional band called Assumptions. 

I chose to go with a minimalist style for this romance indie band. I felt that it was best to portray their simplistic and mellow music that is often based on heartbreaks. 

Creative projects are challenging because there are no limitations. My project initially started off with a mermaid in a vase with the band name being "The One."

  

I used ashy pink tones to communicate sadness and romance. The story behind the poster was that a man had brought home a mermaid from the beach because it was beautiful. He feels that he is doing it a favor since he is showing admiration. He even gives her a flower and places her by a window where she has a nice view of home. In the end, he was only assuming things would make her happy based on his past experiences. But he was being foolish because his choices were only hurting her more. 

I had hoped that the mellowness of the band would be portrayed by the mermaid who only looks out the window and has given up the idea of being able to go back home.

However, I received feedback from my peers and  the sadness was not being portrayed. The mermaid was too small and some said that the poster reminded them of the show "Bachelor." I then knew that I had to change my design. 

A mentor suggested trying different angles to make the mermaid the main subject of the poster. I tried. 

I tried putting the mermaid in a water fountain, changing the vase shape, knocking the vase over, putting her in water touching the moonlight in the reflecting the band name, and liked none of them. 

I decided to start over. 

First, I made some key decisions that I wanted to portray a love that is non existent. 

Then, I thought back to the gig posters that my vector graphics class analyzed. I remembered liking the simplistic posters that used white space as a method of contrast. I also remembered that we do not need to use human objects to communicate emotions. 

I thought maybe textures to portray nostalgia and a simple heart would do the trick. t was too busy and not the direction that I wanted, but I was sure that I should use less elements than my first post. 

I thought back to my poster and remembered what caused the conflict in the story I was trying to portray. I remembered it was assumptions. Then I connected it to the overthinking and assumptions that causes problems in relationships. 

I also loved the concept of using a flower and decided to combine these things. 

Then I faced a new challenge of making these cliche elements in a creative way since I was scraping the mermaid. I kept going back and forth the ideas that I scrapped to see if I just wanted to go back and work on those. Then I thought, thinking, ideas, light-bulbs, assumptions. I realized assumptions were also ideas in our head. Then I started sketching to get my new ideas down. I decided to go with my first sketch idea because it was the most simplistic look. 

I chose a script font to portray romance and kept it black and white since assumptions can be black and white decisions. But the black made the band seem too dark. I also felt that this design lacked the clean simple look that represents the band's music. One light bulb was also not interesting enough. 

So I decided to use straight stems and go with another sketch idea that I did. I also decided to use a sans serif font and space out the wording for a modern look. 

I then went to get feedback on this design and was told that the screw part of the bulb was awkward because it is boxy with too many lines. I was also advised to change the leaves to be more random so that there is variation. Since most of my elements are round, I was told that the straight horizontal lines makes the design awkward. 

In my final product, I redesigned the screws, made the leaves to be round, realigned them to create a curved line, and made the stroke corners round. 

The pink with low saturation and brightness does a great job expressing the heartbreaks that assumptions tends to cause in relationships while the simple strokes and thin sans serif typography sparks mellow emotions. 

The minimalistic modern design and pink color was also geared towards females ages 18-27 living in LA. Since gig posters are collectibles, I thought about the types of furniture that the target audience would purchase in stores like Urban Outfitters and what would be suitable for them to hang on their wall. 

I feel like it would look pretty edgy on their wall, don't you?