"Carpe Diem"
2024 / Digital Illustration
In April, a student at The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts asked me to illustrate and design his Bachelor of Music Honours graduation recital poster.
The poster elements will be all in relation to the concert programme and his home country, Hong Kong, and his school.
He very kindly sent me the photos of him, his pianist and his school to use as reference.
His idea prompt was a poster with a school logo in the corner of the poster, with him sitting or standing with his saxophone, adding his pianist in, including Beethoven, a seagull, with a Chinese Cultural background, adding a dragon which doubles for Dragon Lunar Year, and something that represents Hong Kong.
Based on this, I created these two draft thumbnails for him to select. Both drafts include Virgil riding a dragon that's flying out from the city of Hong Kong and the school, with the view of the Lion Rock mountain peaking in the background. As Beethoven is a foreigner in Asia, he is travelling by boat, facing the city view. The pianist could either be riding with him, or be more connected to the school in this story.
Virgil selected B, and after a few edits, we went ahead with the final line work, removing the placements of the logo and text first, to focus on the illustration piece. The seagull and the rose was added later as more commissioned pieces for his concert programme became solidified.
Certain elements had to have the colours be close to reality (The mountain, the people, the instruments, Hong Kong Waterfront and the seagull). Virgil also had pre-requested that the dragon has the colours in reference of "Haku" from Spirited Away. So based on these set colours, I used the remaining elements to blend the piece together, whilst maintaining the hidden meanings.
Originally as I was working on the colours drafts, I was picturing sunset, to pop out the main elements more, but in the end, as it misrepresented the importance of some elements, I went ahead and changed the idea to sunrise, which fit the graduation title "Carpe Diem" a lot more.
As for the text font and colours, I wanted the viewer to first see Virgil's name, as well as having the school logo on the top right corner, maintaining the school's brand. Having the second title, "Carpe Diem", I chose a script font to indicate the personal touches from the composer who were commissioned for this recital, and maintained the same font as the main title for the details of the concert, to be consistent.
As for the colours that I used in the text, I used the school colours, purple and green, and added a touch of rouge to link with the pianist's dress together visually.
Here are the photos of the final poster in print and on the official website.
