Welcome to the official blog of the Highstrung String Quartet!

Sunday, November 30, 2008

The Evolution of a Concert Poster

Our lives are inundated with advertising. Very few people realize how much thought goes into making them --until they see a bad one. This is a post to show you how we go from awful to presentable.

I started out with a two color idea using a landscape page. the foreground text would be emphasized by the picture in the background and the brown border would match the theme we had on our website and blog. After setting up the layout, I sent the poster to Eric so he could add the concert information. Here is our first draft:



I hated it. In a frantic rescue attempt, I brought the background into focus and moved the “In Concert” so it had a little something more than all caps. The brown border went to black and a foreground picture of us added a softer color. The result:




After these adjustments, I slumped over my keyboard and thought this might be the worst poster ever. The main problem is that it looks like the content was shaken up and spilled onto the page. There’s far too much white space, the website (justified center) looks goofy and there is an ugly white box around the logo that clashes with the grey background. The blue picture…well let’s just say it doesn’t fit. At the end of the day, it looks like John Cage went into advertising.

So, back to the drawing board. The page went portrait the background image became the foreground image and the content went to the bottom of the page where our logo and website rested more professionally.



Much better. I showed it to Josh who said he’d also like a color version:



Now we’ll just replace the concert information on each poster so it is event-specific and send it to our concert organizers.

So the poster is done! That’s a big check on our to-do list. Feel free to pass these posters (the last two) onto your friends and family. You can download the .PDF versions at our website. We’d love to see you there!

-David

4 comments:

Emily said...

Holy cow!! I'm SOOOOOOOOOO blown away....you guys rock my bare feet :)....keep up the amazing work...haha, great job guys! Lovin' the posters =) -em

Michelle Knopp said...

Sweet poster bros! I shall put a copy on my office door.

Karen said...

These posters are mysteriously showing up all around the eastside of Seattle! One was even spotted taped to the inside of a county vehicle. I kid you not.

Mrs. E.......
:-)

Joshua said...

Mrs. E,
That is really great news! Thank you so much for working on getting them taped to "country vehicles" and generally spread all over. You are so awesome! We are looking forward to the concert!

- Joshua Knopp