I am thrilled to finally be able to unveil the work behind the Meet the Pros 2010 poster! This is a project I have taken on twice in the past (you can read about the last one here) and this year I was ready to bring something really special to the table.
Meet the Pros is a two-day student-focused advertising and design event built to strengthen students' portfolios and interview skills before they approach the job market after graduation. It made a huge difference when I attended (many moons ago!) and I'm happy to be able to give something back to the event when I can.
The litmus test for any poster that is going to stand in front advertising and design students is to get their attention. This is often much harder than it looks — these kids are nothing but visually hungry idea-vampires (note to self: 2011 poster idea), so you really have to pull out all the stops. Previously I've done metallic-print zombies and full-wrapping manga comics, and this time around it was all about the year: 2010. The future.
The initial sketch of the poster, with notes on typography.
The concept started out with the viewpoint of the mid-to-late eighties looking at the year 2010 as the far-flung future. Anyone who lived through this time knows nothing but disappointment anytime the idea of flying cars is mentioned, because we were all certain we'd have those by now. Due to my upbringing the movie Tron, soon to receive a big-budget sequel, came immediately to mind. The first step to presenting the concept—unlike previous years, this was the only concept presented—was to flesh it out with a mood-board and tighter sketch.
The mood board was comprised of retro-styled graphics, some from the time period in question, but many from more contemporary designers. This set the tone of the piece, and was coupled with…
…this much more refined sketch of the idea. Basic ideas for tag-lines, composition, and typography are roughed in.
The committee behind the event loved the idea, and I was able to enlist superstar Omaha photographer Scott Dobry to shoot it. I've worked with Scott before, and we always seem to get to collaborate on the coolest projects. He's got a fantastic eye and is absolutely terrific when it comes to working with people.
Liz, the heroine of the poster, gets ready to strike a powerful pose. Note the lack of a Tron-suit and blue leggings at this point.
Liz gets touched up before her next shot.
We spent a long night shooting our three stars: Liz, the heroine of the poster, and Jon and Kim, the two big heads for the background (required of almost any Hollywood poster). We set Liz up in a skin-tight runner's shirt and blue leggings; due to a time-crunch, we weren't able to create a full-blown Tron suit ahead of time. After the shoot I did a rough composition to play with an off-balance placement of the big heads and try some of the suit effects on our main character. These effects were done freehand with a Wacom tablet, and proved I've have to create the suit in Adobe Illustrator to get the right visual.
Also, way too many lines. This rough used a different big-head version of Kim than appeared in the final design.
Here's the suit, drawn in Illustrator, without lighting effects.
To capture the right look, Cindy Morgan's suit from the movie Tron was referenced. Many callbacks to the original design appear on the outfit, with some new additions as well.
Once the images started coming together, the rest of the poster had to be built. For the conference logo I wanted to reflect that eighties motion-graphic look so perfectly captured in the video for DVNO (kudos is you remember any of the originals lampooned in that vid).
The logo, in progress. Here you can see many of the building blocks used to create each character from scratch.
The first draft of the logo was deemed a bit too wild for the committee behind the event, and some of the more experimental bits were removed in favor of greater readability. There was definitely a trade off between style and substance at this stage. While the final logo definitely conveys the information, I miss the way the letters moved in and out of each other and the way the numeral "2" just goes straight off to the southwest and never looks back. I've put the before and after below.
Before: Daring and experimental. After: Usable for the real world.
Then we were finally prepared to bring it all together. Subsequent drafts of the design reigned tighter and tighter on the details, for instance; the first draft that contained body copy (the information needed by students to register for the event) was largely unreadable. You can even see my transparent attempt to keep the old logo alive by repeating the title "Meet the Pros 2010" in the copy area (if your designer ever does this, he's cheating and he knows better). Once the logo came to its final form, the size of the poster was adjusted and the copy was balanced.
Top Left: First rough, no type or effects. Top Right: First appearance of body copy, unreadable by almost anyone. Bottom Left: Near-final design. Bottom Right: Resized poster, with a greater emphasis on registration information on the bottom half.
