Sometimes it's easier than it is hard...

Here's the poster I made for another workshop:

Simple and to the point.


And the one that ended up being used for the film festival. For both of these, I shamelessly stole stock/google photos for backgrounds. And Kiersten honestly fell in love with this film festival poster. She actually freaked out: she must have said "oh my God" about twelve times.

Then she asked me to make it as an invite, as a poster, and for VIP passes. Well, you know, sometimes it really is easier than it is hard.

But I guess that doesn't really answer the question as to whether art should be some sort of struggle, a personal boundary-pushing kind of thing.
There are metric tonnes of people who just make pretty things which serve a purpose but which don't actually stretch the artist. One part of being an artist is just the fact that you have developed that vocabulary and that you're able to express things perfectly. Art has to be spot on, and people notice that. Or rather, they don't, and are just carried away. Sometimes, you know, something doesn't need to be executed perfectly, but it all needs to be in balance in that piece. I mean, I don't like the slightly awkward little rectangle of text down in the bottom half of this poster as the invite because I don't think that the whole piece has its flow. But, well, it's done now. And the actual poster posters didn't have that on it.

I often find that when I see or learn a new technique, I become enamored with it to the point that my love for, well, whatever (I think last week it was the case of my downloading a bunch of new fonts) blinds me. I thought the fonts sold the poster and then realized (or rather, Kiersten enforced the realization) that they actually weren't. So I've got to absorb that shock, that love, to stop making it exotic and just incorporate it into my toolkit so that I can use it well.


And today Ashley wanted me to make her a poster for Questival, and at least right now, I feel like it's in harmony with itself. It stands as one piece where no particular parts of it take away from any of the others, or the whole. Maybe I'll look at it again in a week and see differently.
I still like making posters. To be bold and to the point, to convey the mood without stating it, to intrigue, to pass on the information. It has its own zen. It's not something I'm used to doing, but it's nice to pare things down and work on this level.