Hello! So in my Communications and Conceptual Design class with Professor Kevin O’Neil we were commissioned by The Dunmore High School Theatre Company to make a flyer for their upcoming musical production Meredith Willson’s, The Music Man. I’ve actually done this same project before in my spring semester of freshman year so it was really interesting to see if I’d grown in that time. During freshman year we were asked to make a poster for the Dunmore High School production of Percy Jackson, the Musical. So today i’d like to compare my process between the two and talk about my experiences/thoughts while making them!

Sketching

I of course started both projects with thumbnails. For the Percy Jackson musical poster, I had actually been a long time fan of the books before the project was assigned so I had a lot of knowledge about the stories and was excited to work on it. I went through a ton of different ideas most of which combined the imagery of water and lighting. But I ended up deciding on a simpler solution, having a image of Percy Jackson coming out from within a lighting bolt. I remember I really liked the sense of heroism it conveyed.

For Meredith Wilson’s the music man, I had never actually heard of the show before. So I took a lot more time to research for imagery and ideas. I wanted the poster to be theatrical so the first several thumbnails I came out with were focused around the figure of the music man in expressive positions. I also wanted to make sure that I incorporated hints that he’s not quite what he seems in the imagery as well. I also explored my options further by creating a few designs what were more centered around symbols. But eventually I went with the one that depicted a man running across a music sheet. I had a lot of ideas for tiny details to include in the flyer so I was excited to start.

Actual Poster

I was still in freshman year when I made the lighting thief poster so I was quite in experienced and intimidated by Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop so I mostly just built the poster in Procreate. I was really quite happy with how I drew the figure, and honestly I still am. I appreciate how the lightning bolt leads the eye down towards the lettering. And the body language of the figure and the emotion it creates was pretty well done. But looking back I really don’t like the way I approached the type. The white borders around the type feels sloppy and unprofessional. If I were to adjust it now I definitely would have gotten rid of them. But overall I appreciate the simplicity of the poster, it’s sort of elegant in a way and I’m still overall proud of it.

For the music man poster I mostly built it in Illustrator. I used different tools to warp the sheet music in the background, and some of the text. I did use a bitmap program for the main figure. But I pieced everything together in Illustrator. I had so much fun incorporating different details into the drawing. Most of them were referencing to the fact that The Music Man actually didn’t really have any experience with music. He was faking it so that he could con people into buying instruments. So I had his uniform un buttoned as he’s running away, his suitcase opening up letting money flow out of it. I also added little white music notes which have been squished under him as he ran across the page. I loved the movement and energy this created, I thought it reflected the play pretty well and I’m happy with the outcome.

Final Thoughts

I think overall the biggest thing that separates my first experience making a theater poster vs the second would be that I didn’t really have a strong understanding of what I was doing. I was mostly just winging it and hoping for the best, and it turned out pretty ok. But for the music man poster I understood confidently what I wanted to address and incorporate into the poser. I kept the elements of design in mind, used a grid to map out my boarding and make sure that the spacing was even throughout. I asked for opinions from people I know more and established a strong color scheme to create cohesion. I thought more like a graphic designer and was in turn made me more confident in the decisions I made. In the end both posters are far from perfect, but this was a really cool experiment to test my growth.

Thanks for reading!
Emma <3