Opera Poster Spring 2011

The image for this poster had to do a lot. The opera is actually two separate operas performed one after another as the composer intended. However, the mood of each opera is opposite and the stories do not interrelate. The one connector that I found is love: The Telephone is about a guy trying to ask his gal to marry him, but he has to resort to calling her on the phone since she can't put it down. Cute. The Medium is about a drunk gyspy fortune teller who accidentally shoots her daughter's best friend thinking he's a ghost. He was hiding in a puppet theater trunk thing. The bottom area is for text.

Grow Without Borders

This past year we (the marketing department) worked on a new admissions campaign at the university where I work. We brainstormed concepts and came up with "Grow Without Borders" to highlight our high percentage of students who study abroad and unusual learning opportunities our faculty offers. "Grow" brought up images of plants, animals, and microscopic elements, while "borders" meant maps, astrology imagery and travel. Using vintage clip art and scientific drawings we pulled the two areas together visually. We coupled that with nature photography and vibrant color palette balanced with mellow neutrals.

Process:

Images of some of the final printed pieces. We got to do some bevel embossing, sculptured embossing, foil embossing and spot varnish. This complicated things quite a bit, but it was totally worth it!

Hansel and Gretel—The Opera Poster

This project was completed by my designer, design intern and I early last year. We decided to do an actual gingerbread house inside a diorama (oddly, I never got to make one in grade school) and photograph it for the final poster image. Below will be images from the entire process, sketches to 3-D placeholders to the final poster. 

Project notes: We made the gingerbread people at work in our 50's oven/kitchen setup and it smelled great. The house was from a kit, but we went to candy stores around town to get the fixin's. The trees and other shrubbery are a sort of ground up paper mache´ applied to foam core. 

I can't recommend it enough—fitting the making of a diorama into your day.