Pinchflat Poster Process

I was at the CSCA meeting a few months back when they announced the Pinchflat poster show here in Columbus.  If you don't want to click the link, it's a poster gallery show here in May featuring bicycle themed posters.  Motion Graphics keeps me pretty busy lately (for which I am very lucky), but that means that I don't get a chance to do much illustration or graphic design that isn't destined to be in a video.  I'd been itching to do something in a different medium, and was pretty excited that such a great opportunity presented itself (also, I really love bikes).

Concept

A lot of my leisure time, when I have it, is spent reading articles online, keeping up with the news, and using social media.  But recently I've been doing a lot more reading of traditional, old fashioned books.  One that I bought a while ago, but just now got the change to dig into, was Steven Heller's Iron Fists: Branding the 20th Century Totalitarian State, a book about how branding and design played a role in the facist eras in Italy, Germany, Russia and China. Of course there's a lot to be said about the things that happened in that time period– a great deal of it negative– but I've always been fascinated by how powerful art and propaganda became in those regimes. On a slow day, I devoured the chapters on Russia and China and made notes on their design language (Italy was too art deco for my tastes and even I am not crazy enough to do anything that could be construed as an homage to the nazis).  There was a lot of really neat stuff in there that I wanted to try out, and I made a lot of sketches, but one thing that I was most inspired by were the old chinese paper cuttings with their simple uses of color and complex uses of form and texture (that's right, ETSU, I actually paid attention in my 2D design courses).  Their flat colors and simplified illustration style appealed to the minimalist in me, and their feel and style were just what I was looking for.

Execution

My Pinchflat Submission

I'm really pretty proud of how this came out.  I feel like a lot of modern design draws focus with a lot of negative space and page positioning, so I was excited to use texture and rhythm to accomplish the same thing.  Even though each of the 50 cyclists is unique, they blend together to form a textural element and serve to highlight the field of red of the flag.  Which, I suppose, is a very communal and asian mindset now that I think about it.  A dense bank of clouds and some waving grass complete the effect of the only big solid portions of red being around the focal point near the bottom right.  I also really enjoy the color simplicity of it.  The foreground color is going to be that cream, which I'm told is called "Laurel", and it's going to be printed on a french paper that's this nice scarlet color.  I've never gotten anything printed on anything other than a white or an Ecru, but I hear that it gives it a really nice look.

Bike Seal Closeup

I'm pretty proud of the little "BIKE" seal as well.  I know it's far too tiny to see the details on on the full sized poster, but it's pretty accurate to the soviet bloc seals from way back when.  Instead of a laurel wreath wrapping around it, I used bike treads, and there are little stars in the center of the wheels.  It was little details like that that made it so fun. :)

Thanks so much for reading.  Though I'm not completely sure that anyone is reading, I really will try to update this quicker.  One thing is certain– no one is reading if I don't post.