Project Objective: The objective of this project was to create a series of posters for an art festival of choice. While it could be both realistic and fictional, I decided to base my fictional festival on an existing dance show that I had been a part of years ago.
The premise of this dance festival is around the fusion of Chinese traditional and modern elements, taking the history and richness from the classical Chinese dancing to enrich the elegance and possibilities that modern techniques bring. It is also a fusion between dance and the art of nature.
Name of the festival:
Eye of the Spring
About:
A spring festival as a celebration for Chinese New Year and the arrival of spring. Includes three performances by two dance artists and one dance group.
Performances:
Event 1
Name: Rain
Artist: Dong Mei
Description: To celebrate the arrival of spring and its magic, professional dancer Dong Mei incorporates classical Chinese dance with virtual technology to imitate the movements of the rain. The choreography and the body seamlessly blend into a flow of magnificent scenery. A surreal experience that transcends visual and auditory experiences for the audience.
Event 2
Name: Ink
Artist: Teng AiMing
Description: Teng AiMing, master in dance and martial arts, presents an unprecedented performance incorporating the art of dance and calligraphy. The artist explores the concept of using the body as a tool for art and the stage as a canvas. Join us for a true performance art experience.
Event 3
Name: Bird
Artist: Motion Artistry Dance Group
Description:
The students of Motion Artistry Dance Academy are gathered here to showcase the art of elegant peacock dancing after a hardworking year. This piece, featuring the story of the adventure of a group of peacocks in a magical forest, is a true fusion of contemporary ballet and traditional Chinese dance.
I first went into research for some inspirations. I was looking for a way to incorporate Chinese characters in a design-oriented way as well as some color palette that suits the atmosphere of spring.
With these inspirations, I decided to explore the brush tools in illustrator and play with the idea of an eye in the middle of the poster that expresses the qualities of that specific dance piece.
The first one is rain, I blended together some soft colors to create the ambiance of clouds and raindrops. The second dance is about ink, which has a bold and clean feeling. I tried to express this using a minimal amount of brush strokes and keeping the shape continuous, like an artist moving on the paper. The third one is themed around birds, and I achieved that by layering feathers.
I then decided to abstract the Chinese characters that describe these three themes and make them fit in the center so that the characters would coordinate with the eye and create a focal point. These characters are abstracted to look like they are moving like a dancer.
I further made some tweaks of the illustration of the eyes to make them more clean and minimal, and here is the final version of the illustrations.
Then I moved onto thinking about the typography and how that would tie into the theme of these posters. I first thought about using a fairly modern typeface and extending the title all the way through the three posters to create continuity.
After feedbacks, I wanted to make an overall layout of all the information on the poster first before deciding the type of font to use. Therefore I moved things around to find out the hierarchy of the information and how it may be placed best.
After another round of suggestions, I wanted to make the date information larger as well as modify the size of the title and some other elements to make the poster more legible.
After many versions of alterations, I came to my final design. I decided to extensively enlarge the title, the date, and the theme because they are the most important information to the audience. I wanted to do this in a way that did not disturb the central illustration and Chinese characters, therefore the words are fading into the background of the poster.
