Wellington Zine Fest 2011

Here is the promotional poster I’ve made for Wannabe With Goat for the Wellington Zine Fest this year. It’s being held on the 19th of November at Mighty Mighty (104 Cuba Street, Wellington).  You’ll wannabe there! (See what I did, eh?)

Not only will the poster be used for promotion here online but it will also be hung in front of the stall at the Zine Fest so fans will be able to find it with ease.

This time around I’m going to give a bit of an explanation as to what I was thinking when working on this poster. This will be something I’d like to continue to do when it comes to such things.

Anyone who has seen last year’s promo poster will probably be thinking “What, if any, is the connection here?” As I have previously mentioned music is very important to me especially in a creative sense. Therefore I decided to have something musical for each Zine Fest poster that I’d do for WWG. The Idea for this poster came about when I thought of the image of the Wannabe slamming on a guitar. Last year they were listening to music, this year they’re making it. Whether or not there’s any symbolism in that change I don’t know, but I’m sure someone could come up with something.

Most of the plans for the layout were fixing problems and issues I had with the previous poster. That and I needed to make it simple as I had put a lot on my plate for the time building up to the Zine Fest and I wasn’t sure if it’d all get done on time.

The first fix was the move to landscape, though the portrait layout of the first was unavoidable for the idea I had for it. Landscape is better for various reasons and we should all know what they are by now.

The trouble with the first was that there was little to drag people in with, they didn’t know what the hell it was looking at it from a distance. So I made the title a dominant element (duh) and made the information larger (including a street address as many online people don’t know where Mighty Mighty is, oddly enough). So I used the engorged enlarged title and information to split the page in twine, leaving a space for the Wannabe and the Goat.

To boost its visibility I coloured the title. I went with the Wannabes colours (red, white, and blue). I decided to colour them in that order because when I was planning the colours I was under the impression that there was going to be more blue than red so I tried to balance it out. Alas my impression was a bit off. I try not to use too much red as it is a rather dominating colour, but in the end I think it turned out well. The “WITH” has the potential of being lost at a distance. However I figure that it’s not that important to the title until looking at it up close. The “WANNABE” and “GOAT” are the important parts and do stand out which would also emphasise the key elements of the image.

I left the background white for simplicity but (if you look closely) I added a paper texture to help distinguish between the background and the whites and highlights. It’s Subtle but I’m happy with that.

As mentioned the Wannabe’s pose is what started the theme, perhaps inspired by that guy from ACDC. Initially I wanted him to have an old rundown acoustic guitar, which would be very Wannabe like for him to be rocking out on that. Though I ended up going with something similar to a guitar that Kurt Cobain used (apparently). Why him specifically? I couldn’t tell you.

With the first poster I had the Wannabe in a bit of a dramatic pose using forced perspective to increase the readability of the iPod screen. This time I wanted things to be a bit simpler. This plan was very effective. Because of the simplicity was able to focus on his pose and details thereof. The result is pretty good if I may say so myself.

Lastly (and I’m not too keen on being so open about this) the guitar strap has the titles of the first five issues inscribed in it. Now that’s a guitar strap that’s streets ahead.

I wanted the Goat to have more of a presence in this poster instead of just sitting and wondering what the freak show next to him is up to. Since I had nailed down with certainty that the Wannabe would be on a guitar why not have the Goat be part of the band. I struggled for a while thinking of what instrument a goat could possibly play, what with no thumbs in all. Ideas of him eating instruments came to mind but I really wanted him to playing. Then the idea came for him to be running around on a mountain of drums, jumping and leaping, essentially playing the drums with his hooves (with the drum sticks clenched in between teeth of course). Very bad-ass, very Goat like.

The colours of the drums were to represent the colour spectrum. Red, green, and blue is the scientific colour spectrum. The yellow drum off to the side comes in to represent the artistic colour spectrum with red, yellow, blue. And then of course there’s black, representing shade.

So now you can look at the image and think “oh, now I get it.” In all honesty however I hope you found my explanation interesting. For now, I need to get back to work. Busy busy busy!

-Wannabe out!