my next poster

For my next poster I went through the list of bands and songs that I had discussed with Derek, and one of the bands that stood out for me was the Drums. My reasons for this was that I am I big fan of the band and they are like a modern version of the Beach Boys so a lot of their music is very beach orientated and has a very summery feel to it. The song by them that I looked at was ‘I wanna go surfing’, and one of the verses was ‘while the sun is still shining’.  I chose these lyrics because I think they relate very well to the British seaside in the fact that we should go to the beach and enjoy the weather while it last because the rain is never too far away. 

first final poster

After settling of a composition I decided to cut the whole thing out of one plate of Lino but separate the piece into sections in order to make it a bit clearer to read and to help give the piece some order. I also did this to that each section had a different style of font. I then began experimenting printing the piece in a variety of colours and techniques, like blending two colours into each other to make a fading effect. 

I decided that I want to use the one with the fading red into yellow as my final piece as personally I think it is the most striking and the colours both represent heat and summertime. The colours are also the same as that of a rocket lolly which is classic Ice lolly.

shutter piece

My initial idea for this project was to produce work that I could put on to a shop shutter, and when I went to Margate we visited its neighbouring town of Ramsgate afterwards and where they are building a new hotel on the beach they have boarded it off. On these boards there are loads of pieces of art done by individual people. I thought that size wise it would be a more appropriate way to produce my idea. I began drawing a variety of thumbnails that consisted of activities you can do in Margate, a few images of dreamland, traditional seaside items and classic pin-up girls. My reasons for using pin-up girls were that I believe they are very classy subject and were used a lot during the 50’s to promote certain things, and it was at this time where Margate was in its glory days. So I decided to use the term in order to go forwards you must go back, and by this mean I wanted to use a very retro subject and revamp it. I finally settled on having a pin-up girl in a bathing suit, in order to not be rude or just appealing to men, laying on Margate beach with ‘ visit Margate’, above her.

continuing with the fonts

I have continued to produce a variety of fonts for my poster and also played around with the composition of how I want the piece to look. 

developing my poster

I had a tutorial with Derek last week and we chose a song that’s lyrics I could on a poster about Margate. The song we chose was ‘ hit the road to dreamland’, by Betty Hutton. The song relates to Margate because Dreamland is the name of the run down theme park there. So for the last week I have just been producing pages of different fonts which I hope to use in my poster that I hope will become one of my final pieces. 

tutorial with derek

I had a tutorial with Derek today and we decided that instead of just using obvious phrases of ‘come to Margate’, that I should find songs that have lyrics that could be related to Margate or the seaside and use them within a poster. Similar to the poster I was producing earlier in the project about phrases about the sea. So we began listing bands and songs that referenced the beach and then looking at their lyrics and highlighting key phrases and verses, which could be used on a poster. With some of the songs I didn’t want to chose the obvious verses so picked out stuff that summed up the British seaside such as’ while the sun is still shining’, by The Drums and their song ‘Lets go surfing’, which I chose because I want people to read it and think lets get to the beach and make the most of the day while its not raining which is a common factor within British weather. 

my own hand painted sign

After visiting the fishing museum in Brighton I was massively tempted do make a sign of my own. I decided to use Margate’s slogan of 'Margate the original seaside'' as its on many of the shop shutters around Margate. I went back to the old studio at university to see if there were any old pieces of wood, as I wanted the sign to have that old and battered feel. Luckily I found two pieces of wood that were the same size and thickness. Instead of painting a coat of colour down first I liked the look of the wood underneath and it was something I had seen regularly in Brighton. I do want to add a rope pattern and maybe an anchor to the signs and have them connected together by some chain.