Cherry Blossom Festival
★ This is a project that focuses on creating elements for the poster in Adobe Illustrator. The goal is to make two different posters for a public event that would be stylistically recognizable.
Aside from the same typeface, other elements were picked to unify the design, like the cherry blossom petals, the cherry blossom branch, and the silhouetted background.
★ The first step in creating the posters was looking up the festival’s website, facebook, and images from the festival and festival grounds. Not all, but a majority of these images would become references for the different elements I wish to put into the poster, like the cherry blossoms, lantern, and hot air balloon.
★The second step was creating a rough sketch of an idea for these posters. I started off with a rushed watercolor. From there I created the individual elements.
The lantern was the first created by layering solid colors with the shadows and highlights. After the cherry blossom branch and petals were created using a combination of the blob brush and pen tool. Following the cherry blossom was the background silhouette using shapes and the blob brush. Lastly, I created the hot air balloon. This turned out to be more complex than the lantern as a pattern had to be created from scratch for the basket.
★The color choices came from the reference images themselves. Pinks and reds from the cherry blossoms. Dark blues for the lantern. Even the main color in the backgrounds were derived from the reference photos.
For the hot air balloon, I knew I wanted to do something blue for the sky and to tie in with the lantern. As for the poster with the lantern, I wanted to use a green that would compliment and contrast with the cherry blossoms and lantern. I kept the blue and the green toned down so as to not outshine the main elements of the posters.
★The last step in creating the posters was combining the elements together. Changes were definitely made. Petals were added to the lantern poster. Typeface was changed. What is now the finished product can be seen at the top.
