Recent Work: Gibraltar Music Festival 2014

 

We are getting closer and closer to the end of the year and together with that another month has gone by!

September: the month that for some is synonymous of the beginning of spring, for others the start of autumn and for all Gibraltarians, time for the yearly expected Gibraltar Music Festival. 4 stages, over 30 local and international acts and thousands of people flying in from Spain, UK and Russia make of this music festival, the biggest event in Gibraltar. And for me one of my biggest jobs...

For the second consecutive year, the organizers of this event contacted me to assist them with all the graphic artwork for the festival. Months of work prior to the event included designs such as layouts for dozens of magazines and newspaper adverts, posters and billboards, website design, facebook images updates, brochures and programmes. And that's not all; event maps and plans, timetables and even all the signage for the festival itself and artwork for all stages and screens was part of the work I did for the event.

It was hard-work which included some late nights setting artwork for print deadlines but I must say that I enjoyed every step of it; specially as it was a pleasure working with organizers and visionaries, Jonathan and Owen.

Below are some of the elements I designed for the Gibraltar Music Festival 2014.
Don't forget to click on the video at the bottom of the page to see the highlights of the event and the magnitude of this festival.

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Spring Poster Free Printable

Happy Spring everyone! Today I would like to share with you this free spring printable poster I made specially for the South Bond Bride Blog. To see the full post click here.

I thought it would be nice to show a little bit of how the process of designing a poster works. Many people think that designers just sit in front of the computer, choose different fonts and voila, job done. But the process is a bit longer, more intricate and fun than that.

I love doing as much as I can on paper before I get to the final stage where I bring the artwork into the computer for the last retouches. Here is a simple step by step process that I normally like following:

1. Finding the right phrase
For this project I wanted to use an inspiring phrase with the spring theme. I looked in Pinterest and Google but didn’t find anything that really motivated me so I started writing down words and putting together my own Spring Phrase. “Hello beautiful spring. Let’s have lots of blooming fun” was what I decided to go ahead with.

2. Trying layouts and finding the right one
In my sketchpad I tried different options for the layout, playing around with the words and making sure that the main ones, “hello”, “spring” and “fun”, were accentuated.

3. Sketching each word
Once I decided on a layout I started sketching the different words, each of them in a different custom typeface. Normally I go through many sketches for each word until I’m 100% happy.

4. Inking
Finally, once I had the final design of each word, I took the pencil sketches and inked them. For this I use a lightbox. It’s not really necessary to have the final art inked but in my opinion it makes a big difference for the next step.

5. Scanning
It’s very important to have the final artwork in dark pen, otherwise the scanner doesn’t pick up the light pencil strokes. The clearer the ink work is, the less computer editing work will be needed afterwards.

6. Final retouches in the computer
Once I have the artwork scanned, I use Illustrator and Photoshop to do the final details. In this case to give the watercolour feel to the letters and add the embellishment flowers that finish off this poster.

You can download this gorgeous spring poster printable here.

Calentita 2014 Poster Design

 

For the second consecutive year, the guys from WOM in Gibraltar asked me to design the poster for the Calentita Food Festival. For this year's design they wanted to portrait one of Gibraltar's most iconic architecture landmark: the Moorish Castle. This Medieval fotification is made up of various buildings, gates, fortified walls and its most dominant features, the Tower of Homage and the Gate House. This structure is clearly visible to all visitors to Gibraltar, not only because of its striking construction but also because of its dominant and strategic position.
Regarding design style for this year’s design, I was inspired by the progressive commercial posters of the 1920s and 1930s featuring simple lines and the usage of balanced compositions and bold colour combinations. To create this poster, I used seemingly abstract blocks of colour to build up the castle and the white food stall tents, signature of the Calentita festival.
View and read here about the poster I designed for Calentita 2013.