Design and Layout Projects
This is a collection of the design/layout projects I've done for Eldred Theater
at Case Western Reserve University. I have been making almost all of theater
department's promotional posters (except the yearly brochure done by Tom Rask)
since I was a freshman in Fall of 1997. Each poster is a collaborative effort
between myself and several of the department's faculty members and directors.
The process usually begins with the director of the show deciding on some sort
of creative vision of what elements the poster should incorporate. Sometimes
the directors know exactly what they want and will actually draw it, and sometimes they
will just give vague concepts like "it should have columns".
From there, it will go to Scarlett Grala, frequently with a stop at Russ Borski's desk first.
Russ is the creative madman who frequently fills out the creative holes left by the directors.
Scarlett is in charge of publicity for the department, so she decides what text and logos need
to be added to it. By that point, a hand-sketched, cut and glued mock-up of the poster
will be handed off to me, and I make it happen on the computer using any appropriate combination
of QuarkXPress, InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator. I have the power to make any creative
changes that seem appropriate, and I get the last crack at refining the design.
Two to twenty hours of work later, when I'm finished transforming the hand-sketched rough
into a PostScript masterpiece, I take a copy back to Scarlett to see if any tweaks
or corrections need to be made. Lather, rinse, repeat. When it is ready to go I create a
PostScript file and either drop it into a network share over in KSL Printing Services or burn
it onto a CD and hike it over to them. They run off the final copies.
You will notice that I have made a LOT of progress in refining my style over the years. When I started freshman year, I knew how to lay out text in QuarkXPress, but not much else. With each poster, I experimented and played with new features and new pieces of software. Not a single project got finished without me discovering at least two or three snazzy new features or techniques. I've been learning on the job for the last five years!
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Twelfth Night October 1997 letter size (8.5 x 11) Nothing too fancy here. We didn't get very ambitious on this one because we didn't know what our capabilities were yet. Russ provided a clipart iamge for me to scan and pretty much decided the layout for me. I just had to put it all together. |
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Revolution of the Heavenly Orbs November 1997 letter size (8.5 x 11) Text over an image. Nothing fancy about that. The important thing about this poster is that I created high-resolution copies of the Eldred and CWRU logos for later use. |
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Orpheus Descending February 1998 letter size (8.5 x 11) I was quite happy with the fading effect on the stairs in this one. Once again Russ provided the image, but the text layout was up to me. |
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Cloud 9 March/April 1998 letter size (8.5 x 11) Russ had a bit too much fun with scissors and glue on this one. When he handed me the poster concept I had no idea how I was going to pull it off. The Frankstein image is actually 7 separate images that I had to scan, clean up, and resize so I would be able to carefully stitch and blend them together. I had never used Photoshop for anything more complex than minor image tweaking before, so needless to say I had to teach myself pretty quickly to make this happen. Layers became my best friend. |
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You Can't Take It With You October 1998 letter size (8.5 x 11) This was a fun poster. It's a toner-eating monster, but it's a typical example of Russ's preference for white text on a black background. It does manage to get your attention. The clipart of the city had to be edited fairly extensively. I trimmed out many rows of windows in various buildings where they distracted attention from the text. I also got to experiment with non-rectangular text boxes when playing around with the spotlight effect. I like this one because it is an example of the text trying to burst out of the frame - look at the edges of the word "You" compared to the sides of the black box. |
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Smash Hit November 1998 letter size (11 x 8.5) Your mission should you choose to accept it: Create a poster that looks as though it took an amateur 20 minutes to make. I used the drawing portion of ClarisWorks to do this one. This is another example of a trend of putting all of the actors' names on the poster, which sometimes works fine, but other times interferes with choosing a layout option. |
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Richard III February 1999 letter size (8.5 x 11) Getting the crown of daggers image was a fun task. I went nuts experimenting with Photoshop's Dodge and Burn tools before I ever took any photography classes and learned what dodging and burning actually meant. The face looming out a dagger-like wedge of black gives this poster an appropriately creepy feel. |
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Drums in the Night April 1999 (?) letter size (8.5 x 11) Russ handed me a sheet of paper with the text hand-written and the images glued on in the proper places and said "make this happen". I scanned what he gave me, cleaned up a few scanning artifacts, added time, date, credits, and the appropriate logos, and it was done. |
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Menaechmi October 1999 letter size (8.5 x 11) FUN! This is one of my favorite posters to date. Russ told me to make a wacky picture of Freud wearing a pediment with columns as a hat. I'm not sure what the Freudian implications of that are but never mind... We found a head and shoulders clipart image of Freud and some columns we liked. I had to add a bit of torso onto Freud by hand, and Russ wanted a puppet-mouth flapping open saying the names of the cast members. This is another barely perceptible example of the subject leaning out towards the viewer. The border is overlapped on both the top and right sides. |
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The Water Engine November 1999 legal size (8.5 x 14) Russ had a mostly complete layout before I ever got to it. I scanned his hand-drawn lettering and the image he chose, and just added the top and bottom lines of text. |
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The Playboy of the Western World February 2000 legal size (8.5 x 14) Russ gave me the images he wanted, but the general layout was up to me on this one. I'm fond of the way the text and images flowed together. |
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Much Ado About Nothing/Getting Out March 2000 (?) letter size (11 x 8.5) So much text, so little space. I like the way the bars and lock turned out. I also like how the black/white split of the main box highlights the fact that this is two distinct shows. |
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The Misanthrope October 2000 tabloid size (11 x 17) Text on a path and clipping paths were the primary new features I learned on this one. The bottom box frame is just a duplication of the bottom of the upper box. I don't actually like this poster much. It is very sterile and unwelcoming, but that's how they wanted it. |
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Two by Two November 2000 tabloid size (11 x 17) This is another one of my favorite posters. The nailed flower is a striking image that ties the various boxes together. I learned how to use saved selections in Photoshop as Alpha Channel masks in Quark, which are handy clipping paths. This is the first time I ever really used layer effects in Photoshop to their full potential. The flower and nails are the frontmost layer with very crisp borders. The next layer down is a square mask with a slight rotation blur that gives the wood on the bottom layer a very nifty border effect. It makes the nails pop out of the picture. |
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The Julie Thesmo Show February 2001 tabloid size (11 x 17) This is the first time we did the entire production process in-house, including imagery. We arranged a photo shoot which was supposed to depict the aftermath of the play in which one of the actors is arrested. We even managed to get the University Circle Police Department to play along. The images became the basis for a tabloid-style shock-journalism front page. I bought several tabloids including World Weekly News, the Enquirer, and others as a style guide. If you look closely, even the barcode is authentic-looking. If the dimensions of the cover of "The Inquisitor" don't seem to jive with the 11x17 layout of the poster, that's because it is also the front page of the program insert, which is a four page tabloid expose on the making of the play. |
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The Julie Thesmo Show (Program insert page 1) February 2001 letter size (8.5 x 11) The front page of the insert is identical to the layout on the poster. |
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The Julie Thesmo Show (Program insert page 2) February 2001 letter size (8.5 x 11) Each person on the production staff was asked to write up some kind of odd description of him or herself. Some are funnier than others, and there is no unified style, but it still comes across as funny. Look for the subliminal message! |
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The Julie Thesmo Show (Program insert page 3) February 2001 letter size (8.5 x 11) Same thing as page two except this time it is actor descriptions. Sorry Joanna! She really hates that picture. |
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The Julie Thesmo Show (Program insert page 4) February 2001 letter size (8.5 x 11) The back page was my playground. They literally had no idea what to put on it so I went a little nuts. They had given me an entire folder of candid shots taken during production so I just picked a few that I liked and made up cheesy ad copy to go with them. Thanks to explodingdog.com for the Tax-time image. Has anyone seen my sleep? |
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David and Goliath in America March/April 2001 tabloid size (11 x 17) This poster is a conglomeration of many people's work. If you notice, the credit for graphic design is "Fulton/May/Bellard/Sands/MacLennan". We all did our little part. I had no hand in the image design. I just did the final text layout. This poster marks the point at which I finally switched from QuarkXPress to Adobe InDesign. |
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The Two Gentlemen of Verona October 2001 letter size (8.5 x 11) The director wanted text framed by columns. What is it with directors and columns?!? I decided to add a little flair and put a washed out photo of the Italian countryside into the background. |
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subUrbia November 2001 letter size (8.5 x 11) I was given an interesting request for a graphic effect on this one. Russ wanted the image of the house to look like it was being torn apart (oh! symbolism!). It was actually quite tricky, since I ended up having to slice it into three separate areas. I applied slightly different skew and stretch effects to each of the areas, and I also managed to create a jagged tear-mark that looked fairly convincing. The only problem was that it started to look like a tornado was passing through the front yard. It wasn't clear what the slash actually was until I added a drop-shadow behind the left half. The bird above sails by, unaware of what's going on below. |
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The Beckett Project: Four Short Plays February 2002 tabloid size (11 x 17) Once again, we were dealing with our own photography instead of clipart from some book. I like the looming effect of this character even better the the glowing eyes from the Richard III poster. By now I had a much better idea of how to make it look good. This is another Russ Borski toner-eating monster, but the final effect is worth it. |