The Barber of Seville (Graphic Design Studio 1)
Let me preface my first content filled post with by saying, while I’m very happy with the results of my design, I blew it! I have yet to figured out the best way to present the process behind and leading up to final works of art, so bare with me while I wing it a little. Ok so a brief Background on this project first. The goal of this assignment is to develop a poster to advertise a an opera put on locally by a fictional opera company. The only guide lines; it need to be large 12×18 minimum, and it need to be respectful to the original performance. I randomly chose to do The Barber of Seville an early 19th century opera buffa (comedy). So in spirit of being brief I’ll spare you the long and very frustrating undertaking that was the research done on the source material before I put a pen to paper. To explain whats going on in the poster I’ll have to give you a brief synopsis. There’s this count who falls for this girl in madrid, follows her to seville and tries to court her. He being a wealthy man has no reservations in leveraging his wealth to get what he wants. Theres alot more to it but I’m really simplifing the story. So I decided on the hand holding the coin to symbolize the theme. I also wanted to have a strong typographic design. I’m not one to be afraid of type, making its super small and shoving it in a corner. I wanted the type to be a intrical part of the design as much as the imagery. After all this i finally started to sketch out ideas for the poster. Here’s some on the digital ones I did (too lazy to scan in the ones from my sketch book.)
Ok so let me explain the Bugs Bunny Direction. When I first heard that i was doing the Barber of Seville my thoughts immediately turned to the cartoon with Bugs and Elmer called “Rabbit of Seville”
For the type, I used a beautiful woodtype. I found that the old style went well with the 19th century setting of the opera. it conjured up imagery of store front signage, and with Figaro having a barber shop I made the logical connection. I set it with tight kerning (spacing between letters) and leading (spaces between lines) but I feel that i kept the readability. So now that we’re all clear let me show you version of the posters along the way.
So back to the part where I blew it… At the outset this project was designed to be screen printed. That’s why the colors are solid. My experience with screen printing is NOT extensive in the least, so I chalk up my failure to inexperiance and time constraints. In a nut shell; the registration was way off, the quality of the exposed screen was rough, and I ran out of ink and paper trying to get it right. Issues aside I love screen printing, it gives your poster work a very distinct look and the vividness of color that can be acheived Is uncomparable to the usual CMYK process. I’ve learned some crucial lessons, and I’m definitely going to keep trying. Check out some images on that process.
So thats it. I would have liked to elaborate more specifically on certain elements, but honestly I’m a total n00b at blogging and it took forever to figure out the formatting. I have tons of old stuff I would like to get up here as well as current and up coming projects theres ALOT to come. Oh by the way, did you see the heart that the fingers make? Any suggestions to make future posts better? Let me know! Thanks for reading!
papo you have the ability to transform any
unrefined image into a finely polished project I’m really proud of you