DESIGNING A SERIES

I've had a few opportunities to design a series like the poster set above, which was for Scholars in Business events at Lawrence University. No matter how you approach it, a series can have an intimidation factor because you're looking at multiple pieces that need to tie together, but the individual pieces need to stand on their own.

The client used words like, "modern, fresh, and bold" to describe the color palette and design they were after. Other than that, I was given freedom to come up with my own concepts. There were, however, two concerns. For each poster I was given a large amount of text and a small amount of turnaround time.

The poster on the left was the first I designed for this series. The word "summit" in the event title instantly brought to mind a mountain peak. I had fun putting this one together because it was an opportunity to do a little visual riffing on the old TWA destination posters I love. The second poster's tie-in to entertainment made a big star an easy choice, though it was challenging to get the text to play nice in that space. The third poster had a fun, large graphic element, though I do wish the client had been willing to cut some text.

A couple closing tips:

1. Make sure client and designer understand vague words like "bold" to mean the same thing. On first proof, the sky behind the mountain was blue, and the client said, "It looks great, but we want bolder!" Swapping in a bold green was all it took for the client to fall in love with the design, and also helped establish a strong palette for the series.
2. Don't paint yourself into a corner. Posters in this series were designed one at a time over the course of several months, with usually less than a week of turnaround time for each poster. I've worked on other series where every job came in on the front end and elaborate designs were feasible, but in this case, tight turnaround time mandated bold, simple elements. That's my design aesthetic, but it may not be yours. Either way, try to consider the series as a whole when designing that first piece, even if the following pieces are weeks or months away.