This promotion is awesome. I found the sparkling gem in downtown Portland, in a honeycomb building filled with artist studios that house designers, developers, and a few incredible artists.
Just take a look at it. Wait, don’t read the copy just yet. Let the image take over. I love the girl shouting, the colors coming out of her face, her hand, and the colors on her head, adding some dimension. Why do I love it? Maybe because of the powerful expression that everyone understands -- hey! listen! news! -- and because of the strong diagonal lines of color, which augment her message like a can of whoop ass. Also, it’s a night of dialogue, so the visual is perfect in that it expresses yelling, shouting, speech.
And while this little flier is so extremely awesome, there are some small and confusing quirks.
First, the design really has nothing to do with any of the ideas brought up in the first set of copy. There’s no visual indicato about America, economics, “the great cultural shift”, veganism, etc. Is there a way that the design could still carry the simple message of speech while bringing in any of these elements?
And the copy within the colors. First: totally differing fonts, and a lot of ‘em. Someone once told me a million years ago to not mix too many fonts. And I’ve always adhered to that blindly... and I still agree, in this case. Sorry dudes.
You have this old western font and the totally askew “Sat. Aug 27th” font. If they could have made the SAt AUG 27th” font in line with the diagonals, it wouldn’t be so jolting. But, it’s definitely eye catching.
SpeakUp! being a whole new font... are they saying to speak up, or is that a name of a group, or what? No space between Speak and Up, so I assume it’s a group and that’s why they gave it a font of its own?
The “no one turned away / space limited” copy is somewhat hilarious. OK.... Space IS limited, but no one’s turned away. So don’t hurry now!
Maybe having “Hawthorne Hostel” at the top of the page, with the other copy in all new places...
But despite any design element quandaries, it’s so good that it inspired me to create my own personal business cards, separate from my photography, in a similar fashion. And M walked into my office and said, “Whoa” when he looked at it. Just what they wanted.
Any suggestions for improvement, or enjoy as-is?
- P -
